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STEP 4 - Tamara put pixie_lou's April photo thread back in Discussions. All links should be working now. She's waiting for us to tell her what threads to put in the Gallery.
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Claire,

I just moved the post over temporarily -- it's back in the main forum. The other posts are not missing and still available.

Once you decide which posts you want to move to the Gallery, just send me a list.

Tamara
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That's how it's done on other forums that I frequent. The Gallery is used as an archive. Also occasionally people will take a large number of photos of their garden, sort of "Take a Walk Through My Garden" and then post those directly to the Gallery. Sometimes a person will visit a spectacular garden and post a slide show to it directly into the Gallery and just post a note in Discussions about it.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Hosta Forum Gallery

I like having the current one in the discussions and I think that moving old ones over to the gallery once a year is a good idea.

I agree. Current one in discussions and the old threads in the gallery where they won't be lost.

I concur: All things New England, picture heavy or not, kept in the main New England Forum, then archived after a predetermined period of time, seems correct.

I'd still like to hear from pixie_lou since her threads are very important to the forum.

If she agrees with the idea, we could arrange it so either she or I request the transfer of the threads to be archived.

Probably the best arrangement would be for her to handle her own threads by contacting Tamara herself. That's up to her. I have no problem doing it, since I'm used to acting as an editor with the FAQ.

Once we've set up a protocol, we can look around to see what other threads should be archived. I think they need to be photo dominated for a Gallery.

Claire

Sorry I've been MIA. It's April School vacation week. I know many of you are beyond the stage of young children, so you've probably forgotten how a school vacation week can wreak havoc on your time management and your sanity.

I'm definitely in favor of the idea. And for the most part I will defer to Claire and do whatever she thinks is best. I do feel honored that Claire thinks I'm important enough to request my input on this issue.

But I do have a couple quick questions. I hope I'm asking these questions correctly since I am not very techno literate.

Regarding the longevity of pictures. As a for instance - I post my photos on Photobucket. If I go and delete the photos on photo bucket, they are no longer visible on the GW thread. Does this problem disappear with a gallery thread? Meaning - when a thread is transferred over to galleries - do the photos become embedded in galleries, and no longer dependent on being on the host site?

Also - due to the fact that you cannot edit a thread on GW - what happens to links? Since the threads have been going on for over a year now, I'm trying to link to the same months thread for the previous year, as well as previous months of the year. If threads get moved to the galleries, will the embedded links still work?

pixie_lou, I know you have a young daughter so I just assumed you were busy and would get back to the forum when you had a chance. Not a problem, I just wanted to make sure you have a say on what happens to your work.

You put a lot of work into your threads, and you're very reliable; of course you should have input.

I forwarded your questions to Tamara - hopefully she'll answer them.

Claire

Pixie lou, they do grow up although when they're young it seems like it will take forever! Mine is graduating from HS in less than 2 months. :) Yippeeee!

Concur with others that gallery is a very good idea for archived photo threads.

pixie_lou: I haven't heard back from Tamara yet.

Judging by what happened when the "Show Us..." thread was temporarily transferred to the Gallery, the embedded links will no longer work. We'll probably have to request transfer one thread at a time and then add a note to search the Gallery. Since you've been referring to the same month in the previous year (nice idea), maybe the transfer should occur at no less than one year plus one month intervals so the one year link is still valid (I'm not sure I said that clearly - I'm sort of thinking this out as I go).

We might also be able to post a separate thread directly on the Gallery that shows the links in their new Gallery location. Sort of an Index to the thread. A nuisance, but would only have to be done once, then updated periodically by Follow-Ups. That way your May thread would link to May 2011 and to the Index.

I don't know about the longevity of photos - they probably are still dependent on the host site unless they're uploaded directly into a Gallery.

Claire

Also, pixie_lou, it's always a surprise when you discover that you're a regular now on the forum. All you have to do is contribute regularly and consistently and you become a fixture.

Claire

OK - I don't mean to be a negative nelly here - but this is something I'm wondering. Call it thinking out loud. Or me just not fully understanding.

What exactly would be the purpose of the gallery?

I'm thinking in terms of 2 issues. (1)if the links no longer work. Since we cannot edit thread in GW, it seems like a bit more work to try to keep track of where these threads end up.

(2) if photo availability is still dependent on the host photo site. Then we are still dependent on members keeping their photos available in cyberspace. A gallery would no longer promote the longevity of photos.

If the gallery solves both of those problems, then I think it is a great idea. But if these 2 problems still exist - than why not keep the threads in the main discussion area?

NEG has an Exchanges forum that almost nobody looks at. So I'm wondering if people would really go to a gallery forum - unless they followed a link from the discussion forum.

Am I totally off base with my thinking? Am I missing something? I'm just trying to figure this out.

pixie_lou: For me, the main reason to transfer threads to the Gallery is to keep them from sliding off GW and no longer being accessible to anyone. I hate it when a thread I liked and wanted to revisit is suddenly gone. Sometimes you can find an archive but can no longer post to the thread. The Gallery won't be used that much and threads archived there are unlikely to slide off any time soon.

I can live with either scenario (Gallery or Discussions). If we stay in the Discussions side then we need to remember to bump old threads occasionally. I've done that in the past, and I think I'll go do that now for a few old "Birds and other mobile features.." threads.

As for longevity of photos, I could add a note on the How to post photos FAQ asking people to leave photos on their host site (I think this is what DtD was suggesting a while ago).

The Gallery idea sounded great in principle, but it has flaws that are now becoming apparent (at least its function as a tool to archive recurring threads). In any case, we have a Gallery now that can used by members as they wish.

More feedback anyone?

Claire

I thought the main purpose of using the gallery was not to put entire threads there, but as a place people could put photos for long-term access. I know my free picasa web space will be used up soon, and I'll have to start removing old photos.

Admittedly, I haven't used this feature for a long time - the perennials forum has a gallery, but a quick check shows that nothing's being posted there.

If the monthly photo thread moves to the gallery, it would be handy to have a link to it posted on the "regular" forum page.

DtD: The New England gallery is not set up for direct upload, so you still would have to upload at some other hosting site and then link to that. I looked at the Hosta Gallery and at least one photo was on Photobucket (I only checked one to see).

If you want to use Garden Web as a hosting site, then you would have to upload to Garden Galleries. Their FAQ is here. I checked one photo and the image location was at Garden Web. You would then link to the Galleries instead of Picasa.

I'm still mulling this over. I may try transferring the older "Birds and other mobile features..." threads to the Gallery as a test to see how it works and whether people like that. Hopefully GW won't object to these threads as being somewhat on the fringe of gardening (actually, they are, but the regional forums, IMO, should have more leeway in what they're interested in).

The test should show whether transfer is worth the effort. For me, the 'Mobile' threads have been going on long enough that bookkeeping is getting to be a real pain so it may be worth it.

I would suggest that pixie_lou hang back and see how this works in practice. She has a good routine set up now that works well.

Claire

Hi Claire. Yes - longevity is definitely an issue. With the Show Us Your Garden Threads, they've only been in existence for just over a year now. So I have not yet run into the longevity issue.

I like your suggestion of moving the older Mobile Features Threads into the galleries as a test.

Claire,
I offer my 2 cents as something more to consider not as an attempt to diminish your enthusiasum for this project.
I suspect that most of the galleries are experiencing less traffic these days because GW does not offer photo tagging hence not allowing for the more specific searches that blogs and web pages provide. For example if I wanted to view gallery photos of New England gardens for design inspiration rather than close ups of individual plants. You might consider using the GW gallery to host links to individual members photo hosting site where photo tags and folders offer a narrower search result. Good Luck. kt

Unless the gallery on this forum is set up to be different than other gallery links on GW forums, if the photo is moved or deleted, say from photobucket, then the photos will no longer show in threads on GW, or a direct link to the pic on photobucket would no longer work.

I would venture to guess that the same thing would happen with pics that are initially hosted on other photo storage sites as well.

Fran

Nice idea, kt, about members linking to their own hosting sites on the Gallery. That's something anyone can do when they want.

I'm very pragmatic by nature, I just want to see what we can and can't do with a Gallery. Something new to explore.

You're correct, Fran, a photo can still be deleted from a thread on the Gallery by removing it from the hosting site, so this isn't a permanent storage solution.

Claire

Woo-hoo! GardenWeb transferred 15 old threads (at my request) to the Gallery, and the embedded links still work! I wonder how they did that? (either they changed all the embedded links by hand, or they have some nifty software).

That saves me a lot of work - now I just have to think about how to cross-reference between the Discussions and Gallery.

Kudos to the GardenWeb Staff!
Claire