OUR SIDE-SHIPS: James / Lily, Draco / Ginny, Ron / Luna. This layout's designed for a 1024 x 768 screen, Firefox and Windows.

[Thieving Magpie]

Hi all,

as you might have seen Portkey's new gallery system has been launched by now.

It works in two ways:

1. You can either recommend media
2. or you can become a Portkey Artist

However, in both cases you do need to have a forum account and be logged in to do this!

FAQ

Q. What kind of media can I upload as an Artist?
A. We are currently limited to Drawings/Pictures, Wallpapers and Avatars/Icons. But we might change that in the future.

Q. What kind of media can I recommend?
A. You can recommend Drawings/Pictures, Wallpapers, Avatars/Icons, Songs and Videos. We can't allow you to upload songs and videos on the portkey server, since we desperately try to avoid copyright conflicts.

Q. I just uploaded a picture and there is a red border around it. A friend told me he cannot see the newly uploaded picture. Why is that?
A. Each picture has to be approved by a moderator before everyone can see it!
Artists do not need to be Moderated. We've approved their applications or pre-approved them as artists. This means they will automatically have accepted images. However! This does not give artists free rein to upload anything and everything they want! Moderators can still REJECT images if they do not fulfill Portkey's requirements for shipping and such.

This allows moderators to also take questionable material out of view of visitors until a decision can be made concerning the uploaded artwork. Moderators may also delete artwork if it blatantly goes against the sites rules (IE: Posting of any pornography, child pornography, or other non-HP related tasteful artwork.) If such an event occurs, Moderators may also BAN the person responsible from uploading until administrative action can be decided upon.

Q. Do recommendations need to be approved as well?
A. Recommendations of all shapes, sizes, flavors, and colors are Moderated. Anyone with a forum account may recommend artwork so there is more control applied to this feature of the Gallery. This helps us sort out spam, porn sites, and the like so our visitors and members are not subjected to such rubbish.

Q. How long does it take until a Moderator approves my work or recommendation?
A. Usually, when they come online and check for new entries. We can't provide you with an exact time! But it shouldn't take longer than a few hours!

Q. Some entries do have these strange "Recced Image" thumbnails. What does that mean?
A. Thumbnails are only automatically created for Portkey Artist uploads. If you do a recommendation you have to explicitly upload an image of which the thumbnail is created then. If you don't upload an extra image a standard thumbnail, according to the type of your recommendation, will be displayed.

Q. What can I do if somebody claims to be the artist of a certain media, but I know for sure that he/she is not?
A. Use the Report function on the bottom left of each entry and tell us about it.

Q. Some entries do have these strange "Server Down" thumbnails. What does that mean?
A. Well it means just that. The Portkey media server is not responding at the moment.

Q. My image doesn't show up on the first page! Can I delete it and repost so it does?
A. No, you may not. Administrative actions concerning this are in discussions at the moment.

Q. What does the reply link do? Why do I only see it on my uploaded art/recommendation?
A. The reply link allows artists to reply to each comment personally instead of having to enter a comment afterwards. The Portkey Gallery may utilize features from the forums, but it doesn't behave like them. Anything you upload as a Portkey Registered Artist or as a recommender for someone else's art will provide a link for you to reply to any and all comments on the entries you've made.

Q. I worked so hard on my Harry and Hermione (or other Portkey supported ship) artwork and some wanker flamed me for not posting Ron and Hermione (or any other non-Portkey supported ship). What can I do?
A. These 'wankers' are just people who can't comprehend someone thinking in a way other than them, are 'trolls' who like to cause trouble, or any other form of person who may want to cause trouble. If the comment they leave is truely offensive and the artwork they have 'flamed' is yours, you have every right to delete that comment with the DELETE link. You may also report the troublemaking comment with the REPORT link and moderators will be able to look into the matter. Please do not remove the comment before a moderator looks at it if you report the offense or it will be difficult to track the person down. We are currently looking for ways to improve the reporting capabilities of the Gallery for better 'grief' protection of our members. One good thing? All IPs are logged when a comment is left for our safety in case someone tries something against our site. So, if the person thinks they can get away with what they're doing, we can report them to their ISP if the offense is bad enough to warrant it.

Q. I try to reply to comments in my art entry but nothing happens/I can't reply! What's wrong?
A. To save on bandwidth, we've decided to use a combination of different web technologies and network communication protocols. One of these nifty features is javascript, in particular, javascript popup windowing. When you reply to a comment, a popup window should appear and allow you to reply. If, for some reason, this window doesn't appear, there might be a good chance that you have a popup blocker turned on and it's causing problems with this functionality. Microsoft integrated this into internet explorer without warning and this could conceivably be the problem. Moderators who can't pre-approve artists or perform some of the other modly gallery duties might want to be sure their browser isn't blocking popups or they'll have problems as well. If, you still can't reply (after you've enabled portkey's ability to display popups) report the bug here so that Excalibur can track down the bug.

Q. When I go to the gallery, I'm seeing all the images available on one page but the gallery tells me there are others! What's wrong?
A. There is a bug we are tracking down that causes this. The best way to fix it is to go to another gallery view (by clicking on the radio button next to the gallery view's name) and then back to the view you had the problem with. That should return the gallery to it's proper functionality. Again, we know of this bug and are trying to track it down for the next episode of Fear Factor (We don't eat bugs...).

Q. I would like to contact one of the people who have commented on my artwork or recommendation. Or I would like to contact the artist of this fine piece of work. How can I do this?
A. We have implemented a very handy feature that allows you to view a user's contact card. All you have to do is click on their name! That's it. A popup window will be displayed and you'll be able to choose their email or a forum private message. In addition, they may have included their MSN messenger id, Y!IM id, AIM id, etc. so you'll have different wasy to contact someone. If you'd like people to contact you, go to the forums here: The Porktey Forums: Kindred Spirits and click on the link to your control panel. Everything is there for you to add to or remove! You can even hide the link to your email if you want to.

Q. What are the three radio buttons at the top of the gallery's main view for?
A. These radio buttons allow you to select you you view the Portkey Gallery! Each changes how you view the contents people have contributed and each person will have their own preferences. Anyway, Line View will display the most records per page. It doesn't show the images, just the title, artist, and some statistics like a spreadsheet would. This is the fastest to display for those with slow connections and all you have to do is click on the title of the artwork and you'll be taken to the detailed view. Speaking of detailed views, there is the Detailed Line View next. It will display the least number of records per page. Basically it will display the detailed view of each image. The comments are not shown in this view, but you can click on the comment count to take you to the full detailed record. Clicking in the thumbnail will show the main piece of art directly and you can view the comments there as well. Lastly, there's the Gallery View. This view is the default view for Portkey's Gallery. It displays the most images and clicking on an image or it's comments count will take you to the detailed view where you can view comments and read information about the art or recommendation. I hope you try out each one and find the view you like best!.

Q. I only want to see Harry/Hermione artwork (no recommendations), and sorted by the number of views! The search feature doesn't work! How can I do that?
A. Have no fear! When I started the gallery, I wanted to have at least minimal sorting/filtering included. Luckily for you, I did just that! At the bottom of the page is what's called: The filter block. In this handy control you can choose which ship you want to see, whether it's art, recommendation, or both, quite a few fields to sort by, and an order to how the records are displayed. Currently, we can sort by: Post date, title, rating, size, dimensions, duration, artist, recommender, number of views, and number of comments *whew*. The search feature will be included at a later date and I hope to make it truly robust. Until then, I think the filter block is pretty powerful for a simple sort and filter... Keyword searches and such will be here eventually.

Q. I'm trying to recommend something or upload artwork, but I'm getting a message: 'We are currently DEBUGGING the Upload features, please be patient.' Is there something wrong with the gallery? What about my artwork?
A. Hopefully, there is nothing wrong, but from time to time a Gremlin tries to feed us a bug or three and we have to collect debugging information. How do we do this? We can't say but it helps us immensely when trying to figure out what's wrong. The message means just that, we are currently debugging the upload and recommendation features in an attempt to make things work more smoothly. Other times, we are enhancing the system and testing for bugs from our new code. Either way, there is nothing wrong with your current contributions and if there were, we'd contact you as soon as we discovered the problem. If you see this message, please be patient while we do our work. If you'd really, really like to upload something, please feel free to leave a message in the forums and hopefully we'll be able to let you know the status of when we'll be finished.

Q. I'd like to recommend a piece of art or an artist's website, are there any problems with doing this?
A. Usually there isn't but some artists require that you email them and ask first, also, they may have certain requisites to linking to their stuff. Below is a list of artists that have been asked and their requirements for linking to their pieces, please respect this list, we don't want to anger the people we're trying to promote, do we?

• Muddgutts: Recommending art is cool with him.
• Kristin Bergh (Chamber of Keys): You must drop her an email to ask if you may recommend one of her pieces and you must link back to her front page (due to her hit counter and everything working only there...)

Q. I uploaded an image and when I tried to edit the image because of some reason, the title didn't show up. What happened?
A. You probably used double quotes (") around the title of your image. I'm not sure if most people know this but when a field in a form asks for the title of something, you generally don't have to add the double quotes around it like you would in a book report or other literary work. Just use the title of the image and everything will turn out ok.

Q. I want to be a Portkey Registered Artist, can I give you a link to my videos?
A. Portkey Registered Artists must provide a link to an image gallery or an image. Portkey Registered Artists are allowed to upload avatars, drawings, and wallpapers only. You may recommend your videos, but unless you have the three previously mentioned categories available for upload, you will not become a Portkey Registered Artist.

Q. I put an img link to my image and it doesn't work! Why?
A. This is not the Portkey Forums (Kindred Spirits), this is the Portkey Gallery, a completely custom addition to Portkey. If something asks for a link to an image, please, just put the url, the img and /img tags do not work.

edited to add more questions ~Excalibur 3Dec
edited font colors ~gal-texter 4Dec

This post has been edited by Thieving Magpie: Dec 12 2004, 11:11 PM

[Thieving Magpie]

Hi all,

as you might have seen Portkey's new gallery system has been launched by now.

It works in two ways:

1. You can either recommend media
2. or you can become a Portkey Artist

However, in both cases you do need to have a forum account and be logged in to do this!

FAQ

Q. What kind of media can I upload as an Artist?
A. We are currently limited to Drawings/Pictures, Wallpapers and Avatars/Icons. But we might change that in the future.

Q. What kind of media can I recommend?
A. You can recommend Drawings/Pictures, Wallpapers, Avatars/Icons, Songs and Videos. We can't allow you to upload songs and videos on the portkey server, since we desperately try to avoid copyright conflicts.

Q. I just uploaded a picture and there is a red border around it. A friend told me he cannot see the newly uploaded picture. Why is that?
A. Each picture has to be approved by a moderator before everyone can see it!
Artists do not need to be Moderated. We've approved their applications or pre-approved them as artists. This means they will automatically have accepted images. However! This does not give artists free rein to upload anything and everything they want! Moderators can still REJECT images if they do not fulfill Portkey's requirements for shipping and such.

This allows moderators to also take questionable material out of view of visitors until a decision can be made concerning the uploaded artwork. Moderators may also delete artwork if it blatantly goes against the sites rules (IE: Posting of any pornography, child pornography, or other non-HP related tasteful artwork.) If such an event occurs, Moderators may also BAN the person responsible from uploading until administrative action can be decided upon.

Q. Do recommendations need to be approved as well?
A. Recommendations of all shapes, sizes, flavors, and colors are Moderated. Anyone with a forum account may recommend artwork so there is more control applied to this feature of the Gallery. This helps us sort out spam, porn sites, and the like so our visitors and members are not subjected to such rubbish.

Q. How long does it take until a Moderator approves my work or recommendation?
A. Usually, when they come online and check for new entries. We can't provide you with an exact time! But it shouldn't take longer than a few hours!

Q. Some entries do have these strange "Recced Image" thumbnails. What does that mean?
A. Thumbnails are only automatically created for Portkey Artist uploads. If you do a recommendation you have to explicitly upload an image of which the thumbnail is created then. If you don't upload an extra image a standard thumbnail, according to the type of your recommendation, will be displayed.

Q. What can I do if somebody claims to be the artist of a certain media, but I know for sure that he/she is not?
A. Use the Report function on the bottom left of each entry and tell us about it.

Q. Some entries do have these strange "Server Down" thumbnails. What does that mean?
A. Well it means just that. The Portkey media server is not responding at the moment.

Q. My image doesn't show up on the first page! Can I delete it and repost so it does?
A. No, you may not. Administrative actions concerning this are in discussions at the moment.

Q. What does the reply link do? Why do I only see it on my uploaded art/recommendation?
A. The reply link allows artists to reply to each comment personally instead of having to enter a comment afterwards. The Portkey Gallery may utilize features from the forums, but it doesn't behave like them. Anything you upload as a Portkey Registered Artist or as a recommender for someone else's art will provide a link for you to reply to any and all comments on the entries you've made.

Q. I worked so hard on my Harry and Hermione (or other Portkey supported ship) artwork and some wanker flamed me for not posting Ron and Hermione (or any other non-Portkey supported ship). What can I do?
A. These 'wankers' are just people who can't comprehend someone thinking in a way other than them, are 'trolls' who like to cause trouble, or any other form of person who may want to cause trouble. If the comment they leave is truely offensive and the artwork they have 'flamed' is yours, you have every right to delete that comment with the DELETE link. You may also report the troublemaking comment with the REPORT link and moderators will be able to look into the matter. Please do not remove the comment before a moderator looks at it if you report the offense or it will be difficult to track the person down. We are currently looking for ways to improve the reporting capabilities of the Gallery for better 'grief' protection of our members. One good thing? All IPs are logged when a comment is left for our safety in case someone tries something against our site. So, if the person thinks they can get away with what they're doing, we can report them to their ISP if the offense is bad enough to warrant it.

Q. I try to reply to comments in my art entry but nothing happens/I can't reply! What's wrong?
A. To save on bandwidth, we've decided to use a combination of different web technologies and network communication protocols. One of these nifty features is javascript, in particular, javascript popup windowing. When you reply to a comment, a popup window should appear and allow you to reply. If, for some reason, this window doesn't appear, there might be a good chance that you have a popup blocker turned on and it's causing problems with this functionality. Microsoft integrated this into internet explorer without warning and this could conceivably be the problem. Moderators who can't pre-approve artists or perform some of the other modly gallery duties might want to be sure their browser isn't blocking popups or they'll have problems as well. If, you still can't reply (after you've enabled portkey's ability to display popups) report the bug here so that Excalibur can track down the bug.

Q. When I go to the gallery, I'm seeing all the images available on one page but the gallery tells me there are others! What's wrong?
A. There is a bug we are tracking down that causes this. The best way to fix it is to go to another gallery view (by clicking on the radio button next to the gallery view's name) and then back to the view you had the problem with. That should return the gallery to it's proper functionality. Again, we know of this bug and are trying to track it down for the next episode of Fear Factor (We don't eat bugs...).

Q. I would like to contact one of the people who have commented on my artwork or recommendation. Or I would like to contact the artist of this fine piece of work. How can I do this?
A. We have implemented a very handy feature that allows you to view a user's contact card. All you have to do is click on their name! That's it. A popup window will be displayed and you'll be able to choose their email or a forum private message. In addition, they may have included their MSN messenger id, Y!IM id, AIM id, etc. so you'll have different wasy to contact someone. If you'd like people to contact you, go to the forums here: The Porktey Forums: Kindred Spirits and click on the link to your control panel. Everything is there for you to add to or remove! You can even hide the link to your email if you want to.

Q. What are the three radio buttons at the top of the gallery's main view for?
A. These radio buttons allow you to select you you view the Portkey Gallery! Each changes how you view the contents people have contributed and each person will have their own preferences. Anyway, Line View will display the most records per page. It doesn't show the images, just the title, artist, and some statistics like a spreadsheet would. This is the fastest to display for those with slow connections and all you have to do is click on the title of the artwork and you'll be taken to the detailed view. Speaking of detailed views, there is the Detailed Line View next. It will display the least number of records per page. Basically it will display the detailed view of each image. The comments are not shown in this view, but you can click on the comment count to take you to the full detailed record. Clicking in the thumbnail will show the main piece of art directly and you can view the comments there as well. Lastly, there's the Gallery View. This view is the default view for Portkey's Gallery. It displays the most images and clicking on an image or it's comments count will take you to the detailed view where you can view comments and read information about the art or recommendation. I hope you try out each one and find the view you like best!.

Q. I only want to see Harry/Hermione artwork (no recommendations), and sorted by the number of views! The search feature doesn't work! How can I do that?
A. Have no fear! When I started the gallery, I wanted to have at least minimal sorting/filtering included. Luckily for you, I did just that! At the bottom of the page is what's called: The filter block. In this handy control you can choose which ship you want to see, whether it's art, recommendation, or both, quite a few fields to sort by, and an order to how the records are displayed. Currently, we can sort by: Post date, title, rating, size, dimensions, duration, artist, recommender, number of views, and number of comments *whew*. The search feature will be included at a later date and I hope to make it truly robust. Until then, I think the filter block is pretty powerful for a simple sort and filter... Keyword searches and such will be here eventually.

Q. I'm trying to recommend something or upload artwork, but I'm getting a message: 'We are currently DEBUGGING the Upload features, please be patient.' Is there something wrong with the gallery? What about my artwork?
A. Hopefully, there is nothing wrong, but from time to time a Gremlin tries to feed us a bug or three and we have to collect debugging information. How do we do this? We can't say but it helps us immensely when trying to figure out what's wrong. The message means just that, we are currently debugging the upload and recommendation features in an attempt to make things work more smoothly. Other times, we are enhancing the system and testing for bugs from our new code. Either way, there is nothing wrong with your current contributions and if there were, we'd contact you as soon as we discovered the problem. If you see this message, please be patient while we do our work. If you'd really, really like to upload something, please feel free to leave a message in the forums and hopefully we'll be able to let you know the status of when we'll be finished.

Q. I'd like to recommend a piece of art or an artist's website, are there any problems with doing this?
A. Usually there isn't but some artists require that you email them and ask first, also, they may have certain requisites to linking to their stuff. Below is a list of artists that have been asked and their requirements for linking to their pieces, please respect this list, we don't want to anger the people we're trying to promote, do we?

• Muddgutts: Recommending art is cool with him.
• Kristin Bergh (Chamber of Keys): You must drop her an email to ask if you may recommend one of her pieces and you must link back to her front page (due to her hit counter and everything working only there...)

Q. I uploaded an image and when I tried to edit the image because of some reason, the title didn't show up. What happened?
A. You probably used double quotes (") around the title of your image. I'm not sure if most people know this but when a field in a form asks for the title of something, you generally don't have to add the double quotes around it like you would in a book report or other literary work. Just use the title of the image and everything will turn out ok.

Q. I want to be a Portkey Registered Artist, can I give you a link to my videos?
A. Portkey Registered Artists must provide a link to an image gallery or an image. Portkey Registered Artists are allowed to upload avatars, drawings, and wallpapers only. You may recommend your videos, but unless you have the three previously mentioned categories available for upload, you will not become a Portkey Registered Artist.

Q. I put an img link to my image and it doesn't work! Why?
A. This is not the Portkey Forums (Kindred Spirits), this is the Portkey Gallery, a completely custom addition to Portkey. If something asks for a link to an image, please, just put the url, the img and /img tags do not work.

edited to add more questions ~Excalibur 3Dec
edited font colors ~gal-texter 4Dec

This post has been edited by Thieving Magpie: Dec 12 2004, 11:11 PM

[Jessie Flower]

Hello,

I was wondering now that the art gallery is up, if it is only for hand drawn things. And if your allowed to add Computer Graphics, and Manipulations too? (icons, wallpapers etc.)

Thanks in advance,
Jessie

Mod-Note: I close this thread since in the Administration exist a similar one. ~Phoenixwriter

This post has been edited by phoenixwriter: Nov 30 2004, 12:14 PM

[Excalibur]

[-Jules-]

[Excalibur]

Just a quick note: I edited the main post and added a few more Q&A's for everyone's fun and enjoyment! Now that you see what time it was edited, it will come as no surprise that I must go to sleep now...

[gal-texter]

Hey Magpie and Curt, I hope you don't mind that I changed the FAQs' font colors. The original red and blue scheme was hurting my eyes. I guess my vision's not as good as yours.

And yes, Curt, you should go to sleep!

*goes back to reading the FAQs*



This post has been edited by gal-texter: Dec 6 2004, 07:40 PM

[Excalibur]

[gal-texter]

Btw, let's acknowledge our Portkeymates' inputs, all of which help shape this Media Gallery. *roll call* Kate J, erroom potter, Jessie Flower, and thereader too. Plus some prodding by mogliecat.

This post has been edited by gal-texter: Dec 6 2004, 07:45 PM

[Excalibur]

[gal-texter]