Improving Our Community

Since I have to test this new blog functionality before we can bring it live, I may as well use this opportunity to write my own blog entry and keep the world up to date on our plans and progress so far. If any of you are paying attention to dev.friendlyphotozone.com, then you've witnessed a host of changes recently. Not just in functionality, but in workflow and design too. We've learned a lot of lessons from running FPZ over these last months, and we're trying very hard to apply those lessons learned in this latest renovation.

The first thing most people will notice is the new look. While the old FPZ looked fantastic, it was also slow and cumbersome. It created a heavy load on our servers, and it didn't run very well on older computers. This renovated FPZ has a much simpler look to it which is fast and efficient while still looking great. More tweaks may be done to FPZ's appearance over the coming months to add a bit of flair, but our goal is to make FPZ inviting to as many users as possible, and that means a lean appearance that runs fast.

The second thing most people will notice is the new navigation menu. Gone is the old drop-down menu, in favour of a new "main menu/sub menu" arrangement. At first glance this may seem to slow you down a bit since old sub-menu items which were reachable in a single click are now 2 clicks away. But this new navigation arrangement makes page loading much faster, and also encourages us to add links to important places throughout the site in an effort to flatten out our content. By making everything available from everywhere, the menu should be less important.

There are many additions for the new FPZ. Since this is a blog entry, the new blogging application should be self-evident We want to empower our members to speak out and share their thoughts with the rest of the world. The new blogging system allows you to maintain your very own blog, complete with a graphical editor and image manager. This is a complete blogging solution, including ratings, comments, categories, social sharing, and everything else found in commercial-level blogging services. We'll be keeping it simple initially, and adding features over time as we have a chance to test them. Forums are great and all, but sometimes you've got thoughts and stories to share that just don't require a full discussion. We look forward to seeing what our members have to share in their blog posts.

We're working on lots of other things too, so be sure and check back here regularly for updates. If things go as planned, the new FPZ will be ready to launch before the end of this month.