New B&W Magazine

[vickersdc]

As reported on Thursday, the old site has been taken down to make way for the new site. We had to take the old site down first as the service provider could not run two separate hosting services at the same time - as we cannot point the creativeimagemaker.co.uk domain name at two places at once.

As I'm sure you are aware, I've been very unhappy with this hosting provider and when they finally took down the site (four days late), I purchased a hosting plan with their sister company. With the monies out of the account, I got a response from the site that I would be sent information allowing me to start the process of uploading the new site.

By the end of Friday I still had nothing. I sent in a support call and I'm still waiting for a response.

So, as I write this, we have no site up and running, I can't upload the new site as I don't have the server information I need and I'm guessing that I won't get a response until Monday.

I've also asked for a refund as their customer support service is just appalling. I'll try and find a company that actually responds to their customers!

I'm hugely frustrated and disappointed by this setback - but rest assured that the project is still alive and well, and I'll get the magazine back online as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience,
David Vickers.

[Witold Grabiec]

Dave,
I don't know what hosting package you're after, but there is a webhostingtalk.com forum that is arguably the best source of information on what, who and how in hosting, worldwide. I used that before I switch to HostGator and could not be happier. In case you're still running into issues, that host is worth checking, and their Fantastico will allow you to easily choose one of the CMS platforms, which I'm assuming is the direction you've decided on (Moodle?).

[vickersdc]

Hi Witold,

The new site is up - well, it's getting there!

Because of the nature of the site, I took the decision to go for a proper content management system - in the long run I think it will be better from a management point of view.

So, I went with a company called www.eukhost.com, Linux hosting with so many software options it took me about 2 days to decide what to select! Anyway, I do have some experience of Moodle so I've gone with that - but there's rather a lot of tweaking to do to get it looking nice!

I've uploaded some of the articles already and if you visit the site (at the moment) you'll have to login (top right of the screen) and then you'll get access to what's there (and you can keep track of the building up process).

There we go - I'm VERY happy with the new providers, their tech support are fabulous, the software works and now it's down to me to getting looking right before it's unleashed to the world for real.

Then we can build it up to be the best magazine for the traditional photographic community!

[vickersdc]

Just a quick reminder that the 'Image Within An Image" competition closes on Monday night (31st March)! Submit your entries this weekend to have a chance at winning the prize kindly donated by Fotohuis RoVo.

For more information, look at the Creative Image Maker website: http://creativeimagemaker.co.uk/mod/...view.php?id=25.

Thanks, and good luck!
David Vickers.

[vickersdc]

Hi All,

Just to let you know that I've improved the navigation on the Creative Image Maker website - you can now access the current weeks articles directly from the front page instead of having to go to the overall weekly view.

I hope it makes using the site even easier, as there have been a couple of comments in the past about finding your way around the site. As is the case with these things, it was an obvious solution that struck me like a bolt of lightning! I've also made it slightly more 'graphic', rather than just the plain ol' text that used to be there.

So, if you haven't been to the site for a while / at all - check it out.

Thanks,
David.

[vickersdc]

Creative Image Maker

Well, Creative Image Maker is one year old on the 13th January and we're still going, although even I have to admit that it's been a close run thing at times!

As it happens, we're not just still here, but we're now new and improved! Following several weeks of technical issues surrounding domain name servers and registration problems, the Creative Image Maker website is back on air and has been tweaked to hopefully provide a nicer experience.

But, that's not all - Christopher Walrath has been working extremely hard on the production of a magazine in PDF format for you to download. The first magazine became available in December, and January's issue is also available for free download from the Creative Image Maker storefront.

There's also a new photography challenge that we'd invite you to submit your images to; entitled 'Rebirth', you can find out more here.

There's a proper gallery function added on to the site, and we'll be using this to display some of the best images that are sent to us - want to see your work highlighted in the magazine? Send it in! There are also several future exciting articles in the pipeline, and as usual, we'd ask you to submit your ideas / articles as well.

So, despite the somewhat turbulent year, the magazine is here and still growing - and with your help and support it will continue to do so. You can contact me at d.vickers@creativeimagemaker.co.uk or email Chris for items to be included in the PDF magazine at c.walrath@creativeimagemaker.co.uk. Of course, you can still submit images, comments and articles to the original info@creativeimagemaker.co.uk email address.

Thank you for your support, we look forward to hearing from you! All the best for 2009.

David Vickers.

[Jim Michael]

I thought Pavel made some good points and was not being disrespectful. Several have commented on lack of a domain and domain-based email address. A key to good business is preservation of capital. Don't spend money where you don't have to when you are starting out. Keep that money available for the things you need. If that means using free Internet resources such as blogspot and Yahoo, fine. Upline I think I saw a reference to Lulu. It's a POD publisher. David might be on to a way to publish a magazine without incurring large startup costs by sending a PDF to Lulu (or other POD publisher) and allowing folks to order hard copies that Lulu prints on demand. Pretty cool stuff. Lastly Pavel comments on the blog format. Actually, David might be onto something here as well, with a magazine in a different format - it doesn't have to be in the same blog format, but it can be different from other magazine formats - perhaps it's the best of the blog content plus some stuff not available on the blog. That helps ensure two advertising revenue streams plus a bit from Lulu sales, so it doesn't have to be a Web vs. print media type of thing.

So, I'd cut David a little slack on the email/domain thing and help him with content, e.g. what's more important to you - articles (art vs. technique?), images, etc.

[vickersdc]

Well the title says it all really! It's great to get back in to the magazine again and after having to leave it to it's own devices around Sept '08, I started thinking about it again at the start of Dec '08.

Then Chris emailed me with the questions & answers and that just served to crystallise my thoughts further...

And so it was that I looked at building up a forum-style magazine - even went to the trouble of building it, got Chris involved and between we started to put articles in there and generally started to get the place tidy.

Then a few people were asked to comment on it - and the feedback was... "It's just another forum and we don't want that". The idea was to have articles put on that you could then comment on and pass information on to each other.

Chris & I decided to ditch the forum and I started to dust off the cobwebs from the http://creativeimagemaker.co.uk website. The Lulu storefront went up next and that gave us a great platform to distribute the PDF magazines that Chris is putting together (and they're really neat!). In fact, Chris has got some great things coming up in the magazine, so do keep an eye out for that.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to put together a 'special' - more details later, we're thinking about future competitions and I think that we might just have another member of the team to help out too.

I wish I'd done this last year (got a team together; although to be fair I did ask for help, but I guess the magazine just wasn't mature enough, or people were too tied up with other business) - anyway, a HUGE "THANK YOU" to Chris Walrath who stepped in last year and produced the first PDF magazine. Going forward, Chris and I are dedicated to keeping this all going and whilst I'm sure it's not going to be all plain sailing, we're looking forward to the challenge.

As for the other member of the team? Well, I've asked Rob Valine to produce a series of monthly articles for the mag.

All in all, I'm excited about the future of Creative Image Maker, and I hope you are too.

David.

[christopher walrath]

Yeah, we've done a lot hoping to garner a little more notice out there. After all we are bringing a film photography resource to the table. To date there has been little on the large format spectrum of things in the magazine, even though I had purchased a 4x5 last year and David has one of his own on the way Mine is finally tripod worthy so I hope to contribute more here as well.

So that being said, and not to take away from View Camera, et al., I would very much like to have a large format issue in the near future so if any of you would like to contribute technical articles (really needed and desired) and/or miniature portfolios of your work then David and I would gladly accept them.

Thank you for putting up with the announcements and everything and here's to LFForum.

[ric_kb]

glad you are staying in... came across this thread just today and found it worth reading because of the many "nay" sayers from a year ago. wish I needed a case example, this makes a good one. anyhow, best continuing success. solve the problems you see, not the ones your competitors provide. listen to the little voice of your customer.