Update on missing images and thumbnails - Success at last!

[admin]

Our regular contributors and no doubt other visitors will have noticed that since around 29th December a large number of images and thumbnail files from the period August 08 to September 09 mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps a hacker, but never-the-less a source of disappointment for those that had bothered to contribute and a souce of embarassment for me.
Fortunately (I guess) I had, earlier in December, copied down most of the original post images with the intent of creating a 3D 'Cooliris' wall of the contributed images through 2008-2009 as a kind of retrospective. While the files contained the date as part of the filename, they were arcanly spread across folders and had both prefixes and timestamp components included.
I simply did not have the time to wade through thousands of images and reconstruct manually.
I am pleased to report that today, I have managed to complete a reconstruction of the folder structure by date and re-import 99.9% of these images and thumbnails.
In terms of what remains missing - not much (hopefully):
Ross and Cher from 28/08/09 titled "Recession...What recession?" is there but missing a thumbnail - a re-upload may fix this guys.
Tim N: In a gallant attempt to lighten what seemed to be big load at the time, removed a few images (the posts remain). Tim, if you are inclined a fresh upload of the images will rectify.
User 'loz' uploaded a very well conceived B&W series called 'Red chair' in July 09. While all images are intact, the thumbnails could not be regenerated. I'll try again tomorrow. That is about it. If you notice anything else missing, please let me know.
Well, finally we seem to back on track - You will also notice a few enhancements to the gallery, courtesy of an upgrade. We now have facebook and twitter links (if you are into that sort of social networking), 250 thumbnails per category preview page and the option to copy images to another category during upload.
My sincere thanks to all of the core members who have stuck by LA during what has been a very sloppy period while I sorted this unfortunate mess out. Onward we go into 2010

[annash]

Thanks Mark 

[bigbob]

Well done and a big thank you from me

[tommykelso]

cheers admin dude 

[Carmyllie]

Thank you for believing in us Mark and our art work. I know how close the forum is to many people's hearts, so on behalf of the unspoken folk and also the ones who do regularly visit, a huge vote of thanks! We believe in what LAF represents and will be here to support you through thick and thin times.

Jenn

[Analog6]

Well done Mark, thanks for sticking with it. I realise you have spent a lot of your precious time on this.  Off to explore the Facebook link, it is another way of getting one's images 'out there'.

[admin]

Thank you for the kind words. It is a relief to have that issue out of the way.
You'll also notice in the gallery, that I have added "previous', 'current' and 'next' thumbnails at the top of any opened image.
This is a new optional feature, useful when viewing a series. If well received, we'll leave it in place, if not, it is easily switched off.
There are now five image thumbnail previews to a row (previously 4) and 250 previews to a page by gallery, (previously 100), which I think makes for easier browsing. I have also upped individual disk space to 100 Mb (up from 50Mb)

When loading any image at the bottom of the page there is now an option to copy an image to another category. I have raised this elsewhere, but this creates the opportunity to indroduce a cross-category "best shots" section (eg My best shots April 2010).
This would again simply be rated to determine a best overal shot for a given month by popular opionion.
The object of course would be to only put forward what you consider to be your best work for consideration, albeit as a month progresses, there may be more than one image that you consider worthy.

[Ross and Cher]

Well done AD and thanks for the effort! Will have a ferret around for Cher's shot and repost in due course!

[Tim N]

Great work ! I will have a look and see about the re-upload of those images.

This is a fantastic little forum and I (and everyone else) really enjoy being a part of it, thanks for all your effort Mark !

[Matt]

Well done Admin dude. Working in IT I know what it is like when something goes wrong....