Feelings Towards an Alternate Image-Hosting Site?

ottoatm · Post by **ottoatm** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 5:00 pm

Hmmm....

I am really torn here... I have found myself frustrated by the limited functionality of BS while either uploading or attempting to view other people's work... but it does work, and the biggest catch - everyone already uses it.

If you made another site that was better, I would use it if it were free. But otherwise, I have a strong feeling that the majority of us would tolerate the limited but still-functional features of BS, simply because we are already there and it incurrs no cost.

PS - Maj actually serves me well for posting and storing pics - I love and need this site... but I've never really looked around at the pics of others - that would seem a bit odd, I must confess.

Post by **Bruce N H** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 11:52 pm

Hey Rogue,

Good luck with the image site. I'll be happy to put all my images there, though as long as BS is still the "main" site I'll probably double-post and put images in both places. As I said above, the main danger in my mind of having one main site is what happens if that site were to one day go away.

Some things to consider when putting an alternate site: It would be great to have a contact page associated with each gallery where you could choose to put your real name, e-mail, and any pertinant links, all in a clickable fashion (as opposed to just putting a "readme.txt" file on Brickshelf, which is the only option there). Feedback would be okay (maybe an option that you could allow or not on your own gallery), like with MOCpages. The ability to manipulate folders, upload and download in batches, have comments or captions for individual photos are all nice features. Flickr has the option where you can mouse across an image and have pop-up labels describing different parts of the image. All of these would be nice.
More clickable keyword options would be good. Brickshelf has 16 and you can add your own additional keywords, but different people might call the same creation, for instance, "microscale", "microfig", or "mini", which makes it tougher for other people to search for microscale creations.
Smarter searches (with wildcards, "and" and "or" features) would be good.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Brickshelf is dominant, but there are many extra features that would be nice. If you build a better mousetrap . . .

Bruce

Lord_Of_The_LEGO · Post by **Lord_Of_The_LEGO** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:00 am

Bruce N H wrote:Good luck with the image site. I'll be happy to put all my images there, though as long as BS is still the "main" site I'll probably double-post and put images in both places. As I said above, the main danger in my mind of having one main site is what happens if that site were to one day go away.

Same here. Now that I've learned how to upload pics in huge batches via zip, I'll willingly post my images both on your site and BS. There's always the chance BS won't be around in the future, and I don't want to be screwed when (hopefully if) that day comes.

Good luck!

bombcar · Post by **bombcar** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:03 am

Making money would be near impossible. I don't know how brickshelf does it, I think that it is basically donated bandwidth?

Advertising or payments required would kill it, almost certainly.

Bloody Jay · Post by **Bloody Jay** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:34 am

Brickshelf uses that smart advertising Google provides, I think... I've also noticed some people buy advertising space.

Post by **rogue27** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 11:04 pm

bombcar wrote:Making money would be near impossible. I don't know how brickshelf does it, I think that it is basically donated bandwidth?

Advertising or payments required would kill it, almost certainly.

I don't want to make money, I just don't want to lose money. I do not intend to run any ads, and I plan to have free membership available.

BrickShelf, BTW, uses Google ads and they also take donations. I was going to donate at the beginning of this year, but I didn't do it because it sounded like they were close to going under for a while.

Bruce wrote:It would be great to have a contact page associated with each gallery where you could choose to put your real name, e-mail, and any pertinant links, all in a clickable fashion (as opposed to just putting a "readme.txt" file on Brickshelf, which is the only option there). Feedback would be okay (maybe an option that you could allow or not on your own gallery), like with MOCpages. The ability to manipulate folders, upload and download in batches, have comments or captions for individual photos are all nice features.

My thoughts exactly.

Dunechaser · Post by **Dunechaser** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 11:40 pm

Chiming in a bit late here, but my only suggestion would be to spend a little time gathering "requirements" before you start coding. Perhaps post a new topic in the "Publishing" forum called something like "Image Site Feature Requests" (maybe the Admins would be kind enough to sticky it for a while). Bruce had a number of excellent suggestions, but I'm sure there are others (I can think of a few myself).

If my schedule (work, family, house-hunting, etc.) permits when you get going, I'd be happy to help out with word-oriented contributions like site text and online help. I'm not a Web programmer, but I am a technical writer with a lot of UI design and documentation experience.

If you approach this project from an open-source perspective (since you're not planning on making any money from the project), you might get a lot of contributions from techie AFOLs throughout the world.

Good luck, and keep us posted!