New Site Enhancements / Features / Functionality / Upgrades

[Gene]

In the past week, I have noticed that Ning (the company that produces the infrastructure for this site) has made upgrades at least twice. I thought it would be good to start a discussion thread on what capabilities exist today and then point out when new things are available.

* Profile Pages
- Upload profile pic
- Upload additional photos with descriptions, tags, and location
- Upload videos with descriptions, tags, and location
- Setter background fields (number / years)
- General description
- Link to your web site
- Customize appearance (change background colors, text colors, add graphics,
add HTML/CSS in your Exclusively Setters box)
- Add/respond to comments
- Add/respond to blog postings)

* Photos
- In the photos tab, view all additional photos (but not the profile pics :-( ) by
- Most Recent
- Highest Rated
- Most Popular
- Once you select a photo, you can:
- Add tags (for search engine discovery)
- Rate it (1 to 5 stars) - drives Highest Rated ranking above
- View it in one of 3 sizes - drives Most Popular ranking above
- Add to an album
- Add to Favorites
- Share it with others

One of the disappointments for me on this site is the way it renders photos. Some seem to lose color and some get reshaped to a certain size, blurring the picture. The Favorites option is a way around both of these issues. You can view your favorites as a slide show and even share it. I think the pictures look great this way!

For My favorites (Gene's Favorites), you can see I have a penchant for puppy photos, multi-dog photos, and fun photos. While photos of shows and stacking are great, I don't have an eye for what is good and bad. They ALL look like they should be in my favorites to me.

Here's the shared link to my favorites.

http://irishsetters.ning.com/index.php/photo/photo/slideshow?favori...

More info to follow. If anyone finds something that is interesting, please share with the group. Thanks!

[Gene]

I sent the above web link to my parents and it worked on both of their PCs. Neither PC has a fast Internet connection. Please let me know if you have any troubles viewing it OR if you need assistance creating your own favorites.

[Susan Stone]

Hi Gene

Is it possible to have the most recent thread of a topic at the top of the page for all to see? At the moment we need to scroll down the page, checking all answers before coming to the newest entry. I have not managed to change the settings.

Susan

[Gene]

Hi Susan - Thanks for your input. I took a quick look but didn't see how to change it to reverse-chronological order (most recent first). I believe chronological order (most recent last) is pretty much an Internet standard.

If you assume you would want to read in in chronological order (so you don't miss something that is assumed by someone later) and there are 3 new replies. You would have to scroll down to the first post you recognize from before, scroll up to the 3rd most recent post, scroll down to read it, scroll up to the second most recent post, scroll down to read it, scroll up to the latest post, and then scroll down to read it. From a usability standpoint, I think the thought is that it may be easier to scroll all the way down than up and down over and over. To mimic this in reverse, you can hit the END key and should be taken to the bottom of the page, just like HOME takes you to the top of the page.

Please let me know if this doesn't make sense or if you have any other questions. Always looking for feedback to improve the site.

[Gene]

This group is uploading too many great photos. I learned the hard way that you can only have 99 photos in your Favorites. I am going to have to start over and create multiple Favorites - one for puppies, one for action shots, etc.

[Wendy Czarnecki]

Hi Gina,

I want to thank you for this remarkable service that I am enjoying so much. It's fun and interesting and a place to learn and to share. I've not been involved in anything like this previously and I think its potential is awesome! I'll be looking forward to seeing the new stuff and of course the new members that come along.

Best regards,

Wendy Czarnecki