What happened to the People Pages?
http://www.geocities.com/sdpeoplepages/
The group pictures are gone, and about half the individual pictures are listed as N/A.
GeoCities have been providing their usual level of services and losing the images left, right and centre.
It was some months ago the pictures went blooey. There was a thread at the time, when people were saying, “Oh please don’t re-send your pix to Shayna, she’s too stressed right now.” Supposedly the pix were to be restored in due time whenever Shayna would get a chance. Since they had been lost from her hard drive, and from the Geocities server, the only way to get them back up on the People Pages was for you to re-send.
I waited what seemed like a decent amount of time, then re-sent my pic to Shayna, with a polite message that I understood she was swamped with work, and whenever she could get to it was fine.
Now I see that some of the pix have been restored. Not mine. The restored pix are the cool people, the in-crowd. I’m obviously not a member of this elite inner circle.
[sub]No, I’m not bitter. See, here’s a smiley. :)[/sub]
If anyone has an inside line to Shayna, please give us an update on the SDPP situation, and I will re-send my pic again. Pretty please.
Excuse me, but I don’t know what the flip you’re talking about. I haven’t restored ONE SINGLE SOLITARY PICTURE since Geocities crashed the site I was storing the lost ones on. Not One. If I were GOING to restore ANY of them, don’t you think I’d do my BOYFRIEND’S??? It’s not like I have to wait for him to send me his picture or anything. Sheesh.
There are no “cool” people or “in-crowd” pictures on the People Pages. Period. End of stupidass discussion.
I really appreciate your consideration in avoiding stepping on my penis - Spiny Norman
Jeg elsker dig, Thomas
[sub][sup]Join Team Straight Dope in the fight against cancer![/sup][/sub]
Thus endeth the dream.
Hi, uh, Shayna! [urk]
Well, there go my chances of ever getting my pic back up.
According to this thread from last month, we’re supposed to re-send our pix to techchick68. Is that currently correct?
Ok Jomo (and anyone else reading this), here’s the deal. I’ve talked to my honey and he has agreed to help me kickstart this thing back into production. BUT, this isn’t going to be instantaneous.
Here’s what we’re going to do…
I’m going to look through the old threads that asked about this and find all the kind and thoughtful people who’ve volunteered to help. I’m going to come up with a game plan for exactly HOW each person can help. I’ll coordinate with each person to get this done as timely as possible, but I won’t even be able to start on this until the weekend and Thomas can’t touch it until after next Monday (he’s taking the CCIE that day and all his free time right now is devoted to studying).
I will post a thread in MPSIMS in the next few days to notify you of the status and to try to start coordination efforts.
And if I already have your picture in my inbox, I’ll update yours first, howzat? 
Oh, and don’t thank me, thank Spiny, because he’s the one who came up with the suggestion, the offer to help and encouragement for me to get this done sooner than later. He is wonderful, kind, thoughtful and helpful and I doubt I’d be doing this right now if it weren’t for his support. (Thanks, Honey! <Big Kiss!>)
Stupid smilie. How’d that get there? Feh.
Shayna
I know you don’t really care for it, but I really think our java class that we use on the UnaBoard People Pages does make both archiving and page construction much simpler and less stressful. You’re the boss of the SDMB People pages, of course, but if we can offer any assistance you know Fierra and I will help you out.
Una
Una, I appreciate the offer to help. Very much. However, there is nothing difficult or stressful about the way I have my pages set up with regard to creating new pages and keeping the site maintained.
The problem here is that I have lost HUNDREDS of images and too many hours of work to even calculate. What’s making getting this FIXED so stressful is the fact that I have to
[li]HUNT DOWN the email addresses for each person whose picture is missing (only AFTER checking against my inbox to see what might already be in there).[/li][li]COMPOSE AN EMAIL and send it to every single person.[/li][li]RETRIEVE each and every one of those emails and DOWNLOAD all the images (which are often HUGE and TIME CONSUMING).[/li][li]EDIT EVERY SINGLE PICTURE with cropping, sizing, sharpening, bordering and shadowing.[/li][li]TRY TO ENSURE that the images that are re-sent are re-NAMED exactly as they were the first time so that it won’t require editing the coding on the page since the image name is already on there.[/li][li]UPLOADING each picture back to the website.[/li]
And I’m too tired just typing all this to even go any further in the REPAIR work that needs to be done on the site.
It’s not that big of a deal when handling a handful or so of pictures. THIS task, however, is DAUNTING.
You may like your way better than mine, but I’m really quite happy with how the site looks, feels and operates. What’s going on with it now is a completely different ballgame.
I will, however, enlist your help if either of you are interested in mundane stuff like gathering email addresses or doing image editing.
Thanks again for the offer.
YIKES! I hadn’t realized just how bad it was. My condolences. While I rarely want to see pics of my online friends, I know that a lot of people enjoyed your site. Take comfort in the fact that people DO like it, even if they seem to take you for granted.
Do the cute chicks first, okay?
– Uke, who NEVER takes Shayna for granted
Put up the incriminating photos of Mods and Admins first.
Then the naked people.
Then the cute chicks.
Just a suggestion.
And thanks Spiny Norman and Shayna
Look. It’s apparent from your use of bold and capitals seems you are taking my suggestion the wrong way.
It wasn’t a matter of likes or dislikes, I thought it would make things easier is all. Evidently this is bothering you quite a bit. Forget I mentioned it.
At the risk of making you more angry, I’m going to add some comments.
[QUOTE]
[li]HUNT DOWN the email addresses for each person whose picture is missing (only AFTER checking against my inbox to see what might already be in there).[/li][li]COMPOSE AN EMAIL and send it to every single person.[/li][/QUOTE]
Set up a new mailbox “sdpeoplepages@yahoo.com”. Post a thread in MPSIMS. “Want your picture on the People Pages again? Then mail your pic here. Otherwise, don’t bother me again.” Simple. If this is really all that stressful, I don’t know why you would let people add to your stress. Make them do as much work as possible. You’re not getting paid for this, right? Why do you have to do the hunting down and mailing?
[QUOTE]
[li]RETRIEVE each and every one of those emails and DOWNLOAD all the images (which are often HUGE and TIME CONSUMING).[/li][/QUOTE]
OK, I could help here. I have a really fast DSL connection, and can download these and send them on to Geocities after editing.
[QUOTE]
[li]EDIT EVERY SINGLE PICTURE with cropping, sizing, sharpening, bordering and shadowing.[/li][/QUOTE]
Also in the MPSIMS thread: “BTW - make your images no more than x by y pixels.” If only half of the people who send in a photo can do this, it still reduces that work by half. And I rather think most people here are smart enough to download Irfanview[sup]TM[/sup] and use the simple Image->Resize function, so I doubt that more than 5% of the pictures would need to be resized.
And as for the rest of the actions - batch conversion scripts work wonders. Which ones do you use for shadowing and bordering?
[QUOTE]
[li]TRY TO ENSURE that the images that are re-sent are re-NAMED exactly as they were the first time so that it won’t require editing the coding on the page since the image name is already on there.[/li][/QUOTE]
OK…“View->Source”. Got it. Not that hard.
[QUOTE]
[li]UPLOADING each picture back to the website.[/li][/QUOTE]
Once again…fast DSL connection…uploading not hard…can help out much here.
Well, I did have to screen-clip, color adjust, gamma correct, resize, contrast enhance, sharpen, and convert from bmp to jpg about 1500 or so images for an engineering software manual I wrote over 4 months. So despite what you may think of me, I actually have professional experience at doing this. And although I don’t advertise myself as a “Web Guru”, I know a hell of a lot more about programming and the Web than every single “Web Guru” I’ve ever met.
Let me know if you want me to start receiving and converting photos.
I took your post as an offer to help, with the acknowledgement that you already know my feelings on converting the SD People Pages from my format to yours (since you came right out and said so), yet you couldn’t resist adding that you still think your way is better than mine. Yep, it probably is - or would’ve been - had I started out doing it that way. It’s a cool setup. However, with several hundred pages already created and the task of replacing missing images for nearly half of them, I can ill imagine how huge THAT task would be to completely change my entire format and piss away all the work I’ve already invested in these pages.
And since I have the way I do the pages kindof “down to a science” so-to-speak, I don’t find it “difficult” at all. Nor is archiving a problem. It was merely a matter of lack of foresight that I didn’t have the images backed up anywhere outside of Geocities (which, given the fact that I’ve used Geocities for 6 years now and never lost a single file from any account I have with them, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to be necessary. Hind sight is, of course, 20/20).
First of all, I have a separate email at that exact address already. And there are several reasons I want to email everyone and not rely solely on a post in MPSIMS, not the least of which is the fact that many people - in fact, I’m sure a LOT of them - aren’t regular MPSIMS readers and would fail to even see that post. Note the fact that this thread is probably the 4th one on the subject over the course of several months - yet the poster had no idea this has been discussed repeatedly in MPSIMS.
If I’m going to fix my pages, I’d like to make them as complete as possible and that means reaching as many of the missing people as I can, which can more effectively be done via email. It’s bad enough I’ve left it up in this condition for as long as I have, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to embark on a project to fix it and do a half-assed job of it.
In addition, by making contact with people directly, if I don’t get a response, I’ll know it’s “safe” to delete their page from the line-up and re-code the arrows not to include them in the scrolling feature, because clearly they’re not interested in re-submitting their picture. By leaving it up to them to find a post in MPSIMS, I’ll have to leave them listed as N/A and leave their broken page in there on the chance that they simply haven’t seen the post yet. I’d really like to get the pages cleaned up and not have a bunch of N/A’s hanging around. And I am NOT going to the trouble to recode 2 adjoining pages and 2 index pages to remove them, then having to redo it all a week later just because they were late seeing the thread.
That would be great. I have a fast Cable connection at work, but at home I’m stuck using Dial-up, often connecting no faster than 42k. This is why I’m taking people up on their offers to help.
Nice theory, if it would really work in practice. Trust me, I’ve been doing these pages long enough to know that MOST of the people who send me images have no CLUE what they’re doing and many are obviously only sending images that someone else has scanned and sent to them - they have no image editing software and wouldn’t know how to use it if they did. And if they DO know how to crop and resize their images, then they simply aren’t doing so out of laziness or discourteousness. I’d rather give them the benefit of the doubt on that call.
I’m using Micrografx Picture Publisher.
Una, I never said any of this was hard. I said it was TIME CONSUMING. I have a life outside of SD, ok? And though there are some people in the world who see a HUGE project and just start chipping away at it little by little until it’s done, I’m the kind of person who gets overwhelmed to the point of not even knowing where to start, so I just don’t tackle it until I’m feeling up to it and have sufficient time to dedicate to getting the job done.
Again, that would be very helpful and I thank you.
<sigh> Once again you’re better than I. I’m not a “Web Guru” of any kind whatsoever. My web design skills are amateur at best. But what I am is a community member who wanted to contribute something and happily did what I could.
I’m not sure where the “despite what you may think of me” comes from. I don’t think I made any references to my thoughts on you, personally. If you must know, I think it was very kind of you to offer, but I was a bit offended by the implication that you could do it better than I could or have been. If I took it the wrong way, I apologize. But perhaps you would be wise to re-read your original reply to me and see how it might sound from my perspective so if that’s not what you intended, next time you’ll find a better way of phrasing it. Just a thought.
As I said above, I will be working on a format for how to best get this task accomplished and will post a thread in MPSIMS in the next few days. By then I’ll have a game plan and will be more than happy to accept any help you’re still willing to offer. Again, thank you.
Lynn, Thank you!
Uke, where’s your picture for the People Pages?? Ed sent his in. You’re not going to let him show you up, are you?
ShibbOleth, you’re welcome. And I’ll do my best to work 'em in that order - good idea. 
Shayna, we are not communicating well. Here is the short of it:
- I’m not telling you my way is “better” than yours.
- I want to help you.
- I am not criticizing you, your effort, or your abilities, in any way here.
- The “Web Guru” comment was not directed at you in any way, shape, or form.
- I still think you are making things unnecessarily harsh on yourself. No one will think you have done a half-assed job if you force the submitters to be smarter, IMO. But our opinions differ, so there is no point in discussing it.
- Shayna, I have a life outside of the SDMB too - about 60 hours of work a week, and running the UnaBoard. And yet, I’m still offering to help you.
It seems we are each misinterpreting each other’s tones. I’m not posting here again. If you want help in the areas I mentioned, mail me.
On that note, I’d say the original answer to the OP has been given.
I think we all look forward to seeing the People Pages up again. And I for one realise that a lot of time and effort goes into creating them, despite the method one uses.
My simple suggestion is that people use the mentioned e-mail address to indicate their willingness to help. There really isn’t a need to discuss the “How To”'s on the Boards. Thanks.