Photo Album Phase 2 Today (March 7) - Few Minutes of Downtime Expected

[iacas]

Today the site will get phase 2 of 3 phases in a massive upgrade to the albums and photos capabilities. We can expect a few minutes of downtime later in the afternoon (east coast time) as this upgrade is rolled out.

Here's a quick look at what phase 2 offers.

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Community Albums

This release includes the long-in-development improvements to photo galleries to add support for community albums. This is Phase 2 out of 3 of the overall Image Galleries overhaul we've been working on. Briefly, here are the improvements to photo galleries included in Community Albums:

Community Albums

We've added a new type of album that multiple members can contribute to.

Categories/Portal Page

Categories provide a top level of organization for albums. Check out the new Galleries Portal Page to see categories in action, plus the new modules we've added for image galleries.

Image Reputation

Members can now thumb up images. This data is used to power popularity-based functionality in image galleries. (Note: we will not have image reputation until fractional reputation is implemented. I'll likely set image reputation as something between 0.1 and 0.25 when it is allowed.)

Improved Uploader

The uploader has been updated to seamlessly handle uploading to community albums.

Community Albums

For the most part, community albums look like any regular album, except for two main differences:

1. Multiple members can contribute to the album
2. When members contribute, they can add multiple images at a time. These images become what we call a "photoset".

Introducing the Photoset

Viewing a Community Album

Individual Photo View

Let's take a look at the individual photo view. Notice that:

1. Detail photos (if any) are show alongside) in the side module
2. Users can upload multiple "sets" to a community album

There are a few other new features worth pointing out on the individual photo page:

1. Add Photos - members can use this to easily add photos to an existing set within a community album
2. Edit - edit the image caption and other properties directly from the photo page (instead of having to go to the album's Edit Photos page)
3. Original - view the original, unscaled photo (the one originally uploaded to the site)
4. Favorite - this is the same as thumbing - the screenshots were taken on a site we customized to say "Favorite" instead of just having the plain old thumb

Categories / Portal Page

We've added the ability to put albums into categories. Categories provide a top level of organization for image galleries. Here's an example hierarchy, where Events , Gumpaste , and Holidays are categories. A few things to note:

1. It's a simple 2-level hierarchy: category, and album
2. Categories contain both community and personal albums
3. The number of albums displayed in a category on the portal page is configurable. If the actual number of albums exceeds this, a "View all" link is displayed that leads to a page displaying all albums in the category.

And here is the new portal page. We have a couple of modules for "virtuous discovery" of images and albums up top, followed by an alphabetical list of categories. At the bottom of the page will be links to tags used for images. Here are what the modules at the top do:

• Popular Albums - albums that are seasonably popular
• Favorite Today - photosets in community albums and personal albums that received the most Thumbs in the last 24 hours
• Newest - newest photosets in community albums, and newest personal albums

Image Reputation

Image reputation works the same as regular thumbing that we currently have on posts. Members can thumb up other peoples' images, which:

• Affects image owner's reputation score
• Gives us some data to use to calculate popularity
• "Bookmarks" that image in the user's reputation page

Note: in this screencap, we are using a customized "Favorite" icon and text for the reputation button

Improved Uploader

The uploader is mostly the same, except for some enhancements to accommodate Community Albums. In general, the uploader will attempt to match whatever context the user came from. In other words, if the user clicked the "Add Photos" button while looking at a particular album, the uploader will assume the user wants to upload to that album. Also, if the user is uploading to a community album he has previously added photos to, we give the option to either create a new photoset, or add to an existing photoset.

Bug Fixes Etc...

7061 - From the text area of the BBCode editor, the tab key now takes you to the Preview button, then the Submit button, and then through to the rest of the page. Some users were accidentally tabbing to "Cancel" and obliterating their posts.

8377 - We updated the wording of the setting that pauses your immediate subscriptions after one email. Some users were confused about what this preference does, but the new verbiage should make it crystal clear.

8351 - Escape codes for special characters like apostrophes should no longer show up in the homepage "site stats" modules.

8485 , 8471 - We are cleaning up a few permissions related glitches, including some users having trouble posting to their own created threads, and moderators not being cleared from the roll call.

8367 - We fixed up an error case with the "manage crumb" function of the thread moving tool.

8458 - Problems with the "change recipients" function in a PM were resolved.

8461 - We clarified the error messaging that users see when they try to filter the activity feed by subscriptions but have no subscriptions set up.

8524 - IE users of the Rich Editor sometimes didn't see smileys in posts they quoted. This error will no longer occur, though we cannot retroactively fix affected posts.

8521 - Line breaks in the signature editor should more closely match the output in the published signature now.

8526 - Usernames are no longer lowercased in PM notification emails.

[MiniBlueDragon]

Looks good! Downtime well spent. :)