New site coming soon Options

[Dylaan]

One thing I'm wondering about after seeing some of Gazza's photos... Is everyone supposed to 'blur' faces as to make people unidentifiable? I never knew this but it sort of makes sense. Can ruin the photo if it contains lots of people though.

[Gazza]

^Well, I just did it myself because that's the way they were in the Bucaneer Bay gallery on here. I dont actually know if its policy or not.
Ideally it is better to get photos without crowds, and with local parks I suppose people have been able to do that easily because you can visit whenever, but when I was taking photos at overseas parks I was doing it quickly and if its busy you just have to make do and try to avoid people.
I dont think it ruins the photo, so long as the blurs dont encroach on other parts of the photo.

[T-bone]

Just on this photo system, I have given it a try, and I must say it is really easy to use. Good work richard.

One question though, is it possible to have a feature so that Registered members who are logged in will see a link to a "High" res version of the photo? Say something of a decent size, that you could use as your computer background? I think it would be a rather handy and cool feature.

[Richard]

That's in fact one of the features that is planned. The reason it's not there yet is I am yet to find a way to be able to do this in a secure manner, i.e. so that users who don't have access to the high resolution versions can't get to them, even if they're given a direct link to the image file etc. Hopefully we'll see it in the near future.

[ShadowXL]

Just on this, how do you become a subscriber? I can't find any information on the www.parkz.com.au website.

[zane]

And to add to that^^
why has the price gone up?

[Flea]

Just on this, how do you become a subscriber? I can't find any information on the www.parkz.com.au website.

Go to "My Controls" here on the forums and find the "Purchase Paid Subscriptions" link under the options menu.

[Richard]

And to add to that^^
why has the price gone up?

I don't think prices have changed in about two years. Last time they did was when we shifted from cheaper US-based web hosting to a Brisbane server.

[Rollercoaster13]

When the video feature of the website is open will we beable to make the video link to a youtube video?
Because ive got a whole channel full of MovieWorld videos and Pov's

[Gazza]

Just wondering, is there bias coded into randomiser to show only the Aussie parks?

[Richard]

Because it needs photos to go along with it, it actually randomly selects the park based on whether it has photos or not and at the moment it's set to select only photos by staff. Because there's a few thousand Australian photos by staff up but only a handful of international, it'll naturally skew things that way. I may change it down the track to select all photos; it was done this way because initially I wanted to see how user submissions would pan out.

[Gazza]

Just a couple of questions:

-What is happening with the pages that show all of a users conten, because it is still a situation where clicking a contributors name just goes 404.

-Is there any way to make it so that in a rides database entry, it shows what themed land the ride is in. Its cool how it shows other rides in the themed land, but it would be slightly more intuitive/meaningful if the ride you were looking at was listed too (so its like a full set), it would also improve the situation when there is only one ride in a themed area, and all you get is a blank box

[Richard]

The user's content page is slowly on its way. Hopefully I'll get some time in the near future to sit down and get it finished off.

I was thinking the exact same thing about ride profiles the other day. I'll be making it so that it appears in the list, much like company/resort boxes on park profiles.

[Gazza]

One other little thing, will the community guidelines be back up soonish?

[Gazza]

One other little bug, say if you pick the park scenery narrowing option from a ride page like this:
http://www.parkz.com.au/photos/AU/Gold_Coa...-s-Motocoaster/
The link is missing a slash:
http://www.parkz.com.au/photos/AU/Gold_Coast/Dreamworld/park-scenery/

No problems exist when clicking from a park profile page.

This post has been edited by Gazza: Jun 26 2008, 07:34 PM

[AlexB]

I was just checking out Gazza's latest addition to the photo galleries.
I couldn't help but laugh at the following:

Photos from our extensive Penguin Encounter photo collection.

followed by

Penguin Encounter Photos
SeaWorld San Diego (CA, US)
There are 2 relevant photos in our gallery.

That's extensive....
Surely theres a way (not sure how hard it would be) to program a simple logic into that line that says "extensive". The system is obviously able to recognise how many photos it has for each attraction, so using that, why can't it have a couple of different phrases -
EG: if theres less than 3 or 4 - "Our <Ride Name> gallery needs more photos. Contribute more here!
If theres say 5-10 "Check out the Parkz <Ride Name> photo gallery here!
And if theres more than 10 "More Photos from our extensive <Ride Name> photo collection here

It just seemed a bit of a stretch to call 2 photos a "gallery" let alone our "extensive" collection.

[Adam]

Yeah that is a good idea. The PHP code to make such an addition is trivial.

---- OFF TOPIC ----------------------------------
I think Facebook is so brilliant just for this reason. Every little intricate detail has been worked out and logic applied in the smallest of places.

For example, if someone comments a photo of you, and you've already left a comment, you'll receive an email saying 'someone has posted a comment after yours on a photo of you'. Amazing. It not only knows that I'm in the photo but that I have left a comment. MySpace on the other hand only notifies you of comments on YOUR photos (i.e. not tagged photos) and the text is very generic.
---- END OFF TOPIC ---------------------------

This post has been edited by Adam: Jul 24 2008, 11:11 PM

[Gazza]

More stuff:

-That new "This ride is a work in progress" image shows up on all ride profiles.

-The front page of the site has hit the sweet spot, its more balanced, and solves that problem of whole updates getting shunted, plus its easier to keep track of specific projects.
So I'm guessing what it does is finds the last 5 attractions to have construction photos uploaded...not sure on the ordering critera though (Wheel of Brisbane is 3rd instead of 5th)

-IMO the page that monitors your submissions is the best looking on the site in terms of design. It would be cool if the title bars you made could become the theme across the site somehow.

-But on that page, it still says for me:

Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/parkz/public_html/functions.php on line 331

If line 331 gets fixed then my page will look perfect....like a nice tidy list written by someone with OCD.


One last thing, I'm not trying to bag you out or anything, and I'm probably at fault here by not paying enough attention when I put stuff up, but often photos get through with mistakes (Be it tags, or spelling/grammar errors), which can make the approval process seem a bit redundant.
You've mentioned that mass approve thing you do...does that allow things to go unnoticed?

[Richard]

Eventually there will be a system to report images etc. with incorrectly tagged photos etc. When there's say a dozen or more photos to be approved, sometimes things do slip by. The system has been updated recently to better highlight potential mistakes, but they still get by occasionally. At any rate I normally try to fix them shortly after uploading but it's not hard to miss something.

I can't see that line 331 error anywhere. What's the URL to the page you're using and can you post a screenshot?

As far as the new construction box on the main page, the way it finds and orders them is a little complicated to explain. Suffice to say, 99% of the time it will display them in order of most recently updated, but every now and again, based on the methodology, one may appear slightly out of order. Once attractions are listed as 'Operating', or haven't had an update in the past 60 days they drop off the list.

[Gazza]

Here's a shot showing a few positions on the page:
http://www.parkz.com.au/profile.html