Topic to discuss how/if more photos can be integrated into this website. Follow up from some discussions we have had in the whatsapp group.

Current state is:
* One photo per site.
* Unlimited photos for Els.
* One photo per review.

Old photos are really tiny due to conversion.

Please feel free to weigh in.

As I told on WhatsApp group, this site could be more visual with more photos of visited WHS.

Els told that this hasn't been done because of storage costs involved. For that reason there should be strict limits both for file size and number of photos per review/site.

She also told that it might be awkward to review all the uploaded photos. For that reason it could require let's say 5 published reviews before being allowed to upload multiple images. And for those who are allowed, max 5 images per review/site.

One question is, should the images be linked to a review or a site? For example, I might not have nothing new to tell as a review, but I could have some nice or informative photos to share.

The solution doesn't have to be heavy in terms of user interface. For example it can be photo carousel, where you see only a "cover image" on a review and you can swipe through all the other images. And a full screen mode for browsing photos would be great.

OK, you can search images on Google but I think WHS enthusiasts could point on their photos some specific things from a site.

Functionally, I'd be in favour of a photo carrousel to replace the main photo at each WHS site page (so in addition to the reviews).

But there are a number of issues with this - storage is one of them, but also copyright, liability, privacy etc. What if someone uploads a photo of his naked girlfriend or the ISIS flag? I don't want to be responsible.

If we find a technical solution, we could do a small Proof-of-Concept first.

I defer to Els on the issue of storage space.

I like the format right now where some reviewers have placed links to their own albums on Flikr or Instagram as an option to showcase extra pictures, which alleviates the space issue on this website. That said, I can see where more than one photo could be helpful for some reviews. The idea that Sjobe put forward about allowing reviewers who have submitted a certain number of reviews the ability to submit multiple photos as part of their review seems fair to me, but again, I defer to space issues.

As for the photo carousel idea for the main photo on each WHS page, I'd be intrigued to see how this would work, and would be in favor of the proof-of-concept idea that Els suggested. The following would be my concerns, however:
1) Because of storage issues, only a certain number of images would likely be available to cycle through. This may require some form of selection method to ensure that a variety of photos highlighting the site are chosen (not all from the same submitter, not all showing the same view). What would be a fair number of photos for a carousel, taking storage issues into account?
2) Would Els be responsible for choosing the photos (I'm not sure how this would impact the time she has available for the website), or are there options to have members of the community vote on photos to include in the slideshow, and if so, how would this work?
3) How often could a photo carousel be updated, should new photos of the site become available, either from new members or from existing members who have something new to add from their travels?
4) Would the photo carousel automatically rotate through in slideshow mode, or would it need to be activated? Would any of this affect downloading speed?

I would like to bring a different approach into this. It would be more work but also more benefit. I am sometimes missing pictures of different components. I would like to have these covered. There is not much advantage, if you allow everyone to add more pictures and they are all more or less the same. So my approach would be, that we define for each WHS (I know it is an awful lot of work) from what components or highlights we want a picture and Els, or other reviewers, select a picture for each component. My idea would be something like galeries for each WHS were you can check: "if you have seen this, you have seen the highlights". the amount of pictures would then vary from WHS to WHS. E.g Valango Wharf would only have 1 picture, while Rome would have more.

For possible inappropriate photos, I think there should be control on two levels: 1) Require 10 published reviews to allow multiple photo upload. By then there should be only well known and responsible members on our community. At this moment there are 64 of them. 2) Below each photo carousel should be a link "Report inappropriate content" for community users to flag immediately if a misconduct happens.

About storage concerns, it could be max 3 photos / review and maximum size limited to e.g. 800 x 600 pixels. Then photos are 100–250 kB depending on the content and the level of compression. Someone with better mathematics skills can calculate what the sum would be :)

I would prefer photo carousel on reviews, not on each WHS site page. I think the common use case is that a user want to show on photos something she/he writes on review.

POC approach is reasonable.

This is an interesting approach and worth considering. I like the idea but, as kintante said, it would need some extra effort. As for user interface this approach would be challenging.

My two cents to reduce the extra effort of Els: Add to each photo the option to "mark as inappropriate". With this, the photo will dessepear from the carousel until it is reviewed, and Els will have to check only the marked ones instead of all uploads as it is done now. For sure, those already validated won't have the option to "mark as inappropiate"

I think step 1 would be to figure out the costs in both storage and traffic if we added more photos.

* We have 1100 sites.
* Allowing 10 photos per site
* at 500kb each
= 6 GB storage.

With a carousel traffic would only be generated on request. Can't really estimate how many visits for each site page we have each month. Presumably, only 25% would ask for more photos.

@Els? How are you charged by the hosting company?

PS: Noticed that I misspelled the topic. Sorry. Was in a hurry.

I think this will be harder to implement.

Options I see:
* Carousel per review limited to 5. Should be fairly straightforward.
* Carousel per site managed by Els.

I have 61440 MB available, which is about 60 GB? (lots of sites will never go to 10 by the way)

elsslots
Then it's not a storage, but a traffic issue? Any limits there?

Bandwidth Usage Limit: 300GB

If you can use a 3rd party photo hosting service, you can get almost unlimited storage and bandwidth.

I have over 60,000 images on Smugmug. Almost all of the images on my website are hosted there at a cost of $48/year.

Pictures should rather be around 100kb. 500kb seems excessive.