Gather's Daily Help Post - October 22, 2008 - Have a Question, Suggestion or Idea to Share? Need Help Getting Around the Site? Seeking Clarification on Gather's Community Guidelines or Publishing Guidelines?
Although Gather's Member Support team will not be available to assist with questions over the weekend we encourage you, the knowledgeable and well-connected member, to assist by sharing your own answers, or suggestions, as well as links to helpful posts you may have discovered on Gather.
Simply add your questions, responses or suggestions to this post page to get the conversation started! To learn more about Gather's Help Desk click here.
If you have an urgent question or need to discuss your concerns privately with Gather's support staff, you can reach us by submitting your question via the web form. We always strive to respond to all member inquiries as quickly as we can.
Feel free to also drop us a line right here on Gather!
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 103
And, once again, as I stated above, all the photos in that album have now duplicated in the groups that they are posted to!!!
We are working out a few kinks this morning. Please bear with us. We'll be addressing your questions from the Upgrade Notice and the new features here.
When you organize your already uploaded photos into albums, those photos will take on the viewability aspects of the album. So in the case you described, regardless of the original settings for your rose and daisy photos, those settings will be changed to match those of the album they are moved into. If they were published to groups that the album does not include, then the photos will be removed from those groups. If the album includes groups that the photos originally didn't, then the photos will be added to those groups.
Also, keep in mind that it's perfectly alright for you to leave some (or all) of your photos unsorted.
Shifting from photo to photo in the slide show viewer will not count as multiple page views, unless you click the "comment on this..." link.
However, if someone browses through album photos outside of the slide show pop up viewer, they do indeed count as separate views. Take this photo for instance:
Miso
Because this photo is in an album, it has that "carousel" of other album photos right above it. That carousel will call attention to the other photos in the album and attract views. So think of the slide show as a handy option for viewing all the photos of an album. But in you're interested with blessing your friends (and, well, Gather) with page views, you'll want to click around on the site and load a new page when you view different photo.
Ouch! I definitely see what you mean about the duplicating photos. I will let our engineers know about that right away.
However, I wasn't able to replicate the second problem you noted. I just created an album for myself, rearranged one of the photos, and the settings took. Are you still seeing this second problem?
Are you referring to the "Choose Photos" window that opens up with you click "choose photos"?
I'm not certain if anything we did would have hampered this ability (I'll check and find out), but if you're finding that you can't browse through thumbnails when choosing your photos for upload on a Mac, keep in mind that you now have the ability to drag photos right from your computer into the upload box. Say, for instance, you have a folder on your desktop full of vacation photos. You can open up that folder, and then just click and drag the photos in.
Another thing you could do would be to select a bunch of photos from the "Choose Photos" window, which WILL cause them to appear as thumbnails on the Gather page. Then you can very quickly remove any of the thumbs that you don't actually want to upload.
We will be patching the mail issues this afternoon. No, we will not have to take the site down again, but the patch will temporarily log members out of their accounts, requiring them to sign back in. We'll post an alert on this page when we know what time the patch will go out.
and the linked posts.
Is there a way to make the "other photos" the page that it defaults to when you click on my photos instead of the album page? I don't plan on using the albums much because I pretty much post individual pictures so I would rather that page be what someone sees when they click on my photo page.
Kevin reponded telling me thst was not on option now. Would Gather PLEASE consider making this an option ASAP.
The Gather feature which lets members upload photos in bulk requires you to install a plug-in before you use it the first time. This is a standard plug-in that is required on any photo sharing site that offers bulk uploading.
It is a quick (seconds) process and a simple one. You can read through the instructions before trying it out by looking at the beginning of Share up to 40 Photos at Once.
I appreciate your feedback regarding "other photos". We are looking into making this an option and we'll update folks when we know if that is a quick change that we can address in the short term.
I am getting email notifications in my own mailbox, so I am not aware of any notification problem. I'm going to check into this for you and I'll update you here shortly.
Hey and I was wondering if someone could see if my pictures load now? I was the one having trouble with people viewing my pictures since summerpics was going. I was told at the upgrade it would be fixed. It was loading super slow for people (a couple minutes per picture) or they were just getting a white screen. Hoping it's fixed!
Please let me know the last time you received an email notification for a comment. Thanks!
If you try uploading a photo and have trouble let us know. We'll try from this end as well.
How in heck can I now view the comments on my photos? Seriously, is there a way?
CAN YOU UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE GET WICKED PISSA
We're not seeing the same problem that you are, in regards to viewing the comment sections on your photos. Are you saying that for ANY of your photos that you try, you are not able to see comments when you scroll to the bottom?
I don't know if anybody's told you, but we're experiencing some significant instability on the site today. That can cause pages to freeze, and things in general to just not work well. If you come back tonight, I think things will be working a lot better for you. Let me know if you have any how-to questions. Otherwise, feedback goes here.
No. When I click share and a window opens (to my desktop, for example), the thumbnail is not included with the image as it used to be. It shows up AFTER I click, but if I have a lot of photos on my desktop (or in iphotos) to click through, it takes longer since I now do not have a thumbnail to easily search for.
Click: MY PHOTOS.
You see the following:
My Photos: All Albums
You currently do not have any albums. You can organize your photos into albums or upload new photos and create an album.
Click: You can organize your photos
I see the following:
Other Photos
1952 photos
Any new albums will appear here for easy drag and drop organization.
Previous Albums
Next Albums
Drop photos here to delete
Sort Photos into Albums
Got lots of photos of flowers, or maybe a set of wedding photos already on Gather? Organize them into albums. Just create a new album, then drag and drop photos into it.
Other Photos
Page 1 of 98 First|Prev| Next
Each photo is only draggable but not clickable.
Do you see my problem now?
As soon as some of these major issues cool down, I'll find out from our development team if anything we did would have altered the behavior of that window. You say you're on a Mac... are you using FireFox or Safari? And which version?
You are looking at the "organize photos" page. That is the page you should use when you are ready to create albums and start sorting them. That is NOT the proper page to use if you want to just browse through your own unsorted photos. Here's what you should do:
- click "My Photos"
- in the left-hand column, under "view," click "other photos"
Now, you can browse through your unsorted photos, comment on them, and read any comments that others have posted to them.
The default for all members is currently set up for "all albums" and we can't make this change to "other photos" on the fly. We are hearing feedback from members that this is something they would like to have an option on.
I approved two comments and they must have disappeared into cyberspace.
Did you happen to receive an email notification when the two comments were posted by the other member? If you did, please forward that to chuck@gatherinc.com.
If not, then please give me the URL to the content page where the comments were posted. It would also be helpful to know who the person was who posted the comments, so please give me any information you remember about the member.
We've been looking into reports of email problems. Tell me... do you notice that the ones you're receiving or not receiving are any particular 'type' of Gather email? Like comment notifications, group invites, etc?
src="http://www.gather.com/v/%%VIDEOID%%"
%%VIDEOID isn't initialized in the embed code.
So far I like the upgrade....I was able to transfer all my photos to the albums with not too much trouble. I haven't as yet tried to upload any photos...I'll see what happens when I do.
I also want to thank you for quickly removing that spammer which I e-mailed you about earlier today.
The Gather mail thing...Well Yeah cannot open the gather mail...Do seem to be getting group invites, though...
Can you provide the URL for the video you are talking about?
One possible negative(?) I noticed this morning, and questioned the same thing yesterday on the "explore(ing)" of recent photos, has actually shown up in some of my groups. It appears when somebody uploads so many photos at once, the group's photos show pages of the same person last to upload; burying everybody else's. The photos are great, but it hinders viewing from multiple members posting of photos with ease. I thought it better and more interesting when group member's photos were more mixed up myself. I'm not quite sure I like that result.... if that is indeed what is possible or happening?
If it is, I would like that photos published to "groups" be made one or two at a time, with the alternative to be multiple (up to 40) limited to photo essay type articles in that group publishing/posting instead...?
I dunno'... thinking out loud.
PS- seem to be having trouble with whatever that "Active-X" controls are that your Gather message is asking me to upload. I wanted to experiment some first before asking this question, but not sure what is up yet with my PC? Any ideas....? Thanks.
John S., Oct 22, 2008, 1:34pm EDT
The simple act of creating an album does not produce events in member feeds, and this was intentional. The only time albums are mentioned in a feed is when new photos are uploaded, and placed in an album. Then the feed event would read something like "Sue M has shared 9 photos in her album CATS CATS AND MORE CATS." This was probably to minimize feed clutter. I can submit it as a suggestion, if you'd like...
Groups in general are one area where we identified some potential sore spots when planning this release. One is the effect you noted, where someone bulk uploading could fill up 40 adjacent slots on the recent photos page. Another is submitting photos in bulk to a moderated group - albums can not be accepted or rejected by group moderators, only individual photos. Luckily, our next major release will focus on groups, and that gives us an opportunity to address some of these new issues. In the meantime, we feel your pain, and we're working on it!
Firefox 3.0
I would think that simply creating a new album would be of interest to others, especially if they are new Gather connections that didn't see your previous photos and would now be able to view ones of a particular subject matter that they are interested in. For example, I created a photo album of all my previous bird photos today. If someone especially liked bird photos and was a new connection of mine, they would be alerted that an album of bird photos had been created and could then be able to click on the album in the feed and view my previous bird photos. Or maybe someone went on a vacation earlier in the year to a place I'm interested in going, but I didn't have them as a connection then and missed the photos. I would then be alerted in my feed that the album was posted and could then click on it and view the photos that I would otherwise have missed. Do you see what I'm saying?
http://www.gather.com/viewVideo.jsp?id=11821949021873146&nav=MyGather&memberId=72107
Your email preferences are currently set so that you should receive notifications regarding only two groups, and only when those groups add new posts. You are also set up to be notified when you receive a group invite, and also when new content or members in your own group(s) need approval.
Other than that, if you are included on any broadcast private messages sent via a group, you would be notified of that because it is a private message. The group's name would be found in brackets at the beginning of the message's subject line.
If you think you've received some notifications that you're not signed up for, please forward examples to me at chuck@gatherinc.com.
This is the embed code I see when I look at your video:
<object id="FlowPlayer" height="375" width="450"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://www.gather.com/v/11821949021873146"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="scaleMode" value="showAll"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="allowNetworking" value="all"><embed src="http://www.gather.com/v/11821949021873146" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="375" width="450"></object>
<object id="FlowPlayer" height="375" width="450"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="movie" value="http://www.gather.com/v/%%VIDEOID%%"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="scaleMode" value="showAll"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="allowNetworking" value="all"><embed src="http://www.gather.com/v/%%VIDEOID%%" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="375" width="450"></object>
Email may still be spotty. Personally, I'm receiving most of mine, but I have noticed a few comments on this post that I wasn't notified for.
I will alert the tech teams right away. In the meantime, have a cup of tea :)
I was worried that the upgrade would give Safari users problems but it has been smooth sailing for me. I uploaded albums easily. The only thing I do not like about the upgrade is the album default so that others do not see my other photos when coming to my namespace.
Seriously, in the meantime, please don't remove any photos from your group. Someone's looking into it this afternoon.
It looks like you and Sue are having the same issue. We're looking into it as we type.
I'm asking around for you right now, but I may not get an answer today. Would you please submit this question through our online help form so I don't forget to get back to you?
I uploaded 3 pictures at once this morning and it was super fast. I'm not going to do albums yet. It took me a couple months before I did a friend set.
I'm not stressed but may take Chuck's suggestion of a cup of tea anyway!
The upgrade is complete, however a few technical issues remain. We will be rolling out a patch tonight (Wednesday) at 8 pm ET to address most of them. This will cause members to be logged out of their accounts, and require them to log back in. Be mindful of this if you're publishing anything lengthy!
The patch will fix Gather's private messaging system, and several other glitches relating to Gathers new photo albums.
Thank you all for your patience while we work the kinks out of this new release!
- Gather.com Member Support
Chuck we talked back and forth in email about my pictures loading super slow and for some people just getting a white screen. Was wondering if it was this upgrade that you said would fix this problem? Wondering if it is fixed?
When I try to upload a video. .. the new uploader won't let me open my personal files.
I run vista so my stuff is in Computer>>> Heather>>>My Pictures>>> Individual files
Does new Gather hate vista or just me today?
What gives?
The upgrade is complete, however a few technical issues remain. We will be rolling out a patch tonight (Wednesday) at 9:30 pm ET to address most of them. This will cause members to be logged out of their accounts, and require them to log back in. Be mindful of this if you're publishing anything lengthy!
The patch will fix Gather's private messaging system, and several other glitches relating to Gathers new photo albums.
Thank you all for your patience while we work the kinks out of this new release!
- Gather.com Member Support
What I did mind was that the upload kept locking up, and it took me a couple hours to get a set of pictures uploaded,
I am familiar with the Java script that you are using(yuwie and Village photos use something similar), however it would be really nice if we could do things like rotate the images on sight.
teh upgrade will take some getting used to but as being newer here, I'll probably adjust quicker than most.
I LOVE being able to upload 40 images at a time, its a Huge time saver for me......because I can batch mark them, and if I want to change it later that's easy enough to do. and it also lets me upload some of my not so tecnically perfect shots, without having to do the copyright information on them all before I upload them.
Mooch