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Fotopic community

Discussion in 'Photography' started by southyorkshireman, Aug 9, 2006.

  1. 34007

    34007 Part of the furniture

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    A good setup I think... You should get a hell of a lot of photos on there with 20Gig of space. Myself personally I will probably host mine with some of the HTML skills that I have and buy my own domain name. Not sure of the layout yet.....

    I hope Matt does read these comments and offer some advice etc....
     
  2. 45669

    45669 Part of the furniture

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    Very nice. I like you night shots with the Std class 5; took me back some 50 plus years!
     
  3. Swiss Toni

    Swiss Toni Well-Known Member

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    Looks good John.

    I use "Coppermine" and find it easy to use with plenty of "themes" to choose from.
     
  4. northernblue109

    northernblue109 New Member

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    Flickr

    Apologies if this is duplicated, the original message doesn't seem to have appeared. I've been experimenting with Flickr this afternoon by loading the digitally-reliveried A1 and A4 Pacifics that have been mentioned elsewhere on this site. Conclusions so far is that it's a bit of a curate's egg (good in parts and not so good in others) and I don't feel inclined to jump straight into a Pro User Account, which is the only way that Flickr could be a viable alternative to fotopic. Text handling is good but some of the workarounds (for example re-ordering images by manipulating upload dates) are messy. Also the overall appearance is rather bland and impersonal.

    www.flickr.com/photos/northernblue109
     
  5. 33056

    33056 Member

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    I tried to set up something using the free webspace provided by my ISP this morning: downloaded Coppermine, managed (eventually) to get it uploaded using an FTP program but am now totally stuck! Havn't a clue how to get into it to configure anything, let alone how to upload any images.

    Given up in disgust for the moment and signed up for a two week trial with Zenfolio - will hopefully be enough time to work out whether I like it enough to sign up or see if I can work out how to get the "DIY" path to work. If Fotopic returns I might be tempted to stick with it until my subscription runs out, but am definitely going elsewhere after that.
     
  6. JohnRobinson

    JohnRobinson Member

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    As posted on Fotopic Users Group by the group owner (who is not connected to Fotopic or Snappy Designs):

    I thought it might be useful to summarise what we actually know that's relevant to the current outage. This is particularly for the large number of new members that have joined in the last few days and therefore aren't aware of discussions that have taken place in the past.

    1. Fotopic went into administration back in 2007 or 2008 and was sold by Joel Rowbottom , the creator of Fotopic, to Snappy Designs. Consequently Fotopic as a company no longer exists - searches on the net will tell you that but it isn't the cause of the present issue.

    2. A lengthy outage took place in January 2009 and was the reason I set up this group, initially to look at what we could do given the apparent collapse of Fotopic. In this instance it turned out to be a major technical problem which also coincided with the New Year holiday. The problem was fixed and things returned to normal. Then, as now, there was a lot of rumour spread about and the way the net works is that rumours soon apparently confirm themselves as they do a loop and come back from a seemingly independent source - so take care!

    3. Joel Rowbottom considered it necessary to put out this statement in January 2009. It's not really affecting what happens at the moment but may help some understand: http://blog.joel.co.uk/?itemid=777 (this has been posted in a recent message as well)

    4. Since that outage we have become aware of a complete lack of communication from Fotopic and basically it ran on autopilot with no development, no attempt at marketing or anything.

    5. More recently the servers were moved from their Yorkshire base down south. Whilst there was some disruption during the transfer, things still worked.

    6. Joel Rowbottom made us aware of a tool for backing up our galleries, a need that had become painfully obvious since the January 2009 outage. Quite a few of us took advantage of it and some backed up more often than others. This tool is still available and those who need it can be pointed in the right direction if the option of using it again should arise - i.e. Fotopic comes back on stream.

    7. A recent issue has been the system grinding to a halt around midnight and apparently shutting down completely in the wee small hours (UK time) but I never experienced the latter for myself.

    8. There have been issues with counters and search engines but I think they're a sideshow and are not relevant at the moment.

    9. Joel is now at the final stages of launching a new photo hosting package which will probably (I know little detail) be significantly different from Fotopic in some functionality as it takes account of the way people network nowadays which has changed significantly from when Fotopic was launched. This site is www.pikfu.com, something to which there has been a lot of reference in recent discussions. It is now being launched in something of a hurry to fill the void and will only have limited functionality to start with.

    10. Joel knows no more than we do so there's no point in keep asking him! Even if he really does and isn't telling, asking once more isn't going to make a difference.

    11. We haven't a clue what's going on at the moment.

    As of March 2011, the servers are offline. There is speculation on various Internet groups[2] as well as Twitter that Fotopic have ceased trading. To date no official statements or replies to requests have been received or published by the company owners.



    Dont know any more than above which was e-mailed to me

    John
     
  7. belle1

    belle1 Part of the furniture Moderator

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    Thanks for sharing that info John. If it is a systems failure rather than gone for good an announcement by Fotopic when it is back may cause another crash due to the amount of users hitting the site to check all is well which would be counterproductive. Fotopic are not known for excellent communication skills though so I am not waiting in anticipation of an email to tell me the site is back online...

    Neil.
     
  8. mattspencer

    mattspencer Well-Known Member

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    I suspect if you are using webspace provided by your isp then you won't have the required mysql database it needs.
     
  9. Sidmouth

    Sidmouth Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Moderator

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    and this is why fotopic was so good. Most of us don't want the aggravation and hassle of owning our own domain , buying software , dealing with SQL Database issues . We all dot a web address that looked right and sounded good and a cracking platform on which to show and share our images in a place that so many of our colleagues and contempories were
     
  10. 73129

    73129 Part of the furniture

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    If Photopic doesn’t come back to life what will happen to all the photos posted by everyone? Will they be lost forever or will another company be able to buy the servers/Photo’s and having access to use them without our knowledge?
     
  11. Sidmouth

    Sidmouth Resident of Nat Pres Staff Member Moderator

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    interesting point

    If the servers were only leased then in theory someone could be reformatting then for reuse

    I know from the fotopic forum on google that Joel and Nicky (Fotopic's creators) are doing all they can to find out whats happening and see if they can acquire the residual business . I guess their interest will now be PIKFU but unbeknown to many Joel had created a fotopic backup tool allowing you to backup your entire gallery. It's a shame I hadn't !
     
  12. 33056

    33056 Member

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    I did wonder whether that would be an issue, thought it was a good idea to try that first rather than spend money on web space then having not the faintest idea what to do with it.

    Perhaps it is just as well I have decided to explore other avenues - havn't a clue what a mysql database is or what it does so I'm probably better off sticking to an idiot-proof system!
     
  13. 12" Coch RSH

    12" Coch RSH New Member

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    well i'll be hounst fotopic is now not a option unless they have a ruddy good excuess, and rebuild there goodwill with there customers. still no offical word.
    if it were to come back i'd let the subcribtion run out, which is, Feb 2012 (thats right i topped it up week before it offline lol)
    im intersted to see what the Pikfu is like.....possibley somone hopfully learning the mistakes of fotopic and possibley cashing in, personal isnt a bad thing if somthing better is going to come out of it.
     
  14. nickt

    nickt Member

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    Someone has kindly explained to me how to get a Cached copy of a Fotopic gallery or collection, from which the owner can retrieve Captions, etc.

    Enter the exact collection or gallery name URL in Google's home page (may not work from a google search at the top of a IE page). Hit Search and the top item sshould be the gallery/collection against which the word "Cached" is written. Click on "Cached" and your page will appear, which you can print off to make a copy of the captions, etc.

    If you use the URL for a gallery it will show a list of collections. Go to a collection, right click and select Properties. This displays a box showing the exact URL of the collection. Copy the URL and paste it in Google home page, then as above.

    It works for me. Good luck!
     
  15. Hemerdon

    Hemerdon Member Friend

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    Nick - I assume by cached you're talking about cached files on your PC. That will only work if your cached files still exist. Unfortunately for me, for security, I clear out all temporary files, cookies, etc every day.
     
  16. 34007

    34007 Part of the furniture

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    I think Nick is referring to the Cached word beside you're fotopic forum address once you have put in the adddress in the search option of IE on google. It worked for me the other day and I have saved my details into an MS Word document.
    On another note I got a return email stating the following from the email that I sent to fotopic; The following message to <help@fotopic.net> was undeliverable.
    The reason for the problem:
    5.4.7 - Delivery expired (message too old) 'DNS Soft Error looking up fotopic.net (MX) while asking ns1.fotopic.net. Error was: unable to reach nameserver on any valid IP'

    Seems as though all IP addressing to Fotopic isn't working.
    I wonder if Fotopic do eventually get something sorted that all sites will be transferred to http://www.pikfu.com/
     
  17. alts1985

    alts1985 Well-Known Member

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    Thats brilliant! Good thinking, works for me too. At least I have got something saved, thanks again.
     
  18. Hemerdon

    Hemerdon Member Friend

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    Thanks. Yes, I understand now. Tried it and worked. I did though have all my captions already saved. Problem is what do I go to instead. Some interesting comments in the other Fotopic thread about other options but it all involves an enormous amount of work.
     
  19. 12" Coch RSH

    12" Coch RSH New Member

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    this is one of the Test Pikfu Accounts.

    http://photos.jml.net/

    looks rather basic at the mintuie but it isnt finshed yet.
    there still devopling the site, but it looks promising though.

    if your on facebook or Twitter Pikfu are on there posting regaular updates.
     
  20. admin

    admin Founder Administrator

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