Feedback Viewing photos

gyoung

Regular
Location
Nottingham, England
Name
Gerry Young
Can anyone help a newbie pleaae? If I go to What's New, and select New Media, it always tells me I have no unviewed media, nothing shows up although looking at the individual forums obviously there have been new items. How can I see what photos have been posted on the whole of cameraderie since I last looked, is there a way?

Gerry
 
Hello Gerry,
The new photos and other messages appear under new posts.
René.
Well yes, but that means opening each and every thread to see if new photos have appeared.
How is the New Media supposed to work, at the moment it just says I have no unviewed media when it is obvious that there ARE items I haven't seen.
 
Well yes, but that means opening each and every thread to see if new photos have appeared.
How is the New Media supposed to work, at the moment it just says I have no unviewed media when it is obvious that there ARE items I haven't seen.
Any thread you post in, or mark as 'Watch' at the top of the thread page, will appear under the notification bell at the top right of each page.
 
Any thread you post in, or mark as 'Watch' at the top of the thread page, will appear under the notification bell at the top right of each page.
Thanks, so only new items in threads I have participated in, or are 'watching' will appear in Whats New, New Media? There is no display of newly posted images from all threads, in chronological order? That makes in quite hard to see the work everyone is posting, would require going through every gallery, every thread?
 
Gerry, you have to learn how to use the Xenforo forum software. It's not hard!

ALL threads with posts appear under 'New Posts' and 'What's New'.

You can browse all (allowed) forums from the home page.

I'm an admin on another, unrelated, XenForo forum
Thanks John, I am familiar with the software on FujiX forum. That has a Home page that displays all new photos in chrononlogical order, and Whats New, new Media also displays thumb nails of new photos posted, in chronological order, very convenient and easy to see all creative content.
 
Thanks John, I am familiar with the software on FujiX forum. That has a Home page that displays all new photos in chrononlogical order, and Whats New, new Media also displays thumb nails of new photos posted, in chronological order, very convenient and easy to see all creative content.
We use the front page for featured excellent content; showing all images would, in my opinion, result in a major drop in quality - of course, most people present their best efforts regularily, but many of us shoot and post casually as well - it's a strength of this community to be accepting of varying degrees of seriousness. So, the current solution is well considered and works. As for browsing new content, just choose your entry points in "New Posts" - you'll usually find new images, even though certain threads are discussion threads, but you'll learn your way around soon enough.

For the record, I'm dead against changing the presentation in the way you describe.

It's a fact though that newly uploaded images don't automatically turn up in Media. You can create new galleries and media items, but since the forum automatically creates attachments from images in posts (which you can view from the Attachments tab in your account drop down menu), hardly anyone uses Media to collect their images any more. It's just way more convenient the way it is now. However, there might be a way to make all attachments turn up in Media - I'm not sure that's what I personally want, but it might make viewing and managing images *on their own* even easier. I'd certainly not see this as an ideal entry point to the forum - thankfully, this is not something like Flickr, this is a messaging board, meant for communication, not consumption; but of course, this way, all images would become available via New Media.

@Kevin What's your take on both desirability and technical feasibility?

M.

P.S. Reporting one's own posts to create attention is bad style, please tag a moderator or admin if you want us to join a discussion. The list is available in the Members tab.
 
We use the front page for featured excellent content; showing all images would, in my opinion, result in a major drop in quality - of course, most people present their best efforts regularily, but many of us shoot and post casually as well - it's a strength of this community to be accepting of varying degrees of seriousness. So, the current solution is well considered and works. As for browsing new content, just choose your entry points in "New Posts" - you'll usually find new images, even though certain threads are discussion threads, but you'll learn your way around soon enough.

For the record, I'm dead against changing the presentation in the way you describe.

It's a fact though that newly uploaded images don't automatically turn up in Media. You can create new galleries and media items, but since the forum automatically creates attachments from images in posts (which you can view from the Attachments tab in your account drop down menu), hardly anyone uses Media to collect their images any more. It's just way more convenient the way it is now. However, there might be a way to make all attachments turn up in Media - I'm not sure that's what I personally want, but it might make viewing and managing images *on their own* even easier. I'd certainly not see this as an ideal entry point to the forum - thankfully, this is not something like Flickr, this is a messaging board, meant for communication, not consumption; but of course, this way, all images would become available via New Media.

@Kevin What's your take on both desirability and technical feasibility?

M.

P.S. Reporting one's own posts to create attention is bad style, please tag a moderator or admin if you want us to join a discussion. The list is available in the Members tab.
Thankyou, no doubt I shall learn my way around.
 
Just to tell all you moderators that the way the website looks and works is absolutely perfect for me and I do not need any changes.
To anyone who has problems with finding anything: just give it the time and effort to scroll and click your way through *ALL* the features and pages ... and you'll find it sensible, (mostly) logical with only few wishes left (which I keep to myself because that refers to my tastes ... and tastes as we all know do differ). I'm very happy with the way things are.
 
We use the front page for featured excellent content; showing all images would, in my opinion, result in a major drop in quality - of course, most people present their best efforts regularily, but many of us shoot and post casually as well - it's a strength of this community to be accepting of varying degrees of seriousness. So, the current solution is well considered and works. As for browsing new content, just choose your entry points in "New Posts" - you'll usually find new images, even though certain threads are discussion threads, but you'll learn your way around soon enough.

For the record, I'm dead against changing the presentation in the way you describe.

It's a fact though that newly uploaded images don't automatically turn up in Media. You can create new galleries and media items, but since the forum automatically creates attachments from images in posts (which you can view from the Attachments tab in your account drop down menu), hardly anyone uses Media to collect their images any more. It's just way more convenient the way it is now. However, there might be a way to make all attachments turn up in Media - I'm not sure that's what I personally want, but it might make viewing and managing images *on their own* even easier. I'd certainly not see this as an ideal entry point to the forum - thankfully, this is not something like Flickr, this is a messaging board, meant for communication, not consumption; but of course, this way, all images would become available via New Media.

@Kevin What's your take on both desirability and technical feasibility?

M.

P.S. Reporting one's own posts to create attention is bad style, please tag a moderator or admin if you want us to join a discussion. The list is available in the Members tab.
I just looked into the Media section - it's true that in its current state, we might as well remove it (or access to it). Not that I specifically want that, but it doesn't do anything desirable at the moment - that's why noone's using it, so in turn it becomes less and less usable and useful. It's kind of a vicious circle.

Again, there's no real need for the feature or section at the moment. But that might indeed be seen as a bit of a wasted opportunity.

I'm not pushing this discussion and certainly don't advocate any changes, but it might be worth clarifying and/or streamlining the process.

M.
 
I just looked into the Media section - it's true that in its current state, we might as well remove it (or access to it). Not that I specifically want that, but it doesn't do anything desirable at the moment - that's why noone's using it, so in turn it becomes less and less usable and useful. It's kind of a vicious circle.

Again, there's no real need for the feature or section at the moment. But that might indeed be seen as a bit of a wasted opportunity.

I'm not pushing this discussion and certainly don't advocate any changes, but it might be worth clarifying and/or streamlining the process.

M.
I would argue that having a feature (e.g. "new media", "new media comments", "new resources") go completely unused and therefore be essentially pointless argues strongly for removing it. Or at least removing it from a prominent place in the main navigation menu.

The argument for maintaining the status quo would seem to boil down to "well, someone might discover a good use for it someday" which is anathema to my training and instincts in product management.

This might be a good opportunity to rethink the usefulness of the current menu structure.

- K
 
Can anyone help a newbie pleaae? If I go to What's New, and select New Media, it always tells me I have no unviewed media, nothing shows up although looking at the individual forums obviously there have been new items. How can I see what photos have been posted on the whole of cameraderie since I last looked, is there a way?

Gerry
Welcome to the site, Gerry. I was new here recently and can empathize with your confusion around the site structure. Here is the way I dealt with getting the lay of the land:

Go to the "Whats New" page. The first thing you'll see is a huge (probably overwhelming) number of unread posts. In order to to bring this down to a manageable level, click the "Mark Forums Read" button to reset this number to zero. Now you should see a message that says something like "You have no unread messages". At this point go to the "Forum" menu at the top and dive into any subforums that appear to match your interests until you become bored or move on to another activity.

The next day, revisit the site and again go to "Whats New". You should see a much more manageable number of posts that have been made since your previous visit. Try to browse through ALL of these new posts, or as many as time allows.

Rinse and repeat for a few more days. By now you should have a fairly decent idea of what sorts of threads get posted, which see the most action and where your particular sensibilities might fit into the forum.

After you've participated a while, the Alerts notification that @John King mentioned may prove worthwhile as a place that captures the threads that you visit and interact with more often. But you may find that trying to drink from the firehose of the What's New page fits your needs. Give it some time and i'm sure you'll find a way that works for you.

Looking forward to seeing your contributions!

- K
 
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I would argue that having a feature (e.g. "new media", "new media comments", "new resources") go completely unused and therefore be essentially pointless argues strongly for removing it. Or at least removing it from a prominent place in the main navigation menu.

The argument for maintaining the status quo would seem to boil down to "well, someone might discover a good use for it someday" which is anathema to my training and instincts in product management.

This might be a good opportunity to rethink the usefulness of the current menu structure.

- K
Seems a bit presumptious for a newbie to suggest changes I know, my enquiry was to find out how the New Media choice worked, thanks to @John King for explaining it, although Instill see nothing in it. If it really isn't used at the moment, rather than discarding it could those headings be programmed tomshow all new media posyed, in chronological order? I wouldn't presume to suggest changes to what people use, and the 'front page' shows some marvellous stuff but is selected, One of my simple pleasures is seeing what photos are being posted, they are the ultimate product of our endeavours really, irrespective of what your choice of kit is. All are interesting (to me) even if some are not my style, I think it would be a great addition if itnot already here somewhere I haven'tlooked yet, surely others would find it satisfying?
I haven't done much 'good' stuff recently, been preoccupied with one or two health issues, as well as politcs on the 'other' place! But will do so when I have something to impress you all with (I hope!)

Gerry
 
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@gyoung Gerry, I do that by scrolling through the current threads, even following some down rabbit holes ...

If I come across a thread I'm interested in, but haven't yet posted anything in, I just hit 'Watch' in the top right of that thread. Works for me.
I thought I had tried that and nothing happened, but now I look at my watched threads list, nothing in it, so I didn’t do it right, finger trouble! trying again now!
Thanks, Gerry
 
Greetings, everyone, and welcome Gerry to our community. 🙂

Sorry for not chiming in earlier, for the past several days our 'Fuzzy Dog' has been ill culminating in him going to the local animal ER yesterday. He's home now and sleeping so I'm catching up on my inbox and some of my To Do list.

What's going on here is a matter of perspective, namely "What is the meaning of 'media'? 🤔" Now I don't mean that in a philosophical way 😃 but really as a way to highlight that the same word has different meanings based on our own experiences. For me personally I've been playing working with tech in various forms since my pre-teen days (which is a *long* time ago) so for me "media" means physical storage to store data. Tape, floppies, hard-drives, thumb-drives and so on... all media. For the non-IT geek world "media" refers to news organizations. Ask a doctor and "media" means something else. Ask a digital photographer, videographer, or artist about "media" and the conversation could go in the direction of images or videos or animation or, if you're old enough to remember then, the conversation could even lean into Adobe Flash creations.

Now let's spin the wheel of time forward a few decades and we come to modern software and platforms like XenForo. What XenForo calls "Media" in regards to its software is what most folks what have called a 'photo gallery' in days past. Calling it "Media" is a bit more generic way of indicating that the 'gallery' can be used for stuff besides photos if wanted; it could be used for videos, audio, embedding remote items, and, of course, also photos. With that in mind it is not unreasonable that somebody might think menu items for "Media" would be the spot to browse all of the photos uploaded to a community like Cameraderie. Really, though, "Media" in the context of XenForo is the 'gallery' section of the site which is different from the 'forums' section of the site.

Until recently the different sections of XenForo, like the 'forums' and 'gallery', were more-or-less sandboxed from each other meaning that content added in one section was not accessible by the other sections. The XenForo "Media Gallery" actually started out as being a 3rd-party add-on by a developer who would go on to join the XenForo development team and, when they did, their add-on was brought into the fold as being an 'official' XenForo optional add-on. Here at Cameraderie the 'gallery' add-on is installed and is available for usage but historically 99% (heck, might even be 99.99%) of the images shared are in posts in the 'forum' section. Matt is right in that hardly anyone uses the 'gallery' section of the site. We could turn off the add-on and nobody would likely notice for a bit. Take note of this paragraph starting out with "Until recently" because things have changed a bit with XenForo with recent updates which brings us back to the the original topic of this conversation in regards to "media" and how a site like FujiX is using XenForo. 😉

One of the more recent XenForo Media Gallery updates was to allow the add-on to 'mirror' images from the forums. If wanted we could have a forum named "Pictures of Fuzzy Dogs" and is where posts and pictures would all go as normally done here at our community but I could also create a Media category named "Dogs" and configure it to 'mirror' any attachments in the forum. The end result is that any image attachments in the "Pictures of Fuzzy Dogs" forum would show up in the "Dogs" Media category also and they would look & act just as if they were uploaded directly to the Media category itself. From a user perspective if Jane Doe attached a picture in the forum then John Doe browsing the forum would see a post by Jane with the attachment and he would see a Media entry by Jane with the same picture. Unless John knew what to look for otherwise, for all intents & purposes it would seem to him that Jane uploaded the picture twice but, really, Jane only uploaded it once to the forum and the software 'mirrored' it to the Media section.

And this is where FujiX comes into play. They have the optional Media add-on installed and they have the 'mirror' option turned on for at least some of their forums. A random example is https://www.fujix-forum.com/media/simon-says-rehearsal-dinner-candids-x100v-22-04-24-0018-jpg.151513 - Take a look in the upper-right corner of the screen and there is text Originally posted in: Post in thread 'Bob Jarman - My Photos which contains a link to a post, https://www.fujix-forum.com/threads/bob-jarman-my-photos.126443/#post-1185681/. Clicking on that link takes you to the post in the forums where the image was actually uploaded to. By having the optional Media add-on installed and by configuring the add-on to 'mirror' the forums, it is what gives the appearance that by viewing 'New Media' that you're seeing all new images uploaded to the site in general.

The front page, aka the 'home' page, of both FujiX and Cameraderie are using 'widgets' to display selected content. I am not familiar with the widgets FujiX is using but here at Cameraderie we're using a combination of a few stock XF widgets and a few bespoke widgets with the important one being our custom "Featured Images" system. FujiX's "Featured Images" appears to be really more a "Featured Threads" system but, again, I'm not familiar with the widgets they're using.

I'm not opposed to us turning on the 'mirror' options here for the Media section but would want to explore it further before jumping into it. I have a bunch of questions that I'd want to find answers to before turning the option on. If, after reading this thread, any of our community members express interest in the topic then I'll start looking into it deeper. Taking a look at FujiX, they have all of their forums being mirrored into a single Media category. Viewing that category then shows all images uploaded to the forums. We could do the same or we could create multiple categories and be a bit more precise in regards to mapping which forums mirror to which Media categories.
 
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