Do we have enough bandwidth to start a photo gallery of phones by make, model, or whatever.
No comments just captions. For reference.
D/P
Dan, I don't know how much bandwidth we have. I guess we can start one and add to it until we run out, if we run out and deal with it then. Using the Forum software I guess we could just make a "Board" titled Photo Gallery but then things would not be in any particular order. I don't think the software provides for sub-directories of the main Board, Photo Gallery.
What I can do is put a Board on there called Photo Gallery.
Then let's say you start it off with Western Electric Whatever...and post some photos. Then the next person to post a phone of a different kind would start a new "topic" for the next phone. Subsequent postings could then be made to the topic with members posting their photos of similar phones. But I can't make it read only, obviously. So it would be best to restrict comments.
Again, it would make a huge help if people would resize their photos before posting. Those off-site links are even better where Photobuck or similar is used. Then the photos are stored somewhere else.
I'm open to suggestions.
~Dennis
What a wonderful idea! I think that will really be a great gallery!
I have always thought that a virtual telephone museum of collectors telephones would be neat thing. A "threaded" photo gallery board would be a nice start.
Regarding a Virtual Telephone Museum site:
It would be nice if was sortable by brand, color, model etc. A site like this could also have many links for collectors websites, technical info, This would also be a good place to store databases of set info etc.
It could also have sponsored sites for re builders and parts suppliers etc.
Basically a catchall telephone site of photo's, info links, and resources for the telephone collecting hobby.(a telephone collectors directory of info and services.)
Pertinent threads and articles could be published or linked thru the site.
A site like this would probably need to be it's own web site, and would need a volunteer webmaster. It would probably be good to have some volunteer moderators as well to help keep info on topic and tagged correctly. It would also need member donations to fund the site.
I don't have the time or knowledge to create a site like this, however, I would be willing to donate $20-30 a year to help fund it. I suspect a few other collectors would also kick in a few $ to create a site like this.
Collectors could also run ebay auctions with the proceeds going to the site maintenance.
JMO
Jim S.
Jim, your idea is a good one. I am not a web master and can just dabble in source coding. Maintaining the Forum is relatively simple----even I have been able to keep up with it. The originator of this site, (Classic Rotary Phones) Mark Stevens is a web guy. He has created several web sites on various subjects. This Forum software by Simple Machines is limiting. Is may be impossible to do what you envision on this end of the web site. The "other side" where the bog rests and has been dormant for about a year now may be a good spot to place such a site. Mark was busy with the site and posted pretty much daily. He scanned a lot of ephemera and posted the scans to fill up a blog posting. There wasn't a lot of substance regarding telephone collecting, repair, refurbishing, per se. But his work was and is interesting and attracted some attention. Then he had the idea for the Forum which as you may know he started maybe a year ago this past fall. It has been all I can do to keep up with the Forum and my other blog too. So there are a lot of good ideas out there. I guess it's a matter of being able to find the right person to help create such a site.
It's something I'll think about and discuss with my friend that is a web designer.
I know a guy that can design a web site but he is a busy man and generally gets paid a good amount for his work. It is something to consider. Perhaps even Mark Stevens would come out of retirement and do some work on the site, or even another domain name could be used.
The web hosting fees for this site is not prohibitive but there is some annual expense. I know that if we start uploading hundreds of photos we will eventually max out on the bandwidth and the price of poker will go up to continue the service. But what that limit is, or how long it will take to reach that is unknown to me.
~Dennis
An easy way out for hosting photos is to create a photobucket account and give access to the forum members. Photobucket is pretty stable, too. I've had an account for around six years with no problems. It's free, you can upload thousands of photos, and they wouldn't take up any space at all on the forum.
Thought I'd post a link to a forum which operates very similarly to this one which has a photo gallery as an example.
http://www.stationwagonforums.com
Bingster, I like that idea. Flickr or Google Picasa are both great places to upload photos. Of course there are limitations there too with regard to the amount of photos that can be uploaded before a fee is charged for additional storage space. But I think those fees are relatively low.
That sort of fee is easy to get around. Since accounts are free, if one fills up, getting extra space is as easy as opening a second account. I'm not sure what limits Flickr and Picasa put on uploads. I know Photobucket advertises their free account as capable of holding 5000 photos and "hours" of video. They also give handy forum links for inserting the photos in forums.
I can look into the possibility to make a photo site for members of this forum on my web space. That way it will be free of charge and I can give a general user name and password or give everyone an individual user name and password.
I would like some help with determining the various categories etc.
The section may get rather large rather quickly, if we exceed your allotment, will they charge you a fee ?
D/P
Hello All,
I've created a photo gallery at http://cti.infc.info/ and named it The Classic Telephone Identifier. It also has a search option which I think is usefull.
At this moment it only contains 9 photos and 8 categories. Let me know if this is what we want.
If anyone wants to give me a hand to help fill it with categories and pictures just send me an email via the email form on the site (http://cti.infc.info/).
Please let me know the username and an initial password you would like to use and your email address. You may change your password after you log in.
Remco,
This is a very cool contribution.
When it exceeds bandwidth. We can have an on-line fundraiser. A forum style open bid telephone auction of donated telephone stuff, Bid early and often. Just a thought.
Jim
Dennis;
Can you set it up so we have a link to the gallery from our forum here. Just an icon at the top that says Photo gallery.
D/P
Under each picture at http://cti.infc.info there is an option to copy a link or embed an image into e.g. this forum:
(http://cti.infc.info/images/photo_gallery1.jpg)
Dan,
I can create another Board and title it Photo Gallery. I cannot create another tab at the top, like where the calendar tab is located.
I have not been working on the Photo Gallery. I noticed that Nto wrote about when it was "up and running". I think the Photobucket concept is a good idea or any off-site storage area.
By creating a new Board individuals can then create new Topics for individual type phones and then links can be posted. Is that what you had in mind?
~Dennis
photobucket.com has a group album feature which allows multiple users to add their own albums and photos to a group album. Anyone who wants to add their photos can easily set up a free photobucket account. We could define an album structure so that members would know where to put and look for pictures, and we could also define a set of standard tags (eg. "AE", "WE", "candlestick", "desk", "wall", etc.) which we would all use when adding pictures to make it easy for everyone to find the pictures that they want to see. This scheme wouldn't require much maintenance, there would be no real bandwidth issues, and it wouldn't cost anything. Just my 2 cents.
Larry
Dennis;
Pretty much that is what i envisioned. Just a central location so we can look for examples without having to go to several websites.
D/P
Oh, man, I didn't think it would be soon up and running! I know there are many issues to work out--I just am thinking in the future, if we get a photo gallery up and running! I'm not meaning to pressure or anything......Sorry
I've added several categories to the Classic Telephone Identifier at http://cti.infc.info/
I still need a Leich and a North logo, maybe someone can help me with that?
Also I've added a few "new" pictures of telephones.
Oops... I just realized there are a few push button telephones in the photo gallery.
I hope you don't mind, they are NOT touch tone, they were used for DC signaling, one is even a bakelite phone:
(http://cti.infc.info/components/com_joomgallery/img_pictures//philips_netherlands_pti_8/keyset_telephone_20100111_2062048569.jpg)
BTW the above picture is inserted by using the "Share this image in Forums" code found under the picture in the photo gallery.
I hope you will forgive me ;)
I've added a link to this forum to the photo gallery at http://cti.infc.info/ complete with a nice icon.
This is also a nice gallery:
http://www.telephonearchive.com/phones/
I was just wondering what happened to the idea of having a place to post pictures of our collections? I noticed the link referred to above isn't working. I thought I saw some discussions about this idea not too long ago.
We have a place to post pictures of "Our Collections", it is:
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?board=68.0
I think the idea in this topic was a refernce page where a good picture or two of each model of phones from all of the manufacturers could be posted...wasn't it? I don't know what happened to the link to Remco's site. A reorganization on his part I guess.
Most likely it isn't worth us trying to build our own as by now there are many good sites out there to help identify phone makes and models.
Terry