Monday, November 3, 2008

Living Pixels is Live!

Allan Melsen has built a new web site dedicated to macro and closeup photography called Living Pixels and it's my pleasure to announce that it is live! Allan was kind enough to ask me to join the staff and I'll be available to answer questions that you might have as well as share photos with you -and I hope you register and share your work with me! To my knowledge this is the first site dedicated to macro and closeup photography, and due to the level of interest in the discipline it couldn't come at a better time! Macro and closeup shooters deserve a site dedicated to their craft!

Living Pixels is going to be my new home on the web with exclusive material published on the site before I publish it anywhere else -so register and join Allan and I in making macro and closeup photography better!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi everyone.

Let me join John here, in welcoming and encouraging you all to visit the website.

Our hope is nothing short of making this website the primary source and community for all macro and close-up photographers on the internet.

My idea for creating this website originally came with the annoyance of having to surf numerous websites when I had to find information about macro photography as well as share my own as well as see other photographers pictures. Not only did I have to visit several other websites, but then they also had a much wider scope, covering all photography styles more or less.

After talking to John, we shared ideas and back and forth, and with John offering to be the co-administrator, I decided to give it a go, and what you see there, is basically the result of a good amount of weeks work - and we hope you all like it.

With Living Pixels, we hope - in time, and hopefully with your help - to be able to have a corner on the internet where we actually don't NEED to go anywhere else for macro photography... That we might chose to is a whole other subject, but ideally - this could hopefully be your home away from home.

... again.. welcome to you all.


Best regards,
Allan Melsen

WelshWench said...

Congrats on the site, it looks great!

As a new, so-far-incompetent but enthusiastic and determined, macro junkie I'd love to join and learn but ... it looks like surnames and emails will be visible by default on people's profiles, and that puts me off, I'm afraid.

Unknown said...

Hi welshwench...

Thank you for the compliments regarding the site.. that is highly appreciated.

I just wanted to quickly address your question about e-mail visibility. E-Mail's are _NOT_ visible on the site. Sure, a registered user are able to send an email to another registered user, but this feature does not reveal your email as it is the website itself that actually sends the email.

Furthermore, I have implemented a security feature to make sure it isn't abused. To send an email to another user, it will automatically enclose your own email address as a sender (if you want to send an email to another, it is only fair that the receiver knows who sent it) - but in addition to that, there is a CAPTCHA security, where you need to type in an image that holds a series of letters for validation.

Hope that clarifies the functionality... allowing to send emails to user through a website functionality is quite common, and we have at living pixels even made it more secure to avoid unnecessary spam...

/Allan Melsen

WelshWench said...

Thank you for your response, Allan :)

I just looked at the registration page again, and the "This field is visible on your profile" symbol is next to the surname and email address fields. From what you've said above, I take it that means they are visible only to the site's admins (which would make perfect sense) ?

Unknown said...

Hi,

That is correct. Us administrators (which only is me and John) are the only ones who can see your email address - and we even have to access the administration panel for that as well.

Your actual email address will not be visible anywhere on the website itself.

/Allan Melsen

Rob_A said...

I'm having huge problems registering at Living Pixels. It seems that there are technical problems with the forum.

I have tried registering using three different email addresses, Mac and PC, Safari and Firefox, all to no avail.

The site is currently telling me that I am logged in as Soren Slim Nielsen. This person is nothing to do with me.

When trying to register I get messages that cookies are not enabled when they are. When I try to register again I am told that my email address is already in use. When I use the 'forgot login' link the system says that an email is sent but none arrives in my inbox or spam folder (offline and online). Are you sure the email sending script is functioning correctly?

I have tried to contact Allan through the site but I have had no replies and I don't feel I'm being listened to. Although some people have registered successfully I suspect many more would - I can't be the only one experiencing problems given that I have tried many combinations of computers, browsers, email addresses, etc.

I'm really hoping to be able to join the community but I guess this won't be possible until the problems are ironed out.

Rob

Unknown said...

I am terribly sorry for your problems... for some odd reason, I haven't received any messages which is very odd.

Is it possible for you to potentially contact me over MSN or perhaps provide some screenshots or detailed explenations about where precisely these errors occur..

The error about showing you being logged in is a known error that has something to do with the web caching, and something that are being worked on being solved.

During the registration, the website WILL attempt to validate the webserver being referred to.. If possible, feel free to contact me over email or MSN at amelsen@gmail.com, and I'd be more than happy to help troubleshoot the issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience... I am aware that some errors are bound to occur with a newly launched website, and I can assure you I am doing everything I can to solve these issues as quickly as possible.

Best regards,
Allan Melsen

Rob_A said...

Allan, thank you for responding - I did begin to wonder if the messages I had sent through the site had arrived. I have a bit more time tomorrow and will aim to contact you directly via email then.

I agree that new sites can so easily have teething problems, particularly those with forums where there is interaction from so many users with different configurations.

Rob_A said...

Allan has been very helpful and my registration problems have been resolved. Allan has done some tweaking recently and I suspect my initial attempts to register were done before the changes were in place. Anyway, I successfully registered today and am looking forward to using what promises to be a fantastic website for macro photographers.

Well done Allan!