www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Alex....... I'll say it directly.

The people who pay for this site want you to bring back the "New VIP Gallery" and its search function.

Find a way to do it. That can't be an overwhelming request for a tech-savy geek.

Silicon valley engineer chiming in here...actually database guru. I leave the heavy lifting to the real techies .

It sounds like the CRT site just became PCI compliant. A task that has taken about 20 days on another project I worked on for several hundred thousand users requiring several new servers. All to secure user data and CC information. A feature most people expect but is often overlooked on smaller sites due to the lack of resources. Both man power and finances. Unfortunately this doesn't affect the heuristic features by the users so backend work often goes unnoticed and unappreciated as the main focus is and should be user functionality.

If all the previous images are hosted on another server, migrating and integrating them to the new site would actually require a lot more resources than what I've seen used here. Without knowing anything about the legacy system and the current database I would conservatively estimate a project like this could take about 3 weeks. Probably a lot less. The expense for a programmer though would probably exceed the annual revenue generated from a site like this. That being said, if the old site was still around one could probably scrape the data (images) and build a new database from scratch.

That would be great if this could be done.

I am not "tech savvy". But the one thing I do know - is that the old photo gallery was one of the most important features of this site. It had the entire "photographic history" of CRT, along with all of the comments that accompanied the photos. And it was a major factor for attracting new members

It is unfortunate that the VIP membership didn't get a chance to voice their concerns "BEFORE" the new changes were made. Personally, I don't have to worry about renewing my membership, as I'm a lifetime member. But I predict that we will eventually look back at the implementation of this "New & Improved Photo Gallery" and realize that it was a pivotal factor in the decline of CRT.

R.I.P. old faithful gallery....

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You ALWAYS have an option ....... "NEXT" !!!

A database is a database is a database. The old photos and comments are still there in the old database unless Alex decided to delete them. It would not be a big deal at all to provide a link to the old VIP photo database if Alex is just willing to do it. Nothing on the new website would be jeapordized by providing such a link and the CRT masses would become happy once again. Alex, these are your customers telling you what they want.

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Slut Puppy in Training

Is low self esteem a prerequisite for being a good Ho or is it a result? ;-)

I am an old engineer, and I have good reason to believe that the old "New VIP Gallery" is still available on the old server.

What we need to do is sufficiently motivate Alex to do the right thing for us by restoring the old gallery and the search function. What we want CAN be done, and it is not that difficult to do.

Maybe Alex would like to tell us in more detail why he does not want to do what we want him to do.

If we knew more about Alex's reasons, maybe we could eliminate them and get what we want.

Do we really need a link to look at 5 year old photos of mud ducks?

I'd like to see the photo history preserved, but I'm more concerned about the utility of the photo feature going forward. It's not just about the old photos, it's about ease of searching and ease of access that doesn't stop with just the old photos. The searchability and the cateloguing of photos is what made the gallery so powerful. I'd hate to lose the old photos, but I could live with that if we could preserve the features going forward. eevery single one of us that's been on this site for more than a minute has benefitted from these features, and we all seem to be clear that we want to retain them

IMHO, we need both the old pictures AND the new pictures to be available and able to be searched.

Many of the best providers in the old "New VIP Gallery" are still in the game.

We need to be able to refer to their pictures as well as to be able to refer to the new pictures that are posted going forward.

San Te,

Maybe some of us LIKE looking at 5 year old pics of mud ducks!!!
But I think you're missing the point here.

Maybe some of us LIKE looking back at photos of the phenomenal CRT Anniversary Parties of the past at the Sportsmens Lodge, or the Hotel M, or the Pirates Club, or Zona Blue, etc.!

And maybe some of us like looking at pics of the awesome CRT Superbowl Parties.

And maybe some us like looking at pics of the incredible CRT Halloween Parties.

And maybe some of us like looking at pics from CRT member's Birthday Parties.

And maybe some of like looking at pics from numerous CRT Dinner outings, such as the infamous Don Gordo annual b'day dinner at Costa del Sol, or group trips to Pork Chop Hill!

And maybe some of us like looking at pics from some of the more "private" parties over the past 10 years.

And maybe some of us like looking at pics from some of the memorable CRT MP Tours.

And maybe some of us like looking at pics from various mongering destinations from around the globe.

And maybe some of us like looking at pics of other CRT members doing a 3-some or 4-some or 5-some!

And maybe some of us like seeing pics of other CRT members & friends mongering at different locales in different countries.

And maybe... just maybe... some of us really do have fond memories of Costa Rica's superstar chicas, i,e., Pamela, Karen, Stephanie, Paola, Squeaky, Rocio, Jenny, Maria, Christina, Hazel, Sandra, Ruby, Anna, Alexis, Diana, Laura, and so on and so on and so on....

I could go on and on about why many of us liked the old photo gallery, but these are just a few reasons off the top of my head.

And by the way...
Nobody would be forced to click on any link!

But it sure would be nice to know that we had that OPTION available to us!

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You ALWAYS have an option ....... "NEXT" !!!

And maybe some of us would like to refer newbies to all that MG writes about to keep the brotherhood alive.

Now, it's impossible to do that. We need a fix that will enable a search of the history like we had before.

Congratulations on a well written project scope document / project charter / arrangement letter.

FWIW, I have some comments:

1) Given you've made this document public, to manage everyone's expectations you might want to add a "deliverables in-scope / deliverables not in scope" section, where you specify what you plan to deliver and what you won't deliver, at least not during this phase. This may help minimize the possibility of cranky CRTers bitching and moaning about, "But you said the new pic gallery would..." in the future.

2) In the Functionality section you have 2 requirements pertaining to the CRTers who will be the users of the gallery site. Might I suggest adding one more: allow the use of metatags to let CRTers tag photos with search keys. If possible I suggest limiting the possible metatags to a predefined set, with just one free-form tag for "Chica Name". And if the functionality is available, notify the original photo poster via email when there's a new comment about a photo they've uploaded. Hmm that's actually two additional requirements... sorry about the scope creep.

3) I would also add a high-level implementation timeline and (for Alex's eyes only of course) a cost / effort estimate.

4) I assume you're going to go with Gallery 3 to host the new image library, set up predefined albums, etc. Nice!

5) Consider setting up a dedicated thread on the forum describing the project's progress. Make your document URL a sticky post so latecomers can read about what you're building.

mh

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mh