news

Dear Orthphoto users

At this time with our 12 year anniversary is at hand, This year, I want to take a different approach and not write so much about site statistics and what happened in the past year. In general we are less active than we have been in the past, so our statistics are less impressive. New data is available on the statistics page. In general, the past year we participated in several exhibitions and at the same time we were trying to maintain active website life.

I think most of you feel that we need to make some changes both in design and in the concepts of our site and concentrate more on our community working together to make necessary improvements. I do need your active participation in this process – including putting pressure on me. I feel that some changes are important not only for myself but for the whole Orthphoto community also.

I am like many of you, busy with family life, my employment, and church life and the many projects I am involved in. Like many of you, I do not have time for everything that I want to do. Basically I tend to do things which are more frequently brought to my attention. I want you to feel free to complain and suggest new features and help me in finding solutions.

Besides this complicated introduction there are some positive changes and interesting ideas which I wish to share with you:

1. Orthphoto in Georgian
Today we have started a new language version: Georgian – now we have eleven languages and if we are always willing to increase the number of languages. If any of you want to add another language to our site, please join us and help with translation. The Georgian version became possible thanks to Mari and Lasha – two volunteers who work in our office (from Erasmus project).

2. Valuable voting and comments.
Last year we have promised photo album for users who will try to use all the scales of voting or try to be more active in commenting photos (help with better evaluation).
We have selected Ioann and novinar and they have received the photo albums. From today until Pascha I will look at your activity and again give mini-albums about Polish Orthodoxy for those who are active and constructive in discussions and voting.

3. Instagram
A few months ago we also created an account on Instagram and we all need to be more active there. Please send us email with your approval if you let us use your photos to promote Orthphoto on this venue: write on this address instagram@orthphoto.net. If you have account on Instagram include it in an email so we can tag you properly.

To make a good beginning we also have a small photo competition.If you are interested, upload into Instagram, your photos with hashtag #orthphoto. The photo should be also uploaded on Orthphoto. We wait for them until Pascha. The most interesting photos will be shared on our profile and for the top five members whose photos receive largest number of likes we will send mini-albums with photos about Polish Orthodoxy.

4. Photo of the month
Since April we want to again start selecting the photo of the month. We will also try to go back and select winners for all the previous months. We are also looking for someone who will sponsor for this photo of the month competition; together with the winner we can provide some space explaining what the sponsor is doing so that in helping us the sponsor would be able to promote himself.

5. Facebook
Please join our profile on Facebook; hopefully, in the near future we will be able to start some polls there which will help us to improve how Orthphoto works. Your active participation will help in making better adjustments. You can also share on your profile photos from Orthphoto and in this way bring people to our site.

6. Changes
The last point is about the most important thing. We need to improve design, especially to increase the ability of the Orthphoto site to be more accessible to mobile devices and at the same time think about new features like photo essays, favorite authors, information about exhibitions, thematic competition etc.

If you have creative ideas write about this to us at info@orthphoto.net. We will include them into our plans and ask all members to decide what is most important for them and try to implement it.

Soon we will try to be more concrete about all this issues and I hope on Easter some of the changes will work on site.


Regards


Aleksander Wasyluk