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PostPosted: June 16th, 2021, 7:33 am 
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Joined: August 16th, 2011, 8:02 pm
Posts: 347
Location: Edmonton area
Callee, I am no wizard at anything IT related, but my way of posting pics does not rely on a third party host, although it may well be more labour intensive than other methods. What I do is this:

- I create a folder in my Pictures file on my computer, and put any pics that I want to post on MYCCR into it,

- I then open the pics individually in Microsoft Paint, click resize, choose resize by pixel count, change the larger of the two dimensions (length x width) to 800, which will make the smaller of the two numbers change to a number less than 800 automatically, then save those resized pics in another folder in my Pictures file on my computer,

- I then log in to my CCR Gallery account, import each resized pic from my computer into the most appropriate folder within the Gallery based on pic content, and wait until CCR Admin staff approve the new pics in the gallery, usually a few days of waiting, until my new pics are visible in the Gallery,

-Then draft a post, and to insert a pic into the post, I click Img, go back to Gallery, right click on a picture, click on Copy Picture Address (or however it's called), and drop that in between the IMG parentheses in the post.

It's slow, but works, and third party hosts can't make my pics disappear from their sites if they change anything on the sites. I expect that there are likely more user friendly ways to post pics here, but I also accept that it seems that most CCR members are older rather than younger (whatever that means), and not as adept at such things as perhaps some younger people are, and that funds for site technical improvements, such as making it easier to upload pics, are simply not available, and so it is unlikely to get any better any time soon.

Personally, I would like to see a page in the site which explains how to use every feature on it, that has not been rendered difficult to use because of site members who input distractions into it, which makes it near impossible to follow for concise instruction on how to do anything on the site.

A page that members cannot input into, which clearly lists each step for each feature on the site, and is not made near useless by superfluous comments and jokes by members, would be a big improvement, but again, Admin staff are unpaid volunteers, and that would be a fairly significant undertaking. I expect that we will just muddle along as we have been. Imperfect, but still probably the best wilderness canoe tripping website on the Internet.

Cheers Callee.

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PostPosted: June 16th, 2021, 1:06 pm 
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Joined: February 18th, 2021, 9:21 am
Posts: 105
recped wrote:
The way the forum is currently set up pictures greater than 800px in width will lead to scrolling issues and conflict with the ad sidebar on the right.

It would take a complete redesign of the site and perhaps an upgrade from phpBB to a more current backend, all of that would require a considerable amount of work (money) and the bottom line is that it would do little for the actual content that is here.


I hear what you're saying about the current forum set up, but, again, given the state of cell phone camera technology and the resulting pic size, to me that's kinda like saying "the stereo is only set up to play 8-track tapes, so if you want to play your mp3's, you'll have to convert them first" . Most people would rather just give up than go through that kind of hassle, and for sure there was at least two who responded to this thread that they had just given up. When posters are giving up on posting, I do think that is a problem. Enabling them to post and post more would - I'll disagree with you - probably do a great deal of good for the content here.

I agree it would cost money though. The board stats say that there's 14,000 members. If we did a funds drive asking everyone to pony up $10, most would decline. Many of those are probably inactive members anyway. But if we got even a 10% response rate, that would still be $14k. I don't know how much a website upgrade would cost, but if the total budget currently is $3k a year, surely $14k would go a long way towards an upgrade, no?

I'd pony up. Heck, i'd give a double portion and throw in a $20, and that could cover someone else who can't give right now.


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PostPosted: June 16th, 2021, 2:16 pm 
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Joined: August 16th, 2011, 8:02 pm
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Location: Edmonton area
Eberlym, what are your thoughts about any potential for such an effort as Callee describes?

I love grass roots initiatives for the collective good, and so I default to "I'm in!" in things like this generally.

But I know full well that there may be concerns involved in managing a website of this nature other than financial, so I'm curious about your perspective.

Thanks, cheers.

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PostPosted: June 17th, 2021, 8:27 am 
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Joined: April 30th, 2010, 4:11 pm
Posts: 268
Location: Georgetown, ON
Here are the current Attachment settings:

Maximum file size: 6 Mb
Maximum number of attachments per post: 10
Maximum image dimensions: 800 x 800 px

I have to do some more research to answer this question properly. Please give me a few days.

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PostPosted: June 17th, 2021, 8:45 am 
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Joined: April 30th, 2010, 4:11 pm
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Location: Georgetown, ON
recped wrote:
The way the forum is currently set up pictures greater than 800px in width will lead to scrolling issues and conflict with the ad sidebar on the right.


To see an example of what recped is describing above, try to write a Private Message and you will notice how the ads on the right hand sidebar block out the text box.

Even when you are writing a response comment to this one in the forums, notice that the ads slightly overlap the reply boxes. The website was set up this way; for some reason, the widths on the interfaces are not all aligned very well, and we are just living with the result.

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PostPosted: June 21st, 2021, 3:22 pm 
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Joined: April 30th, 2010, 4:11 pm
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Location: Georgetown, ON
On using the Gallery as an alternative;
The max width or height for uploaded pictures is 2048 pixels and max size is 1024 KB.

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PostPosted: June 24th, 2021, 2:33 pm 
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Location: Georgetown, ON
guyfawkes041 wrote:
Personally, I would like to see a page in the site which explains how to use every feature on it, that has not been rendered difficult to use because of site members who input distractions into it, which makes it near impossible to follow for concise instruction on how to do anything on the site.

Cheers Callee.


There is an FAQ link immediately below the first advertisement, and it explains a lot of things.

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PostPosted: June 24th, 2021, 2:55 pm 
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Joined: April 30th, 2010, 4:11 pm
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Location: Georgetown, ON
Obviously I am at least as invested in the continued success of this website as anyone, so it is important to me to give a practical and worthwhile explanation of my personal philosophy, hopefully without writing too much of an essay.

I took the opportunity to read all of the available meeting minutes from the myCCR Board. To summarize; after the Wilderness Canoe Association purchased myccr.com from Richard Munn in 2007, it was not until approximately 2016 that the website became financially self-sufficient. The work that was done included removing substantial amounts of accumulated spam content, establishing protocols which have prevented infiltration since then, and most significantly, improvements to the search engine.

There have been a number of attempts to increase advertising revenue, which have each generally failed. The companies that do advertise on this site are small, specialized, and operate on limited cash flows.
It is a simple reality that this is a relatively small sport and I regularly give this advice to the WCA Board; that we should not reasonably expect to compete with what have become some of the most powerful companies in the world. I may have this wrong, but my memory is that myccr.com was first registered under another name in 1995. Wow has the internet ever changed since then! This site is now very old and this is paradoxically its strength.

There are only 3 fundamental reasons why myccr.com continues to be successful, and these also represent its core purpose;

To maintain and provide free access to the accumulated data available in the Routes database (roughly 600 entries) and forums. As of today there are 346 085 posts in 33 475 topics in the forums.

To maintain and provide free access to the accumulated information available in the roughly 160 issues of Nastawgan published since 1974.

This material exists specifically because the website predates the big-data corporations, and it has been freely contributed by: The community of interested participants; the users who make up the community of paddlers. Those are the people who elect to come here when looking for information to plan their next canoe trip.

Anyway, all of this to say that while appealing in concept, for the most part photographs do not make a substantial contribution to the website, where the information is primarily text. It is certainly encouraged to post trip reports of where you have traveled and under what circumstances, but there is no system for likes and shares here. Being popular is not the point. Pictures are a luxury and therefore a low priority. In comparison, I also participate in several of the large Facebook groups relevant to canoe tripping in Ontario, and there are some obvious differences. The least of which is that when people discuss where they have gone, there is often no meaningful detail. Sharing photos just does not communicate things like specific locations on maps.

The site was last upgraded to Drupal 8.0 in 2017. There are no immediate plans to do anything structural. What has already been stated above is absolutely true. Layout settings were chosen many years ago to give the site a certain look, and these were based on assumptions about the technology of the day.
Digital camera equipment has far exceeded anyone's expectations, and is continuing to develop extremely quickly just like everything else. I think we ought to accept that instagram is the place to go for a website that will continuously develop itself in order to keep up.

myccr.com in general does not have substantial resources for constantly trying to reinvent something that already works.

Since myCCR Inc. is legally a for-profit corporation, while the Wilderness Canoe Association is a charity, if there is serious interest in starting a fundraiser;

Obviously this is welcome, but it would be done under the umbrella of the WCA. In that case I suggest joining the club and attending the next Annual General Meeting. I can only speculate that copying and pasting the database into a different interface will cost on the order of $25 000, because we will have to hire a qualified company to do that.

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PostPosted: June 24th, 2021, 3:47 pm 
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Joined: August 16th, 2011, 8:02 pm
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Location: Edmonton area
Eberlym, your detailed, concise, and frank assessment of this issue is much appreciated, thank you for your research and insights. I know a lot more about the site now than previously; well done.

I think some processing time is in order for me, and perhaps other folks as well.

Cheers.

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PostPosted: April 5th, 2022, 12:44 am 
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Joined: April 14th, 2018, 7:19 pm
Posts: 595
guyfawkes, and others who use windows,
if you resize one by one in MS paint, or whatever app, check this:
https://filehippo.com/download_fast-image-resizer/

i used it for bulk image resizing back when i used windows.
it is so simple, so fast.
all you do is drag all your pics (at once) onto the app,
and it 'machine guns' through them, makes resized copies of all.
no questions asked. no menus to navigate.

i have never seen a more easy, quick, resize app for windows.
am sure it works for win10, etc.
ps, i know some here use irfanview. excellent app.

@callee, great points, you hit nail on head.
i bet you that if, by whatever means, image sharing was made Easy,
the rate at which images get posted on ccr, would climb by over 200% after a month,


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