Now serving over 1000 users

We've reached our first milestone! Photie now has over 1000 registered users. Thank you to everyone who enjoys using Photie, sends us constructive feedback and helps us improve our service. We love feedback, and thanks to you we're currently working on some issues and improvements you've helped us identify.

As always, please continue to tell us what you think, share your ideas and report any problems: http://photie.com/feedback

Thanks all!

Performance and statistics improvements

Statistics
We've changed how the view count on photos is handled. We had originally been counting every time the thumbnails where loaded. That meant any time a user visited any page where the thumbnail was displayed the count would increment. We admit - this wasn't a very useful way to do it! So we've made some changes.

The photo view count will now only increment under the following conditions:

• If the thumbnail is clicked on
• Only for the first click, not for any subsequent size views (changing the size from original to large will not increment the view - you are still viewing the same photo)
• If the user that uploaded the photo is the user viewing it, then the view count won't increment (we are interested in other people viewing it, not the person who uploaded it)

This will make the statistics gathered on "most popular" much more relevant. It will bring to the top the images that are being seen most around the web. It will elimiate any way for users to "bump" their images to the top.

It will also go some way to removing the "junk" that was gathering in the "Seen on" section. Now your stats should be much more accurate and relevant!

Performance
An issue that was frustrating many users was the load time of the thumbnails. We hear you - so we've worked on the performance.

The following improvements have been made to thumbnail loading

• Removing the view count on every thumbnail load has significantly decreased load times.
• We made other code optimisation improvements to make loading faster.
• We've tightened the sizes, so that loading doesn't let the layout break.
• We've added "missing photo" functionality that will show when an image is broken or missing, rather than continuing to try and load the photo.
• We've made changes to the upload process, that will attempt to prevent broken or missing photos from appearing on the website.
  
• We're working on a "clean up" facility, that will remove any broken photos automatically.

Photie buzz

"Strikingly simple uploading and tagging, like nature intended it”

Josh Lowensohn, Webware.

“Incredibly simple”

Jay Hathaway, DownloadSquad.

“Most importantly, Photie.com is easy to use”

Bruna, Killer Start Ups.

We had a few teething problems

If you've been using Photie you'll have no doubt run into a few errors here and there. As expected, we had a few teething problems. We're happy to say we've now sorted these little issues and Photie is running much smoother.

We will be continuing to improve the performance of the service over the next few weeks, as well as making a few interface changes.

Thanks to everyone who reported problems to us. If you find any other errors or have any problems using the service please report them to us so we can get them sorted as quickly as possible.

Embed your images on the web

Some users still aren't aware of the embedding functionality at photie. This post aims to clear that up by showing you how it's done! Sharing photos with photie is really easy, whether it be on a forum, social networking profile, or your own website. Let's say we want to share this photo. When the photo was uploaded photie automatically resized it into the common sizes, which you can share by simply copying the embed code and pasting it into your site!

Sharing the medium size:


Sharing the small size:


Sharing the thumbnail size:


Whoever you are sharing it with can easily view the original and large sizes by clicking on the image and selecting the various sizes on photie. Simple!

Reset your password

Since launch we've been missing the functionality to reset your lost password (oops!). But no more, you can now reset your password by entering your email address or username. Photie will send out a new password to your email, which you can then change to something more memorable. Find it on the the login page and let us know if you have any problems using it.

Photie now in beta testing

Today we've launched (at least to our beta testers!) We're identifying and working out some final little errors before we go live to the public. So what is Photie? Photie lets you share photos easily and effectively. Simply upload photos, add tags and share! There are useful things like automatic image resize, tag clouds, and referrer stats too. This development blog is where we'll keep you updated on whats happening, announce any major news and releases and gather your feedback on everything. Keep an eye on this blog to know what's happening first.