New B&W 'Zine...? & Updates..

[vickersdc]

Just thought you might be interested in a new competition that will start when the website goes live on January 13th 2008.

It's been inspired by a comment made by a contributor (Christopher Walrath) who has written a couple of articles for the magazine, and it's one of those articles that brought about the idea for a competition.

You'll have to wait until the new website hits the 'net for more details, but although there's no actual prize (other than the self satisfaction of being pronounced the winner - you will have your winning entry included in the paper version of the magazine in April)!

So, for more details look to www.creativeimagemaker.co.uk on the 13th January.

Cheers,
David Vickers.

[Snapshot]

I'm looking forward to this release. Thanks for the effort!

[vickersdc]

To go with the nice shiny new website that's planned, I figured it made sense to have a proper email address - one that ended in creativeimagemaker.co.uk. An email was duly setup and that's where the problems started!

Personally, I'm not too bothered about using the current Yahoo email address - it seems to work fine and there's a couple of other advantages to me in using it. However, I guess that it doesn't look too 'professional' and I can see the advantages in having a 'proper' email address.

Anyhow, I've setup an email address which is info at creativeimagemaker.co.uk which seems to work OK from some email addresses - although, it now appears that emails originating from Yahoo, gmail, hotmail and BT may not be being received by me.

So - can you (and I know this could open the flood gates!) send me a quick email from your accounts so that I can check this properly. I've tried from my Yahoo account (did not work) and from a Vodafone account (did work). If you can make the subject line "Testing Times", then I can easily seperate these test messages out from any others. Remember, email: info at creativeimagemaker.co.uk if you can.

I will reply to each one, so if you don't receive a reply from me within a couple of days it'll mean that I didn't receive it.

Apart from this hiccup, the website build continues on apace, with the various sections coming together nicely. Something tells me that January 13th might come round sooner than I expect!

Happy New Year to one and all.
David Vickers.

[vickersdc]

To go along with the new website, there's a new email address (which is active now) if you would like to contact this project. The email address info@creativeimagemaker.co.uk can be used to submit comments, ideas, thoughts, articles and images.

Speaking of images, the first Feature Image has been selected for the website and there's a photo gallery that will need some more images in it too. I'll be looking through the Flickr 'Creative Image Maker' group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/555449@N25/ to select some for the website. Take a look at the group pool of photos if you get a chance - there's some great images.

The first article has also been chosen, but I'm not giving away any more as there needs to be something of a surprise for when it all goes live on the 13th Jan.

Thanks,
David.

[vickersdc]

It's just a couple of days until we go live and I can't wait! There's been a couple of set-backs, but we'll deal with those in a moment.

The site is just about ready - a couple of finishing touches which I'll do Sunday morning, before publishing the site. I'm looking forward to getting it live, as I'd like to spend some time with my wife and daughter!

Now, about those setbacks. One contributor, John Cowie, was going to write an article but is due in hospital thanks to a bad leg. I'm sure you'll wish John a speedy recovery - then he can use that rest and recuperation time to write that article ;-)

The article that I was hoping to lead with has had to be put back one week to give out writer a chance to complete it! I can't wait for this one, and he was always up against it to produce the article against a pretty tight deadline. Not too worry, as it just so happens that I've a couple of spare articles knocking around that have been sent in!

I'd just like to say a huge "Thank You!" to those who have sent in their writings and images, as well as to those who have pledged articles.

Now for the one big setback...

Despite that fact that we haven't actually gone live yet, I'm busy writing a new website. It turns out that the web hosting package that I purchased (that clearly advertised an 'unlimited' number of pages) only had a very limited number of pages - 66 maximum. Whilst that might sound like a lot - it was arranged as 6 top level pages, each with 10 sub-level pages. That's it - no sub-sub-level pages, and no more than 10 pages per top level page.

Considering the number of articles that I'm hoping we can produce throughout the year, we're not going to get too far with that restriction.

So, I've had to start back from scratch, loading up an web-server and Perl language scripts on my laptop. I've had to dust off a few brain-cells from my days as a Systems Administrator working on UNIX systems to create the new site!

So, don't get too comfy with the version 1.0 of the Creative Image Maker site! I reckon we'll be renting that space for about a month whilst I write version 2.0, then we'll switch over.

Anyway, until then, enjoy http://www.creativeimagemaker.co.uk when it goes live on the 13th January (when we'll also launch the competition). The first article will be on the 15th.

Thanks to all those who have helped with advice, work, comments, pictures and to all those who have joined the Creative Image Maker group on Flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/groups/555449@N25/ ).

David Vickers.

[Snapshot]

Good work David. I can't wait to see the site.

[Christopher Walrath]

Nice headlight, Snapshot. I haven't seen that one before. Get well soon, John. Can't wait, David. Let the Pulitzers now begin.

[vickersdc]

I've just pressed the 'Publish Site' button, so I guess that means we're now live at http://www.creativeimagemaker.co.uk.

You might find that there's a slight delay before you actually see the site - don't worry; because of the way the internet works, the changes need to be propagated throughout the web (for those in the know, the Domain Name Servers need to be updated and could take up to 24 hours).

Cheers,
David.

[Ian Grant]

No David, the sites not live yet.

Ian

[pesphoto]

It's just a wrong link.

Here it is:
http://creativeimagemaker.co.uk/

I like it! Nice job, keep it going.