Forum Activity for @admin

'Products' feature now available to all for testing

Updates

As we mentioned a few months back, if you are an organisation such as a local or family history society or group, and you are struggling to make these available online to maximise their reach, you can now sell these items through Our Town Story, providing you with a potential new income stream.
It could be books or postcards, local research, CD-ROMs of transcriptions or even tea towels! You choose the title, description, how many items of stock to make available, pricing and postage costs. If someone makes a purchase, we take the payment securely using Stripe, and you receive an automatic email to tell you who has bought what and where it needs to be sent. 
Once a month, we will distribute any funds you are owed straight to your bank account. Yes, we take a small fee (currently 10%) of the item cost to cover our costs. However, as a not-for-profit setup, any surpluses go back into the running of the site. 
The folk at @HRGS have been trying this out for us, so you can see what product listings looks like there, but here's a picture:

In order to sell with us, you need to have created an account with Our Town Story, and chosen the 'organisation' account option. You must provide a working, monitored email address - your customers will be expecting the delivery time that you mention and they are paying for! 
We really hope that this will open up the online market for your goods, and increase your revenues to allow you to do more. If you have any questions, just reply below, and we will do our best to answer them!

Editing

Feature Requests

Hi, @noswar. Thank you for your observations and sorry to hear that you have been losing data and having to re-enter it. I'll have a look into that for you over the next couple of days and get back to you. 
In the meantime, I'm glad you like the other updates - the gallery ordering in particular is a big improvement, I think!

'Products' testing

Updates


As part of our plan to offer small local and family history societies a 'place to be' online, we are currently developing a 'Products' feature that will allow them to be able to sell their publications (and any other material, for that matter) through Our Town Story. 
The aim is that we can deal with the hassle of sorting out the secure online payments system, whilst they get to expose their publications to an audience that might otherwise only get to see them at local events or history fairs. 
Whilst we carry out this testing, you will see a 'Your Purchases' menu option has appeared in your profile menu. Please just ignore this for now. As you can imagine, this service will take time to fully come to fruition, but we will let you know when the feature is available for use. 
As ever, if you have any ideas or features that you would like to see on OTS, just pop a post in the 'Feature Request' forum...

Image Watermarking

Updates

Watermark news....in response to comments at a recent meeting, we have made the watermark slightly more intrusive!
updated by @admin: 28 Oct 2017 21:45:51

Index Problem

Bug Reports

This should now be mostly sorted!

Grief updating image information for galleries

Bug Reports

Hi, there! 
Right - I've had a major play about with the galleries layout. If you visit a gallery you have uploaded, you will now see all the images in that gallery laid out in a grid: 

You can use the number buttons to change how the photos re laid out on the page. If you are using a PC/laptop, you can drag the images with the mouse around into the order you want them in. 
Clicking the pen icon in the top right will take you to the gallery edit page, where you can add/delete photos from the gallery, or edit the details of the picture, cinluding all the descriptions, tags and map locations:

I hope this starts to make things a bit easier!

Grief updating image information for galleries

Bug Reports

Hi, @noswar, I'll have a look at what occurs when images are uploaded that might make them duplicate - I've not experienced that in over 400 uploads. You're right, though - it could be easier to update the 'whole gallery' description. I'll get that sorted out. 
As regards the ordering, I will investigate that, too. They should order by the original filename - e.g. Img001.jpg, img002.jpg etc. etc. I'll get back to you....

Marking images as having reproductions available

Updates

We would like to be able to offer Groups and Societies the ability to allow Our Town Story members to purchase reproductions of the images that have been posted. This could create an income stream for the Group or Society that might otherwise be inaccessible or hard to manage by themselves.
We would likely be talking small sums of money (£1.50 - £5, in three tiers, depending on printed size) for example, and in the short term, purchases would be made direct from the Group or Society, with a contact link for the purchase displayed on the photo detail page.
The Society would always have the opportunity to decide whether or not to offer an image for reproduction, and be able to add/withdraw this facility at any time.
In order to reduce the admin burden (i.e. having to go back over hundreds of added images, we are adding a couple of new fields, that are only visible to members with a 'Society' status.
Firstly, in the group's main profile, the following fields will appear: offer selected images for sale - yes/no, 6" x 4" price, 7" x 5" price, 8" x 10" price and contact email address. This will allow the Society to enable/disable the feature, and to set the prices accordingly.
Secondly, when editing a photo's detail page, an option will appear along the lines of 'offer reproduction of this image for sale?'. If this box is checked, then pricing and contact details will be displayed along with the image.
In the medium term, we hope to be able to automate this process somewhat, with Our Town Story able to take payments online (including a commission), and then send 'orders' directly to the Society. Payments would then be passed on to the Society.
What this does mean (but this is pertinent generally) is that societies will need to have some structure to their Our Town Story membership. We would suggest generally the Society has a main account from which all images are posted - other members can then join individually as they may well wish to use the site as individuals anyway, and might move away from the Society but wish to continue their OTS membership. Society usernames can be anything, e.g. @tcfhs, and the profile name should be the full name, e.g. Trumpton & Chigley Family History Society.
We would welcome your thoughts on these proposals - we will add the new fields imminently for 'Phase 1', and will let you know when they are available.

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Feedback

Hi there - we've made the text slightly larger, and given the links a button-style appearance...how does that look?

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No problem - leave it with me....