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Sunday, 15 March 2009

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On language: people with disabilities are not "differently abled" and we prefer to be called disabled. My art creative mental process is the same as it was pre-disability. I have had to change media and adapt work methods, but I am an artist, same as before.
Euphemisms...ugh.

I would gladly give you .07 cents a month... or $1 every year? or?
I enjoy reading just about everything you write... so I hope you keep on writing.
If I was to express a preference for anything in particular it would be about becoming a better photographer... whatever that means. For an amateur/hobbiest I have a decent understanding of the basics/technical side of things... so am always particularly interested in reading articles about composition.

Three suggestions:

1. Refer to TOP as an "online bulletin", meaning a special interest periodical. See http://www.thebulletin.org/ for a notable example.

2. Like photo.net, offer memberships for about $25 a year. "Members" get: 1) the satisfaction of supporting the site; and 2) the option of being listed in a membership searchable directory featuring links to their own websites. I suspect there is much interest in who regularly reads this humble photo rag--I mean online photography bulletin.

3. Encourage submission of brief articles from readers on novel photography techniques, especially for taking photos (as opposed to storing or processing them).

John Hansen-Flaschen

Not having the time to read 100+ comments, please excuse me if what I am about to say has already been said. Well, not the first part, at least, which is that the site is excellent. More content would be better, but only if it remains of the same quality as everything else you already have.

Two notes regarding site design, though.
1–This page is about the articles, which are top posted in a blog-ish format. Great–there's nothing wrong with that. But if you can, make that the main page–the first thing you come to, the "http://www.theonlinephotographer.com/". The welcome page can remain with the same title, but should be buried. It could also be an 'about us' page. But since this site is about the great content, then it doesn't make sense to me to have to go through another page to get to the big deal, unless that page is some kind of article list. You could do that if you want to make TOP more magazine-like (think the main article list on arstechnica.com), but I don't think it's necessary unless you have a LOT more content in the future.

2–Revamp the Resources bit. You've got so much great content, but if a reader doesn't keep up every day or three, the content sinks to the bottom... ! Some kind of tagging system could fix that, with each article tagged and those tags listed in the resources column. Or you could just set up a few categories, and then add articles in each of those pages as they go up. For example, some categories could be: photographers/random excellence, photo exhibits, cameras/lenses, books, site-related, philosophy of photo, etc. Articles could appear in multiple categories, and you could have a misc. section for anything that doesn't fit.

I'd be happy to discuss these ideas further with you–feel free to send me an email.

And yes, I'd gladly pay for TOP. What about a repeating yearly bi-yearly donation?

Thanks for the site!!!
Ben

More Jazz recommendations, please :). Seriously.

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