Letter from the Editor
Edward Mendes
Great changes for year two.
With the May/June issue now in our rearview mirror, Whitespider.org has officially started its second year. You may have noticed a few changes to the site, and if you haven’t let me tell you a little bit about them. First, we’ve changed the look and feel of the site a bit, particularly on the homepage. Gone is the slideshow of user images, we felt the slideshow was a bit dated and it’s difficulty in updating with new images on a regular basis didn’t help it’s fate any. In its place we’ve added some nice, stylish and functional button to some of our most popular content (The Whitespider Podcast and our new “WIN THIS!” contest). In addition we’ve added something new, Video. We have many plans for Whitespider videos, including being able to actually show you our Master Series interviews when we have the opportunity to conduct them in person, tours of Master member’s darkrooms, behind the scenes footage and more. Some of the “more” is already up, the Whitespider Tutorial Series. The Whitespider Tutorial series brings the classroom right to you. We’ll feature tutorials on all things photography, both behind the camera and behind the keyboard. Best of all, if you have your own photography related tutorial or video in general you can upload them for everyone to learn from.
I’m also really excited to announce that the Whitespider gallery is again back online and better than ever. After months of trouble shooting and attempting to save all the pictures from the old gallery we discovered that it just wouldn’t be possible. So, we went back to the drawing board and started from the ground up. The new gallery has all the functionality as before, offering members their own album and as many sub-albums as you’d like. You can keyword your images and albums for easy searching, watermark your images, add titles, technical information, rate and comment on other member’s images and show you own off to the world. We’ve also added a couple of new features. First, your images and albums from the Whitespider Gallery are now linked to a Gallery tab on your user profile. This is an awesome feature that we’ve been working on for a long time but have finally got working.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, we are now introducing the Whitespider Professional Printing Service. This gives you the opportunity to now have your own professional lab without the hassle of setting up accounts, getting re-seller permits, business licenses etc. We’ve partnered with Digibug, the Professional Photography Lab, to bring you and your clients’ high-quality, professional prints at great prices. Just add the images you’d like to order into your cart from your gallery album. When you’re finished go to your cart and select “Print with Digibug”, you can then select sizes, finishes, quality etc. The prints will be shipped directly to your door.
For some time we’ve wanted to make your Whitespider profile page your central hub for all the community activity that Whitespider has to offer. Finally, as Whitespider enters its second year, I think we’ve finally made some huge leaps in that direction. As I mentioned earlier, your gallery album(s) and images are now showing up in your Whitespider profile, but that’s not the only new feature your profile now has. You can also check your recent forum posts and all the forum activity right from your profile, ad to the Whitespider community blog, write your Whitespider friends a message or make new friends. Heck, you can even invite a friend (or 100) to join Whitespider.
Finally, I’ve like to formally welcome our newest columnist David Schroeder to our Whitespider family. David is a very talented photographer who has been traveling with his camera for over 30 years. During that time he has collected not only an impressive portfolio of images but also a tremendous amount of knowledge regarding every aspect of travel photography. So be sure to give his column a read on a regular basis, I know you’ll love him.
See you in September,
Edward Mendes
July 2008
