DissCamera.org.uk

There is still a lot of work to do on this new site and whilst it is now available to the general public it will still be some time time before things are completely finalised and the layout and styling polished.
However if you are a member of the club you are welcome to look around and try out features, post some content etc. - but don't put too much effort into posting anything yet since it may be lost as major changes continue to be made.

Current status

Much still needs to be done to refine the design and layout of the site. I have basically begun by throwing together a quick template based on the old site. It is mostly greys in order to provide a neutral space for viewing pictures. There a various bad links and incomplete features but please do make any suggestions you have to improve the layout and usability of the site.

More detail on specific features is below.

Gallery
The gallery feature doesn't quite work how I'd like it to yet, this is more to do with the way the front page is organised and you drill down to the sub galleries. I hope to resolve this soon as I see this as a key feature of the site. You can however post images to the site using the user tools tab on the right, following the drill down to create content ->image. When uploading an image you can associate it with a project or competition, I might also think about adding a facility to associate it to an outing. You can also mark a location for where it was taken. Unfortunately the map facility does not support address searches so you will have to enter the location name and find and click on a location on the map separately.
If you are shooting digitally your file should include the camera data in the Exif header, this will be read by the system and displayed showing f-stop, shutter speed etc. If you do not shoot digitally or this data is not in your file header for some reason then you can enter it manually.
I will be transferring over images from the old site over the coming weeks.

My account

You can edit your user profile. when editing it you may notice some tabs across the top, these allow you to add further sections of information about yourself such as kit used, how long you've been a member of the club, and a general space to introduce yourself. Feel free to fill these in for real.

Forums
I have done little to organise or give structure to the forums as yet. Suggestions would be appreciated here. The last forum setup wasn't heavily used and I don't believe we need such a heavily defined structure. Also many things that would previously have been posted there can now be createed as specific content types and shown in apporpriate areas of the site. e.g. links - there is now a system for adding links to a dynamic list and categorising them (though the layout of the list display needs work). You can also post news to the fron page as a story item. If you want to share a technique then contribute a book page, there is the beginings of a member created photography How to guide you can contribute to. If you want you can also create a blog or even photo blog, but I'm not sure how useful this feature will be so I may remove it if not used. You can also review equipment you own of have used. I hope to get this to link up with the equipment lists in the user profiles but will only bother doing so if people think they'll make use of it to contribute reviews to the site. I can also expand these features by adding new content types with special forms to fill in should we think of other uses for the site, which leaves me wondering how much a forum will be used anymore.

Currently there is very little content and what there is has been mainly for the purposes of testing the system.
You can use the Contact Us form to report any feedback if you like.