Bangkok Images Grand Site Opening!

First, I'd like to say the new site is not a replacement for this weekly column. The column will continue to receive the articles first and they'll continue to post every Saturday as they've done for nearly two years now. I look at the
site as an enhancement

I've talked about this for a long time now and finally it's happening. Our new website is on-line and operational and registering new users as we speak! The road has been long and an immense amount of time and effort has went into building this
state of the art site, complete with most of the newer high tech features designed to make your experience more enjoyable.

I'd like to give a special thank you to Dave the webguy. During the last few months we've worked together almost every evening and suffered through each others off-moods and other
personality disorders.. 🙂 Yet, he's remained 100% professional and came through in a huge way with this site. He's given me something I could only dream about on my own. Thank youDave!

For those of you who don't want a blow by blow description of the different components of the site and just want to head on over and give it a go, click www.bangkokimages.com and enjoy! For the
rest who would like some very useful tips on how to use the site please stick with me through this special. I'll start at the home page and take you tab by tab through the site.

Home Page

The home page
has several components. A greeting, a moving image which is kind of fun, a list of the most popular (most read) articles on the site, a random article display, and the login screen. Registering and logging is free and allows you
full access to the sites featurs.

To register click on the "register" tag in the upper right corner of the screen in the date/time bar area. Fill out the fields, name, email, user name, password, and then click "register." If your information
is accepted you will be told you registered and a confirmation code will be sent to your email. This shouldn't take more than 1-2 minutes. The first time you login the system will ask you for this code.

What's New?

This page

has an area listing all the recent forum posts and the newest articles. It's also where I'll announce new galleries, new workshops, or anything new added to the site. Check out this page often for new and fun content. Future additions
to this section are in the works.

Workshops

This page
talks about the types of workshops and what we cover in a workshop. We go over the differences between group and individual workshops and talk about techniques and venues. I can't stress enough how much a quality workshop can help you
capture quality images so read through this page to get an idea of what workshops offer.

Articles

This page
is the heart of the site. It's where you can find the last two years worth of articles as well as the newest pieces. We've divided the content into (9) categories to make things easier to find and access. The article landing page
has lists of the most recent articles in every category in addition to a search bar to make finding specific content easier.

Because this site is full of images and content this is the slowest part of the site. We're constantly working on improvements, but this much indexed and searchable content can take as much as 5-9 seconds the first time you load a page.

Each article title is accompanied by the authors name and a brief excerpt highlighting the gist of the article. There is also a counter on each article so you'll know how many times it's been read.

Forum

The forums are set up and ready to use. Everyone can read the forums but only registered users can post replies or start their own topics. I've set up some
main topics to post under, but if you don't see what you're looking for please let me know and we'll get it added.

Please keep in mind that this is a photography site and not a site to discuss politics or the latest Stickman submission. Discussion should center around the educational, travel, and pleasure aspects of photography. There will be no moderators, no work
limiters, and no forum police of any kind. The forums are there for the benefit of all and if anyone abuses them we'll simply make them go away.. 🙂

Also note that after hitting the "submit" button on a post the system takes several seconds to save the post and return you back to the system. We'll try to improve this performance in the near future.

Site Galleries

This is where Bangkok Images main galleries are located. I have over 163,000 images in my current archives, but I have no desire to post them all. The locations
and images represented have been selected to show you what's possible at these locations. As time goes on I'll add some more 'edgy' galleries reflecting my personal taste and likes in photography, but for now there are 43 galleries
of some of the most popular photography locations in Thailand (and Cambodia).

We went through many galleries until we found one that offers the best of everything. As it turns out the galleries are flash galleries so you'll need to make sure your browser has the latest flash plug-in installed to properly view them.

The landing page will feature different small low-res slide shows and is currently featuring Angkor Vat. To the right you'll see a gallery index.

Choose an index such as "Tak" and you'll get a page showing all the galleries from Tak. Select one of these galleries to view.

Along the bottom of the gallery are thumbnails. Hover over them for enlarged views. Click on the thumbnails to view the full image. By default the exfil data is turned on so you can see the camera, lens and settings used to make the capture. This information
can be very educational. The bottom right icon (circles in blue) is the 'full screen' icon. Selecting this puts you into a full screen mode displaying 1600×1200 images which is plenty big enough to give you a real feel for what we were
trying to do with the image.

While in the full screen mode you can continue to move through the gallery images one by one observing the exfil data.

User Galleries

I've very excitedabout this area. I love looking at the work of others and I bet you do too! So we provided the capability for you to share small
galleries of Thailand and other SEA destinations. These images can be linked in the forums for critique or discussion.

While user galleries are there for you to share, they're not meant to take the place of image hosting sites for large scale hosting of images. Perhaps it's something we'll consider for the future (along with private galleries) but for now
the User Galleries are there to share up to 10 galleries for each user.

Please read this forum sticky post
about using the Parent/Child gallery relationship. Understanding how the parent/child relationship works will help keep the main User Gallery display page nice and tidy and will help you organize your work.

Please provide feedback in the forums and during site revisions we'll do our best to implement what we can.

About Page

This is a simple pageabout myself. In the future we'll also add site statistics and other fun information.

Contact Us

This page provides contact information where you can submit a question, ask about workshops, or provide any private feedback you desire.

FEEDBACK IN GENERAL

This is a brand new site and I'm sure like any other there will be some teething pains. We want your feedback, but please submit it in the forum where both me and the webguy can see it.

We hope you'll enjoy the site. We're looking forward to your participation and with your help and support the site will grow and become better and better over time.

Thanks for checking it out! www.BangkokImages.com