http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/ APUG.ORG is an international on-line community, completely devoted to traditional (non-digital) photographic processes. en Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:36:38 GMT vBulletin 5 http://www.apug.org/forums/images/apug4/misc/rss.jpg http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/ http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/329-site-progress-report.html Tue, 28 Dec 2010 10:13:24 GMT The latest updates were to the homepage. I have put some extra focus on social networking and keeping a newsfeed updated there (news relevant to... The latest updates were to the homepage. I have put some extra focus on social networking and keeping a newsfeed updated there (news relevant to APUG & traditional photography).

Next on the menu is the big 4.1 core forum update which contains over 500 bug fixes and many feature requests. There will also be a gallery update and I think we'll shoot for importing the old links system into the new system.

Stay tuned :) ]]> Sean http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/329-site-progress-report.html http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/312-turning-over-advertising-pros.html Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:36:12 GMT I love that so many small businesses can reach a large target audience on APUG. We've taken on quite a few advertisers over the years and I've always tried to manage it myself. It's reached a point where managing this has become a slight disaster to say the least. Who has paid, who hasn't and left, who is still current but simply forgot to have money in their paypal acct, which ads to disable, enable or re-enable.. contacting advertisers and fielding problems with advertisers and their accounts. After a rough month of this I began looking into an alternative for our advertising, such as let some pros take care of it. We roll out the new system in 30 days. Advertisers will not experience much of a difference, still the same ad zones available and rates (even better rates as I'll be offering discounts for extended ad buys). The main difference is that I am no longer tied down with managing the back end. The advertisers will go to a reputable 3rd party firm, buy the ads there, I approve any ads and then they serve on APUG. All support and account management is off loaded so I can focus on more important things. It took a couple of weeks to find the right firm and set everything into motion so I'm glad a solution was found. ]]> Sean http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/312-turning-over-advertising-pros.html http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/305-more-updates-fixes-features-have-gone.html Sun, 26 Sep 2010 01:33:20 GMT I've taken us from vBulletin 4.0.5 to 4.0.7 (containing 300+ core system bug fixes), as well as an update to the APUG Gallery from RC1 to RC2. Bit of a scramble and a 3hr outage but all is going well. The hard work on the initial vBulletin 4.0 APUG build has paid off, allowing me to have quite pain free system updates. Keeping our system up to date has never been easier, the last system was a nightmare to update. We also have some features ported back to the new system such as Gallery thumbnails displaying view & comment counts, Subscribe to a Member's Posts, viewing of single posts for those who want to print a single post, and a few cosmetic glitches fixed. Next on the menu will be installed tomorrow, a "new thread" keyword trigger system. This will be to deter new threads containing mainly "Digital" topics which are out of scope for APUG. For example if someone posts a new thread containing the word "Scanner" they will first be prompted with a message about our site scope and policy, and links to more suitable resources. If the notice is a false positive the thread owner can simply ignore it and continue. I have wanted this type of trigger system for a while now especially since many new members have been posting digital content lately. The friendly reminder should steer them in the right direction. And as always there is a backlog of day to day emails/help requests I need to take care of. I plan to focus on this most of next week.

See you in the forums,
Sean ]]> Sean http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/305-more-updates-fixes-features-have-gone.html http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/295-challenges-new-software.html Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:00:45 GMT Well, this has been one challenging APUG upgrade and still a lot of tweaking lies ahead. Of course life would be easier if we had a team of 5... Well, this has been one challenging APUG upgrade and still a lot of tweaking lies ahead. Of course life would be easier if we had a team of 5 working on this, but it's just myself and a freelance coder (when I can afford him). There should be a large round of bug fixes and feature requests going in this week as well as a point release of vbulletin software taking us from vbulletin 4.0.5 to 4.0.6 (this includes over 100 bug fixes in the forum software itself). One of my main goals is to re-instate some of our key functionality from the old site (that is my top priority). For example things like ignore forum, ignore thread, "new posts since last visit but posts below this line have not been read", gallery thumbnails showing view & comment counts, several visual glitches, and sooo much more. We'll get there soon.

vBulletin 4.0 has not been without controversy, they were recently acquired by IB (Internet Brands), some top staff left and product quality took a nose dive. It wasn't until version 4.0.5 (5 point releases after the initial launch of 4.0) that I decided to make the leap. 4.0.6 is being installed likely this week(end). Still the consensus among vBulletin forum owners is that 4.1 will be the solid release we've all been waiting for. This is slated for "mid sept. or mid oct." according to vBulletin. Judging by the flack they are taking over product quality issues, I would say sooner rather than later, possibly even a 4.0.7 release will emerge in a couple of weeks. So why did we take the leap to 4.0? As stated in other threads I believe in keeping my server software up to date. The vBulletin 3.x system is nearing it's support cycle and the longer we put of moving to 4.x the harder the migration gets. We were over 15 point releases behind and open to security vulnerabilities. The old system was also a nightmare to update, requiring weeks of work. The new 4.x architecture we are now on allows me to update the system in a matter of minutes. I also, much prefer the back end systems of 4.x to the older system. It has made my admin life easier and the spam tools are doing a better job as well. Several key mods for 4.x system show improvement such as the new APUG gallery (multi-delete for example).

We'll definitely have a little bit of pain for a month or two but once things smooth over and the kinks are out we will have a great system to carry us for the next several years. :cool: ]]> Sean http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/295-challenges-new-software.html http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/238-blogs-back.html Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:15:20 GMT Unfortunately my darkroom is boxed up so I won't have much to blog about. We are hoping to move house soon but are having trouble finding a buyer. Anyway the blog seems to have a lot of customization ability. Just look to your "Blog Control Panel" and you'll find a heap of options.. ]]> Sean http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/238-blogs-back.html http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/4-another-marathon-dev-session.html Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:47:47 GMT and not photo chemical dev unfortunately. I've just spent the last 5 days working on the photocentric.tv video site. It's coming together nicely and should be ready for launch in a few days. I'm looking forward to seeing what gets uploaded to the site and at this stage have no idea what to expect. It's been difficult juggling all the sites while dev is going on and with the recent major upgrades to APUG I'm feeling a bit tired. My developer friend/greatcapture.com partner that I'll be working on greatcapture.com with is already screaming for the specs and mockups so we can get started. More on that down the road.. phew! ]]> Sean http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/4-another-marathon-dev-session.html http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/1-testing-1-2.html Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:58:48 GMT Just testing out the new blog system. Yes, our 3rd system for blogs but this should be our last. This is the official vbulletin blog system created... Just testing out the new blog system. Yes, our 3rd system for blogs but this should be our last. This is the official vbulletin blog system created by the makers of our forum software. It is a new product, fully supported and built within the actual system (previously we required 3rd party modified applications). Very sorry that many posted blogs in the old system are gone but this new system is here to stay and should improve with each new version.

Sean ]]> Sean http://www.apug.org/forums/blogs/sean/1-testing-1-2.html