FYI- GALLERY ACCESS TO CHANGE NEXT WEEK

[TPPhotog]

Do Teletubbies need a TV licence I wonder :confused:

Thanks for all the extra work Sean, sounds like it's going to make things better in several ways

 

[dschneller]

Thank you Sean, you do good work. Or is it fun?

The recent changes to APUG have prompted me to become a subscriber, the cheque they say, is in the mail.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[mark]

Good for you Dave.

So, Sean are you going with the dark leather and mahogany in the jet or pretentious white? HEHE

Your doing a great job. Thanks

 

[modafoto]

...but was kidnapped by a 2 yr old and forced to take part in a Teletubbie tea party..

Teletubbies are great!

I think it would be kinda cool to have TV in my stomach...

 

[titrisol]

Not so cooll.... it'd fog the film

Teletubbies are great!

I think it would be kinda cool to have TV in my stomach...

 

[TPPhotog]

Teletubbies are great!

I think it would be kinda cool to have TV in my stomach...

Just make sure it's a analog one and not ....... no no no don't even go there

 

[Chris Fraser]

Hi Sean,

I am a new member (and even newer subscriber) and I am really grateful to have this site available. I found out about this site through “Black and White Magazine” for which I paid $9.95 (Canadian). I am not knocking the price of the magazine, it’s a good magazine, but rather saying $12 USD is a little more that the cost of a magazine and well worth the price. One comment (since I am now a subscriber : ) is that it might be advantageous to keep the thumbnails of the recent photos (8 or 12) in the free area. So prospective new members can see some work.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[BruceN]

One comment (since I am now a subscriber : ) is that it might be advantageous to keep the thumbnails of the recent photos (8 or 12) in the free area. So prospective new members can see some work.

I think non-subscribers will still be able to view the galleries, just not post to it. In my opinion a very reasonable solution.

 

[mark]

Welcome Chris. Jump over to the introduce yourself section and tell folks who you are. Not many people will see your intro here.

 

[Sean]

everyone will be able to view thumbnails, thanks

 

[MattCarey]

Hi All,

The gallery has been causing a huge load on this site transferring over 4 gigs of data per day. This is a direct correlation to the peak 6,000+ unique visitors to apug daily. Sean

Sean,

thanks for all your hard work. I put my thanks into action with a subscription just before you announced this.

I have a couple of questions--this is just for clarification, I have no doubts about how you are running the site.

1) is the problem due to people viewing the images or uploading images?
2) if there are 4Gig transfered each day, that would mean 26,000 picture tranfers at 150K/image (if I did my sums correctly). That would be about 4-5 transfers per visitor per day, which sounds reasonable.
3) Most images have "views" < 100. If most of the traffic is views, and there are 26,000 views a day, I would expect a lot more views/image.
4) Is there a way to allow Google images to still crawl through the images? That might bring more users to the website. Is this a bad idea for some reason?

Again, no critique, I am just wondering where my logic is wrong. Comes from a career thinking in numbers a lot.

Matt

 

[Sean]

Hi Matt, I haven't had time to sit down and do the numbers but the weblogs definitely show the bulk of data transfer coming from /gallery. This was also when I had right click disabled so spiders coud not swamp us (right now it is enabled for those who want to copy their images down). It will be interesting to see what happens after the change and how much we save. I estimate 2 gig a day..

 

[Gay Larson]

Thanks for all your hard work, I subscribed as soon as I saw this notice. I appreciate all the information I received here and want it to continue

 

[roteague]

This was also when I had right click disabled so spiders coud not swamp us (right now it is enabled for those who want to copy their images down)...

I'm not sure how the right-click affects spiders, but, do you have a robots.txt file in that directory? Most well behaved spiders will play by the rules if you have an exclusion file.

 

[BradS]

Sean. Fantastic site. Thank you very much for all of your effort and attention to detail. I too sent you a check as soon as I read this thread even though I don't use the gallery much (no scanner). Thanks again.

 

[titrisol]

buh-bye gallery!

 

[Bill Mitchell]

Well that's too bad. While I think that the idea behind APUG is a silly one, I've enjoyed the site as one of the nicest groups of people and best posted pictures on the web. I'll miss it.

 

[rusty71]

Well, it looks like I can't even view the gallery for free. Too bad it has to come to such an elitist attitude on the part of APUG administrators. There are still plenty of free photo sites like photo.net and usefilm.com where non-subscribers can post one image per day or at least view images.
I find it frustrating that a non-subscriber cannot even view the gallery. How would you know if APUG is even worth the money? This is bad customer relations and poor marketing.

So, good bye to all. This was a site I had recommended to my photography students to view silver based work. No more recommendations from me. Have fun in your exclusive little club.

 

[John Bartley]

Hmm...Bill Mitchell and rusty71 appear to be a bit hasty in condemning changes in a system where not only are the changes not yet complete, but where they are not financially supportive members. I think maybe a bit of patience is in order. Based on what I've seen since my recent subscribing, I'm sure that all genuine participants will be well looked after. That appears to be the history of this site.

respectfully
.

 

[BruceN]

Hmm...Bill Mitchell and rusty71 appear to be a bit hasty in condemning changes in a system where not only are the changes not yet complete, but where they are not financially supportive members. I think maybe a bit of patience is in order. Based on what I've seen since my recent subscribing, I'm sure that all genuine participants will be well looked after. That appears to be the history of this site.

Unfortunately wanting "something for nothing" is becoming quite a common attitude among certain groups in our world today.

 

[mark]

People should learn to read. No where does it say you cannot view the gallery.

 

[Aggie]

Sean is an individual with a full time job and a family to support. He started apug to have a few like minded people to talk about photography with him. At first apug didn't even have a gallery. For a long time, we got maybe 1 or 2 pictures a day posted. (even when we had 1000 members) Well apug has grown 5X as large. The gallery usage has grown over 1000%. Recently we have had abuses of the non digital thing, and others thinking that no matter what they should be able to down load their whole portfolio of projects each day. What has this done? it has caused major usage that has to be upgraded again and again to new servers. Who pays for all of this? At first it was Sean alone and a few who sent him donations. It was not enough to cover his expenses. Then he started to have a few banner adds. These do not cover his costs still. His time spent on this site just maintining and dealing with all the complaints and requests has soared to where he spends most his waking time when not actively working at his full time job, here working on apug. How many of us would spend 10 - 12 hours a day doing something menial like Sean is, with no compensation? Well costs soared even more, and he then asked about what we thought of subscriberships. We all thought it a good idea.

Now for those who whine about the gallery postings being only for us elitists, I say a big rousing B**l S**T We are the ones who rallied around Sean and realized this site can not exist unless it is supported. I put my money where my mouth is. I think Sean deserves that from us at least who use this site, that we contribute the small amount of at least $1 a month. But for many that $1 a month is like asking for blood. I stand behind Sean. He works hard and most often it is a very thankless job. We are over 5000 stong on this site now, and of the ones that support Sean, we are not even 300 in number. Tells me there are a lot of selfish people on this site that only whine about "IT SHOULD BE FREE!" Yeah it would also have pop up adds, and more add space cluttering up the site to the point that you would get frustrated trying to get around the darn adds.

As one of the sponsors, I do not think a 50% increase in fees would be out of liine for the numbers that come here. As for being a subscriber besides, I don't think $1 a month for free forums, and the priveledge of using the gallery is out of line either. Even students who are hard pressed for money can afford $1 a month. Been there done that.

Personally I would love to see Sean make enough off this site that once in a while he could afford to take his family out to a nice dinner. A dinner once in a while for 70+ hours a week is not unreasonable.

[/B]SUPPORT OUR SEAN!

btw there is only one administrator and it is Sean. No one else

 

[bmac]

So, good bye to all. This was a site I had recommended to my photography students to view silver based work. No more recommendations from me. Have fun in your exclusive little club.

Lets call our club "the people who read the whole thread before making untrue statements" Or how about "the non-freeloaders" Should we start a poll?

 

[mark]

Brian. The first club name can't be made into a cool acronymn(sp). PWRWTBMUS is just too long. Now the second is quick and rolls off the tongue. TNFs has a certain ring to it.

 

[Sean]

I am working on making thumbnails viewable to all visitors, should be going today. Thanks for the support everyone.