Hey everyone!!

We just made some major to the galleries and thought I'd quickly discuss to help with the adjustment.

First let me start off with the basics.....

The galleries along with the rest of the site has been updated to give users more control over the content they see, to accomplish this we have merged 'Favorite Artists', 'Favorite Vendors' & 'Friends' into what is now called 'Followers'.

From your personal 'Activity Feed' you can track all site activity related to whom you're following. This allows users to easily keep up to date with site-wide activities while filtering out all the extra noise.

You might have noticed a 'For You' section within the galleries & marketplace. Content generated within these sections derive from users you 'follow'. The mindset is that if you follow someone with similar taste perhaps you might be interested in similar content. By simply following or unfollowing users/artists you can customize your recommended content. It is important to think of the 'Followers' NOT as a social tool, but instead use it to customize your experience.

Note: If the recommended suggestions are not even close, try cleaning up the users you are following.

Okay ... let's cover some changes we've just made.

• First you can upload gallery images up to 4000px. You also have a choice to upload a thumbnail however, this is optional. If you do not upload a thumbnail, one will be generated from the main image on upload.

• A lot of legacy thumbnails are now blurry...to fix this issue we are simply displaying a scaled version of the display image ONLY IF the original thumb is below the current minimum size. (Some of this is still being converted). If you don't like this, just edit the image and upload a new one.

• Going forward we are going to be concentrating on improving the quality of art within the gallery. You will only see gallery images within the bounds of your content advisory setting within the gallery settings. For example, if your content settings are set to filter out nudity then any image with nudity will not show. Any images trying to get around this, with a self-made 'Content Advisory' thumbs will be removed if the correct advisory is not attached.

It is important to note that signed out members can now view the galleries. Their content settings default to block anything with a content advisory attached. Therefore, it is recommended for artists who want to maximize impressions to create suitable content.

• A 'Trending' section has been added, this section pulls images weighted on 'views' & 'likes' & 'favorites' within a specific time frame, with different weights on each action. You can view this by 'Daily', 'Weekly' & 'Monthly'.

• A 'Fresh Favorites' section has been added, this section pulls images weighted on 'Favorites' within a specific time frame.

• A 'Whats Hot' section has been added, this section pulls images weighted on 'Likes' within a specific time frame.

• A 'For You' section has been added, this section pulls images based on what your followers are viewing, favoriting and liking.

Again if the recommended suggestions are not close, try cleaning up the users you are following and remember to keep track of their site activity you can visit your Activity Feed to catch up.

I hope some of this helps with the confusion. Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions.

gosh. i'm starting to feel as if every time i turn around, learn more about what staff/programmers are trying to do with things, i have something not positive to say about it, or rather, i suppose it will most likely be perceived that way, which is, nor ever has been, my intent.

"A 'For You' section has been added, this section pulls images based on what your followers are viewing, favoriting and liking"

this seems a little flawed to me. i follow someone based on their ART, not what their preferences of viewing things might be. maybe they do cute little twisted images, and that's what i like to view & why i follow them, but the person i'm following likes viewing things that are far from what they themselves create, or they purchase stuff i have zero interest in. or someone following me doesn't care for all the gothlicky things that draw me in like honey, and i don't think i do a whole lot in the genre i adore so much thus my art doesn't necessarily reflect my taste, so then their experience might become a bit skewed because of my bit in their equation, in the galleries as well as the MP.

ok, you say, easy enough to clean up and drop following certain folks to try to better 'customise' things for myself. but then how do i know whenst they post an image or a product i might like?

also, tons of folks in the galleries might never see this information, unless you decide to put it in the Activity Feed, so my experience could forever remain skewed simply because folks DO use the 'follow' thing as a social tool, don't realise how the site itself is using it, and don't want to cull anyone from it for whatever personal reasons they have.

given enough time, and if you do the math, essentially, if i want a customised experience then i'll need to eventually only surround myself with those of similar minds, and then we can become a hive. how exceptionally boring and narrow in focus.

i guess i just don't see how this falls in line with the idea of: "The galleries along with the rest of the site has been updated to give users more control over the content they see..." and if i actually had tons of folks i'm following, then to get the most out of my experience requires me to also guess at who i should un-follow, and test, test, and test again to get a balance. who has that kind of patience or time?

could a little profile survey not just be created asking about likes and dislikes at an individual level, and if it is attached, or married, to our profiles, it would also allow for us to change it on a whim if we're so inclined. yes, more work for you guys, and i'll guess not a quick, simple or easy fix on the back-end if it were to be a well-developed tool to give one any kind of meaningful results, but there it is...

of course, the real easy easy way out is to just never visit the "For You" section either which sort of defeats its existence, but, here too, there it is...
it would be nice to have ways to truly self-customise things though...[shrug]

there are my immediate knee-jerk, gut thoughts and suggestions...
i'll try refrain from thinking on this further, so that way i'll feel less motivated to say anything else about it.

thanks for reading...

@Giana I read your post and you need to look at the glass as half way full not half way empty. We haven't taken anything away, we've only added functionality. There is no right way or wrong way to use this site. The following functionality allows you to do whatever you want, you can be more diverse or be narrow or both it's up to you.

Also, the recommendations aren't designed to be perfect if so it would be hard to generate enough content to fill the pages. Understand we have over 1.5 million images in the galleries, at its core it's just another way to give you more to look at and bring up some of the better art you might be missing.

given enough time, and if you do the math, essentially, if i want a customised experience then i'll need to eventually only surround myself with those of similar minds, and then we can become a hive. how exceptionally boring and narrow in focus.

The 'For You' section is only that, one section of the site. This is the whole point of the 'Trending' & 'Fresh Favorites' & 'Whats Hot' which is based on a global real-time calculation so that it is not reliant on the tailored data.

Again, these tools are just another way to serve more images in creative ways. There's a lot of negativity in these forums and a lot of it is valid but some of it is just a negative outlook on change. There's a lot of good updates here and maybe some bad ones, but it's part of moving forward and we are always open for feedback.

I'm only trying to help educate you guys on some of the recommended ways to use them, but at the end of the day have some fun play around with the new stuff it might just grow on ya.

What I would like to know is that since all these (fav artists, vendors, friends) have been combined will we now just check the feed to see what's new with them or will we still receive e-bots when a fav artists uploads something new or when a new product from a vendor we are following is released?
I'm not really concerned with the For You section. I might check it sometimes and if it doesn't interest me, no big deal. I can't see myself going through artists I follow and try to figure out who likes what so I can customize For You. I've been browsing art galleries for over 15 years on the net and I managed fine without suggestions so far :)

Kalypso posted at 12:37AM Thu, 27 August 2015 - #4224571

What I would like to know is that since all these (fav artists, vendors, friends) have been combined will we now just check the feed to see what's new with them or will we still receive e-bots when a fav artists uploads something new or when a new product from a vendor we are following is released?
I'm not really concerned with the For You section. I might check it sometimes and if it doesn't interest me, no big deal. I can't see myself going through artists I follow and try to figure out who likes what so I can customize For You. I've been browsing art galleries for over 15 years on the net and I managed fine without suggestions so far :)

Good question, honestly as it stands right now nothing is final with the ebots. There is a lot of technical server side stuff that kinda plays into all this. But as of now I can tell you that the gallery uploads do not send ebots. You can just check the 'activity feed' for that, the reason being that some users were getting over 100 emails per day lol. I'd have to check on the MP uploads, not really sure. Again I recommended just using the 'activity feed' and follow any artist/vendor you are interested in.

A lot of the site design was actually meant to help users stop thinking in terms of 'Galleries', 'Marketplace', & 'Freestuff' and start thinking in terms of an entire application. We really want artists to become involved as vendors and vendors become more involved in the uploading art and freestuff. Really bring it full circle and the activity feed is where as a user you can track those updates.

But again nothing is really final with the ebot situation. Personally, I'm leaning toward having a weekly rolled up email kind of like Facebook does.

Yes, I suppose it's much easier to just check the feeds although I'd like the idea of the weekly email for vendors especially. If I miss a gallery posting I can always see it at a later date but I'd like to be informed of a new product as most times there are introductory sales I'd hate to miss, just like e-bots for wishlisted items. Hope this is taken into consideration :)

good to know you're open to suggestions. i personally am not opposed to change as long as it makes sense to me...

again, i'll re-iterate, i am not trying to be negative. if i were i'd just say something like "oh, this sucks the big one" and leave it at that.

i am fully aware, and can somewhat even empathise, with just how hard hit the admins & mods have been during all of this. and i do honestly try to keep that in mind whenst i post, as well as in general. and i realise that the recent state of things can makes folks feel defensive, like you gotta suit up before you even come in here right now, adopt that defensive posture cause who knows what new joys you'll find...

PLEASE keep in mind that you opened the floor for thoughts & suggestions, and that i tried to give you both, and the tone in my head was definitely not one of combativeness [and btw, nor is this response] as i'm also aware that the louder one screams, the less anyone desires to listen. even though the post above was my initial reaction, that doesn't negate the fact that i actually tried to put some thought & effort to what i was saying - i.e. i spent about 10-15 minutes thinking things through, weighing words, how they might be perceived, made mention of my concern about this very thing at the top of my post. i was trying to give you a different perspective on the tools you've implemented, nothing more... [crosses heart]

and just for the record, i'm adapting to the changes, even like a few. yes, there are some i don't care for, but i don't need to as this isn't MY personal website.

Ah, my question has been answered. The tailoring of recommended items in Marketplace and Galleries is based on who I follow or which vendors I like. OK. Got it.

You want a negative answer so here goes, "I'm hating ALL THIS"
You have changed Renderosity to make more money?
I do not have Facebook because I do not like their system and Renderosity is using a similar system.
I want my favorite artists separated from my friends and vendors.
I'm furious about it.

Marcia, when asking about special characters needed for different languages it seems there will not be a change to add those. Sorry!!!

Kimberly
Renderosity Admin

Renderosity is only for user who speaks English?

I want to comment on my Portuguese-Brazil language
To speak English I use the translator.

@BWSupport - I've been looking all over the forums, but have not seen what the file size (in KB-MB) is now. Maybe I've missed it somewhere, or am completely blind.... What is the maximum file size now? If I've missed where that was addressed, just point me in the right direction :-)

Thanks for reinstating the 4K image size and for all your hard work.

@Rods The image size file weight is now handled when uploaded by our image handler. I don't think there is an exact file weight for the gallery, as long as the width and height is restricted the weight can only be so large. We just ask that you don't take advantage of this by purposely uploading extremely hefty files because then we will be forced to restrict the quality of our compression.

Keep in mind a human can only see so many pixels. So after a certain point the quality can be compressed without any downfall. This is called Lossy Compression, which is what we use along with most sites. But as long as your images are already a decent weight you should not lose any quality.

Hope this answers the question.

Cool - Thanks for the information! I generally save @ 72 dpi, and most of my images are somewhere around wallpaper size (i.e. 1680 X 1050 or 1920 X 1080) and generally under a meg. My biggest images are either my T.N.A. series @ somewhere around 1000 X 3000, or photographic panoramas @ 3000 - 4000 wide.

Really glad you went back to the 4K image size. That 1200 X 1500 size was making kittens cry... :-P

I for one, would love to get some logistical info (Can be technical, without too much jargon, as I'm not a programmer/market analyst) on how this site is doing as far as it's overall sustainability with the new changes, vs the previous path that the site's design and function provided...

As most would have loved to have been able to have a choice for customization. That is, would it be impractical to offer something of two different site templates, one geared more towards the original site, while the other geared for tablets and mobile users, a perfect example would be what Runtime DNA currently has, at least in compisision.

BTW, Thanks for the recent forum changes as far as formatting and quotes are concerned!

Hoping this goes through, as the last few time I have tried to post, it just errors out. As to the gallery updates, I, for one, really do not care what others are saying is "hot", or see a list that everyone else has posted as "favorite". I look through the galleries to find that art the stands out from the rest, that surprises me, and many, many times that is from an artist that nobody knows, is on no ones "auto fav" list. Artists that I may be the only commenter. The never ending sprawl of continuous gallery scrolling is horrible. As has been pointed out, I have always noted page numbers while browsing the gallery. I knew where to go back and find something. Now, it just a slow loading nightmare. Also, as to the continuous scrolling, even though the product pages are now not scrolling, they seem to be fixed at something like 130 items per page. Please either limit them to some reasonable count, or give us the option of items per page. This is common in web programming and should not be difficult to implement. I am trying to be fair here and adopt a "wait and see" attitude. I have seen some improvement, but the entire mobile app interface is a disaster. Would it not have been better to either write a mobile app for those users, or have device detection to direct to a parallel site? As to Prime? Well, I'l leave that be at this time other than to say, it was handled wrong. Between the credit card fiasco and the new site, my buying has stopped. Truly hoping you get this straightened out before everyone leaves. Peace - Rhett

Puhh, this is the first time I see this and I'm almost shocked how bad it looks like. You mended that was working just fine, I immediately abhored the large "thumb" images, it's a total mess....why o why? Also, I wanted to upload something, it complained that tmy thumb is just too small, so everything I typed on the upload page disappeared. It's a total mess and it doesn't look nice as it was before.

I am with MariciaGomes on all of this. The whole entire store is TERRIBLE DESIGNED. If I want something like FB I go to FB. Of course a store site wants to stay modern but PLEASE not at the expense of functionality. It takes AGES to navigate. It takes AGES for pages to load. It takes AGES to find what you are looking for in the Galleries. It takes AGES to go through all the promo Images in the store as it takes AGES to load each Image.

The Site looks as if someone who never designed a site has been let lose to create THIS.

As a self-respecting Artist I refuse to show my Images here because the Gallery looks HORRIBLE with the different sized thumbnails which are also distorted to meet the silly requirements for the thumbnail size.

I do not mind Nudity, but I do not want boobs and genitals in my face when I enter the Gallery, I want a choice ! Just checking the settings for NO NUDITY does not cut it as I am not against it and there are some Artists that display beautiful Artistic Nudity which I do not want to miss out on.

PLEASE, either go back to the Site as it was OR let someone who knows what they are doing design a usable site.

We are your Customers, you want our money, so PLEASE listen to us.

Please, reinstate the old notifications systems where I got a notification if someone commented on one of my gallery images. Found out by accident someone posted a comment on one of my older images and I don't want to check my whole gallery every week to see if this happened again. That's not doable, not if one has a regular job and wants to pay attention to one's family and do another couple of real life things like making art.

ADDED functionality!??! noooooo don't think so, My hand joints are a problem....and I have to CLICK MORE and wait LONGER to figure this out... WE USED TO JUST CLICK A PERSON'S USER NAME, ON THEIR COMMENTS OF OUR ART...AND GO DIRECTLY TO THEIR GALLERY, AND EASILY RETURN THE FAVOR! NO MORE.

and yes, CAPS... I'm TRYING SO HARD TO WORK WITH THIS SITE... but GEE WHIZ! :( maybe the programmers OVER DID THE FUNCTIONALITY... TOO MUCH... not simple and user friendly. HEAVY SIGH

I have to agree with Lyne. I'm really wondering why Rendo removed our ability to click on the person's user name/icon when someone makes a comment in our gallery. This was a great way to view their work, and make a comment, especially if it is someone new. I see it is also disabled in the forum. Seems the ability to communicate with other artists/members has been greatly disabled. I hope Rendo will bring this feature back.