photowalk.ie

Chorcai

http://photowalk.ie/

Pix.ie twitter thingy

"Planning on or looking to go on a photowalk in Ireland soon? http://photowalk.ie - answer to all your photowalk questions."

Sounds interesting.

zerohamster

considering there is nothing on photowalk.ie yet what is the plan, where and when?

Fajitas!

I think it's still being set up at the moment, I'm not sure it was ready to be released to the world...

elven

Someone actually leaked it before it was supposed to go live... keep an eye on it this week though, should be up and running properly in the next few days.

It's a central place to manage all your photowalks - anyone who wants to organise one can post it there so that everyone can check one single place for all the details, rather than skipping between google wave, boards, twitter etc and getting different stories.

Chorcai

Cool idea.

Nisio

Where does "adding value" fit in that Venn diagramme?

elven

adding value to what? Jeebus, you give people an inch and they want a mile...

Fenster

Where's my fecking mile? I don't want a used one. I want a shiny new one, straight out of the package.

Nisio

You'll never get money from the venture capitalists without adding value for your shareholders!!

(going forward)

elven

Ah yes. I'll add that to our next brainstorming session when we do some blue sky thinking outside the box.

ThOnda

Walking in a box? More with a box

Cannot wait the structure of the page.

elven

Well, after lots of hard work, blood and tears we're officially live

I know that boards meets are generally arranged in the expeditions sub forum, but if you want to open it up to people who aren't on boards as well, it's a good central place to put the details. And we'll tweet it like mad things so more people see them!

This isn't some commercial thing done for the sake of making money, we just thought it'd be a handy thing for people like us who like meeting up with other people who like to take pictures. And in that spirit, if you have any suggestions of how we could make it work better, all you have to do is leave a comment on the site.

Hope to see a few of you at the next walk, then...

pullandbang

elven wrote: »

Well, after lots of hard work, blood and tears we're officially live

...and it looks great!

Looking forward to the first outing all the way outside my front door

dinneenp

Hi,
Just had a quick look at the site (nice idea), here's some feedback:
home page is confusing, there's too much going on.
1. On the home page I think you should have an intor blub sumarising what the site is about.
instead you have what seems to be blog entries, tweets, links to photowalkers and the navigation is both on top and hidden under the tweets on the right hand side.

2. Attending is a confusing title for a page- it should be something like faq or photo walk basics. On the homepage I saw the like to 'attending' and thought it was a page for people who have signed up for a walk.

3. Why are the photowalkers so prominent on the homepage? (also the images should be clickable, not just the names).

4. On individual photowalkers pages there should be links to their photo sites- flickr, photo blogs etc.

5. Surely there should be a page 'upcoming photowalks'! Is this not the purpose of the site?

6. Photobloggers page states 'Want to be added to this list? Leave a comment!' It doesn't tell me that I have to register to be able to leave a comment. i should also be able to leave a comment on the 'photobloggers' page.

Small things then like
a link to the Scott Kelby site?
On attending page it says 'You can even use your phone and if you check out the photoblogs, you’ll see plenty of superb shots taken in this way'
The photoblogs link brings me to 'plan your own' page. A mistake?

Good luck with it,
Pa.

elven

Thanks for taking the time to come back with a snag list

I'll come back to each point individually:

1. On the home page I think you should have an intor blub sumarising what the site is about. instead you have what seems to be blog entries, tweets, links to photowalkers and the navigation is both on top and hidden under the tweets on the right hand side.

There are a couple of ways that could work:

A sticky post with an intro that always stays at the top. But isn't it normal for be to go to the about page for that stuff?

Question: Is the navigation for the pages at the top not obvious enough?

I'll change the widget for the navigation to the pages to be at the top of the sidebar, to make it more obvious.

2. Attending is a confusing title for a page- it should be something like faq or photo walk basics. On the homepage I saw the like to 'attending' and thought it was a page for people who have signed up for a walk.

Probably. I'll see if there's something equally short that makes more sense.

3. Why are the photowalkers so prominent on the homepage? (also the images should be clickable, not just the names).

The photowalkers are prominent because they have nice pictures that brighten up the front page, and the blurb about them is meant to be a good way for noobs to get an idea of what kind of person goes on a photowalk. As the site matures, we will probably have images from actual photowalks in the 'carousel' and have them linking to pages with stuff about the photowalk and links to people's pictures from the walk in various places like pix.ie tags, flickr tags/groups and their own gallery pages elsewhere.

Yes, the pictures should be clickable too. I've still to figure that out in the code (yeuch)!

4. On individual photowalkers pages there should be links to their photo sites- flickr, photo blogs etc.


There's a link to each photographer's blog or gallery at the bottom of their pages, in italic. Maybe I'll put it at the top or make it bold, if you didn't think it's noticeable. I'd love to actually create a little gallery on the page with an rss feed of theri images but i'm still working on the technicalities of that with a couple of wordpress plugins.

5. Surely there should be a page 'upcoming photowalks'! Is this not the purpose of the site?

Yup. That's in the plan, and someone more technical than me is charged with making it happen

6. Photobloggers page states 'Want to be added to this list? Leave a comment!' It doesn't tell me that I have to register to be able to leave a comment. i should also be able to leave a comment on the 'photobloggers' page.

I noticed the having to be registered to leave a comment thing today myself. I think that will be scrapped pretty soon.

Small things then like
a link to the Scott Kelby site?

Good idea. We've yet to establish a proper links list, apart from the photobloggers one.

On attending page it says 'You can even use your phone and if you check out the photoblogs, you’ll see plenty of superb shots taken in this way'
The photoblogs link brings me to 'plan your own' page. A mistake?

Well spotted, I'll sort that now

Cheers for that, plenty to be getting on with!

AnCatDubh

well done. nice one.

SubLuminal

Brilliant idea, looks great so far - can't wait for and really hope that this gets popular and that the minor snags get fixed quick.

Really excited by this, but can't find where I sign up.. lol!

elven

You want to come along to the Trim photowalk? There's a link at the bottom of the page where you can sign up if you want to officially register, but we're not going to turn you away on the day if you haven't!

I'm not so sure about having to register to put your name against it but it's the only way we can do it just now to have a nice list of attendees in the back end of the site. Hopefully we'll make it a bit slicker in a while. This is only v1.0 after all

MartMax

This Wordpress plugin might be useful to the website. Looks good on the feature list.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-events-calendar/

Finally, it would be great to have a website for everyone to organise some photowalk or even beer meeting!

nonsequitir

Appreciate the feedback. We knew v1 would be rough around the edges, and to a degree it is but that's okay, it was planned this way. We opted to push it out as a workable version rather than procrastinating over features/themes/content and not getting anything down at all.

Now that it's out in the wild we can get real user feedback, based on real use cases and we'll see how it goes. It's an experiment that's hosted for free, built for free to help consolidate photographic endeavour between the multiple forums that exist. It's also a place of 'other' people who don't tweet, wave or take part in forums but LOVE photography.

So keep the feedback coming, seriously, everything will be looked at and if you want to volunteer your time or expertise to help us get it to the next level, we'd be delighted to plug you in too!

Thanks again... Steve

rymus

mart_max wrote: »

Finally, it would be great to have a website for everyone to organise some photowalk or even beer meeting!

Photowalk = beer meeting

nonsequitir

mart_max wrote: »

This Wordpress plugin might be useful to the website. Looks good on the feature list.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/the-events-calendar/

Finally, it would be great to have a website for everyone to organise some photowalk or even beer meeting!

Thanks for the link. I looked at this, but one of the issues with the addins for event management is that they all take a slanted view of what we felt our requirements were and none delivered everything. In this case, the event management engine was page based rather then post based and didn't fit the bill. So we settled on the one that's sitting there presently as a compromise.

I personally liked the calendar idea a lot, and so I'm currently working on two plugin enhancements...

1. Calendar integration with the existing event database
2. A future events ticker widget

If you're interested in weighing with PHP/CSS/HTML dev or testing, then let me know!

Fenster

What about a shared/public Google Calendar?

nonsequitir

Fenster wrote: »

What about a shared/public Google Calendar?

Google = Evil :-)

Fenster

Google is also accessible, extensible and embeddable...

elven

We used to have a boards meetings google calendar and it died, forgotten, in a corner...

Fenster

Nobody ever told me about it.

DK32

Elven,

If we wanted to use the site for organising photo walks, are they organised in the same way we currently do it on boards? Just wondering if there are any hard set rules to the format of the walks on the site.

I think it's a brilliant idea though, thumbs up from me

Chorcai

Have say Im very impressed by it all ! Looks fab, great idea I hope it goes really well for everyone.

elven

DK32 wrote: »

Elven,

If we wanted to use the site for organising photo walks, are they organised in the same way we currently do it on boards? Just wondering if there are any hard set rules to the format of the walks on the site.

I think it's a brilliant idea though, thumbs up from me

Glad people seem to like the setup, in theory anyway

There's no set format at all. It's just a bunch of people coming out to walk around with their cameras for a while somewhere, then go to the pub... it's the same thing i started doing when i joined boards back in the mists of time, but the crowd i've been walking with more recently is a mix of boardsies & photobloggers, and other people along the way who know someone who knows someone, that sort of thing.

If you wanted to post a boards meet on photowalk.ie, just email the details to info@photowalk.ie and someone will post it for you. Hopefully we'll develop a slick way of submitting events in time, but for now it's a fairly manual process.

Fenster

Registered.

dinneenp

Could be too ambitious but.... why not try to have a photowalk in as many locations as possibloe on the same date and use them to gain awareness of photowalk.ie. You'd have a lot of images for the site then.

Could also add stuff like photos of the month etc...

nonsequitir

I'd be happy to have a photowalk organizer on boards be an admin in the photowalk.ie website.

To that end, I'm writing up a HOWTO with respect to the event manager, twitter interface and such. Not quite there yet, but you could certainly muddle through.

Obviously, as the site is brand-spanking new, and with known issues, we really didn't want to throw it wide open straight away. Ultimately, the goal is to allow anyone to be able to organize or join a walk.

DK32

Would there be any value at this stage in advertising the current planned walk for this Monday on photowalk?
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=64335430#post64335430

Probably a bit short notice for most. Thoughts?

Valentia

DK32 wrote: »

Would there be any value at this stage in advertising the current planned walk for this Monday on photowalk?

I reckon there is only one way to find out ;-)

dinneenp

Hi,
some more feedback on the photowalk.ie website:
1. you should have page for 'X photowalk, post your links here' up immediately after a photowalk. The Galway Photo walk was on the 27th, it's now the 31st but still no 'post your links here' page.

As a result people are posting their links in the Galway photowalk page.

2. Depends on space I'd imagine, but why not allow people to post images on your site? That would get more traffic to the site and save redirecting people away if they want to view other people's images. Also if someone isn't a member of Pix.ie/flickr etc then they can't comment on peoples images unless they join.

If this isn't possible how about just having a page showing some selected photos from photowalks.

If you think about it it's odd that the website is about photo walking but there's no pictures from photowalks....

3. I'm giving this feedback through Boards as there's no single 'contact us' point on photowalk.ie! On the about page there's links to 4 twitters accounts but what if someone just wants to contact 'Photowalk.ie'? (with a question, suggestion etc.) without having to join twitter or wordpress?

Cheers,
Pa.

SinisterDexter

Don't bother with the twitter - I tried several times to contact them about the Glendalough Sunrise walk to no response.

elven

Sorry about the contact issues, we do have an email link in the header for direct contact and emails sent to that address go to three organisers so that at least one of us should be able to pick it up pretty quickly.

We're trying to find a gallery solution for wordpress that will allow us to pull in images from different sources. There are two reasons why we haven't tried to develop something to allow people to post images directly on the site:

1. Most people have a pix.ie, flickr or blog where they upload their stuff to and instead of making them double post, we thought it'd make more sense to just pick up on those sources.

2. Hosting space is an issue, nobody is being paid and it's voluntarily hosted on someone's own server so images would probably put too much stress on it.

Given that it looks like the email icon isn't doing it's job, I'll see about making the contact link a bit more obvious on the site.

pixbyjohn

Photographic Expeditions on Boards.ie is the way to go. Its reliable, lots of viewers and has space for a gallery and comments. Everything on 1 site.

AnCatDubh

pixbyjohn wrote: »

Photographic Expeditions on Boards.ie is the way to go. It reliable, lots of viewers and has space for a gallery and comments. Everything on 1 site.

Yes, but the intended audience of photowalk.ie is very different to boards.ie which is why the expeditions forum for photowalk.ie type of people doesn't work. This I gather is the motivation behind setting photowalk.ie up and I wish it every success.

The expeditions forum on boards or some variant will continue to cater for boards.ie photowalks and other expeditions. But that would seem to be where its focus remains.

SinisterDexter

"The expeditions forum on boards or some variant will continue to cater for boards.ie photowalks and other expeditions. But that would seem to be where its focus remains."

Where should it's focus go towards?

And I have nothing against the website. The last 2 walks I organised had people from Pix.ie, Boards.ie, DCC and friends of people who were attending. I totally welcome another medium to let people know there is a walk going on - then I tried to put one on the site.... and I met the brick wall.

Can it be made easier for the likes of me - a registered user - to post up a walk?

elven

I hope you can understand that we're still feeling our way around hwo to actually run this thing, and the only thing we're sure of is that we're arranging photowalks at least once a month for people from any background to join in.

When it comes to other people with photowalks arranged through boards or another medium, we're still trying to figure out how to manage the posting and the organising.

AnCatDubh

SinisterDexter wrote: »

Where should it's focus go towards?

I have no idea. My comment in that regard was simply to demonstrate just that. There had been comment in the past in respect of eliminating the number of sub forums that photography has, the number of stickies that we have, and various other stuff. Such outcomes ultimately are driven by the community need/desire of the time.

So, if expeditions didn't continue as a sub forum at any point in time (not on the agenda in so far as I have heard anything at the present time), then where would the expeditions focus land or settle. Again, I have no idea.

I think the photowalk site is a great idea and is another outlet for these kinda things to happen. It is just another outlet, as is the local camera club, the photographyireland site, the boards forum, the folio collaborations, the paid for walk-shops, the two guys who meet up on a Saturday afternoon, etc., etc.,

I sincerely hope there is room for it and that the enthusiasm from the general community (both organisers and participants) to make it into a thriving walking snapping community, is seen through. I also suspect although I could be 10 million miles off, that getting technology in place to support every feature that would like/desire to be delivered is a little difficult to orchestrate to perfection but with the enthusiasm referred to above, it will happen. I think if it isn't perfect at the moment for people, that given it's voluntary nature, you (we) will have to cut it a little slack until things get sorted proper. It appears a tremendous start from what I can see (albeit that from afar).

dinneenp

I think photowalk.ie website is a good idea- at the least it's a url that people will stumble upon if googling.
It's also an easy url to remember- if you mention it to someone they'll remember it, whereas if you tell someone boards.ie photo forum etc. they mightn't remember it.

duffarama

Any chance of a photomarathon being organised through the photowalk site sometime? I read about the annual FNAC fotomarathon a while back and it sounds like a lot of (nerdy) fun

The idea is :
- get there on time at first checkpoint

- get task to shoot challenge in three hours (always a broad challenge, like "Stone", "Water", "Red" or "Music in the City")

- make your way to next checkpoint and deliver picture (must be straight OOC JPG)
- get new task and repeat this three times.
- this gets you all through the city in a hectic day.
- drinks and prize-ceremony at the end of the day.

pixbyjohn

AnCatDubh wrote: »

Yes, but the intended audience of photowalk.ie is very different to boards.ie which is why the expeditions forum for photowalk.ie type of people doesn't work. This I gather is the motivation behind setting photowalk.ie up and I wish it every success.

The expeditions forum on boards or some variant will continue to cater for boards.ie photowalks and other expeditions. But that would seem to be where its focus remains.

What is very different, sorry I don't understand your post.

AnCatDubh

pixbyjohn wrote: »

What is very different, sorry I don't understand your post.

Hope I didn't misunderstand your post but what I was trying to say was that there is no reason why the expeditions forum wouldn't work for what you are suggesting. The difference (in so far as I gather) with photowalkie is (a) people, and (b) the desire to have a recognisable place that works for everyone.

In the case of people, you will find lots of people who won't venture next or near this place (boards) as you do with most other online forum. That's their prerogative. Meh.... they'll always be welcome whether they like it or not

In the case of a desire to have a recognisable place that works for everyone, photowalks organised on boards through the expeditions forum will attract at best boardsie's and albeit that they are a fine upstanding bunch of people, there is more to the photographic community in the country than those that inhabit boards. So, an expedition organised on an expeditions forum of boards probably isn't an inclusive expedition if the entire community happens to be your target.

Then again, given the nature of how things just 'are' (and it's not worth your while trying to understand it), the same is likely to happen with any online forum - it has with photography ireland, it has with boards - some people will gravitate to it, others won't, others will and then they won't .

pixbyjohn

OK Tommy, thanks.

HxGH

Oh wow! Sounds like a great site!

pullandbang

duffarama wrote: »

Any chance of a photomarathon being organised through the photowalk site sometime? I read about the annual FNAC fotomarathon a while back and it sounds like a lot of (nerdy) fun

That certainly sounds like fun - nerdy or not. Worth starting a new thread in "expeditions" and see will it take off?

nilhg

Couple of strange things: trying to open http://photowalk.ie/ gives a server error, opening http://www.photowalk.ie redirects to http://photowalk.ie/ which opens fine.:D

RSS feed doesn't seem to work.


Anyways keep up the good work, I'll catchup with you all one of these days....


EDIT, and just like that it works.............