B-A Yana-Yana-Yanas!

Hello,

I have said it in the last 4-10 months the site is due for an upgrade — make that an overhaul. I have planned for September to initiate that task. I am aiming to be done in  October.

With that said, there is caveat:

bread and butter — I have been broke since April. So, the timeline might shift as I get new projects, which means, I'll have to shift focus to complete those projects then come back to completing this task — the wolves at the door are barking.

Now that the disclaimer to miss the October deadline out of the way, here are the things I'll be working on. First list is the backend (development) stuff:

1. The new version is codenamed Bananas which is borrowed from the second version two of 2LMN's web development MVC framework which is also called bananas (hence the title of this post)
2. This new framework has a lot to do with web security and 'networking' — by networking, which is not the right term, I mean the ability to speak to a whole lot of other online services twitter, facebook, youtube, vimeo, soundcloud, bandcamp, flickr, dropbox (hint-hint), etc.
3. Support for OAuth (incl. 2) which will be used for new registrations — I am yet to figure out how to manage the possibility of multiple profiles for accounts that are already in the system. It will also be used for sharing with other platforms and systems
4. Transactions, quite honestly, I am not sure how this will work, but if we are going to start selling prints via the site, then, I have to find a way to make it happen — at the least I will make it transaction ready.

I will be rewriting the entire code — nothing worse than seeing code from 2 years ago — the times (and how my mind works) are changing.

Then the biggest challenge will be the redesign of the site, User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX), more focus on the latter.  The following are the key things I will be changing:

1. Firstly the colour scheme will change — don't worry I am very, very, pedantic about brand currency — the emphasis of the redesign will always as it has in the past, will be photography: above all else this is photography, everything else is second to that. I want to tone down the noise of other visual elements and bring the photography more forward and prominent.
2. Photo Narratives — in the past we had a thing called books, it failed, terribly, I blame the bad UI+UX I designed earlier.  How this will work is the same as invitations: 3 narratives per multiple of 75 'graphs. It will allow a 'grapher to post a sequence of 'graphs on one specific day that have a single narrative.
3. Licensing, I do think we need more, as @paulscott56 suggested, creative commons options — I am hoping to get more ideas of which specific ones would work, if that fails, I'll make the system more adaptive to adjust easily, as time moves.
4. Collections — I think æ suggested this a few years back, Diaan also spoke of it.  Two versions ago it was part of the plan but I think I forgot about it.  In essence it allows you (I am thinking of opening this up to all) curate a collection of photographs into a catagory of your own chosing.  I am aslo thinking of expanding it, into external entities, not sure how that will work but we will see.
5. Activity/Notification: this is a set of things I'll be adding, in short: a quick (or quicker) way to monitor your activity on 75: comments, replies, love, messages, contacts and everything else that you are part of — these will be site wide, and mostly driven via Ajax
6. Tags: Sadly, these are not used as much as I would like — they are key, sometimes, if getting us to understand the context of the graph, and they are also more important for the collective narrative of 75. So, I am planning to use more visual coercion and also allow others to tag 'graphs — with limitations of course; I am not sure 'bout Geo-location, yet. Support for other characters like é, ö, and Asian uhmm what do you call it?
7. Themes and Exhibition spaces: firstly, I hate, hate, hate, hate the 'themes' page it looks like shit — so that will have to be changed.  With it, I'll be adding an exhibition space, for our own exhibitions, facebook events is great but we don't all live in gated communities.
8. 'Grapher's biography, being that links to the other spaces a 'grapher has is now a common meme, I intent to pull updates from your site (including rss-feed of your blog, tumblr, flickr, twitter, etc.) onto the grapher's page — a test-case was done on my photo-journal, it will give you a gist of what I am talking about.

Umm, I feel like I am forgetting something, oh, yes, I need your thoughts on something I want to add:

Editorials.  I am not sure what I mean by this, but more of a 'engagment with a photographer (or a photographers work) — in or outside of 75.  Imagine if we had a chance to have a 'photographic' conversation with Sam Nzima? type thing?

If you think I have missed something please do share — I am an agile-programmer so adapting to new requirements is easy like Sunday morning picnics.

Your thoughts?