I got the 4.1 version of ktools installed today and they added a couple nice features like image zoom.. (for example here http://www.realstockphotos.com/photo/194/cavity-dentist-drill.html).  They also fixed a number of bugs and added a number of nice other festures.. but..

They didn't change one of my biggest gripes about ktools .. the search.  Perhaps they feel it works properly as it is  If you search for Dentist Chair you'll get all results that include a chair or dentist or those search terms are any part of the keywords (such as chairman).  The search defaults to 'newest uploaded' so you can get some really irrelevant search results - still a disapointment  

They did fix the problem with having to log in and click a button every time someone purchases an image though.. which was a HUGE problem before.

Unfortunately there is still no timeline that I've seen on the search fix despite asking several times.  It also seems that the next big project is Rights Managed pricing.  I don't know exactly what's driving the order of these particular additions, but to me it seems that a proper search should come first or people won't be on your site long enough to find images from additional photographers or with rights managed licensing.

I'm not excited about the addition of a $89 add on before main features that would be useful to all the current customers are finished.

The image zoom is just an overlay of a bigger preview image, which would be easy to grab:
http://www.realstockphotos.com/samples/NDkxMjZiMDE0OTAwMQ==/MjI2YjAxNDkwMDE=/photo.jpg&size=1024

I suppose you have a point (I assume you are alluding to theft?).. but if someone wants to steal images there are a lot easier ways than looking at the source code, finding the large image and spending the time to remove all those water marks.

Yeah there seem to be a few kinks to work out on the newer features.  Good news though, there is some search updating underway and Jon posted a preview of some of the changes that will be in 4.1.1 that he says will be released soon.  So things are moving along.

I'm sure I'm going to end up hiring a pro to do more tweaking in the future for things that are over my head in the code department but with a few more of the upcoming features and fixes in place Photostore v4 will be pretty robust out of the box. 

I attempted to but it throws a server error because it apparently relies on some additional updated files in 4.1.1 which he's working on now but it sounds like that one is getting pushed out pretty quickly to fix some known bugs. Someone else got the same result so we are just waiting for the next update to see exactly what it does.

the search.  Perhaps they feel it works properly as it is  If you search for Dentist Chair you'll get all results that include a chair or dentist or those search terms are any part of the keywords (such as chairman).  The search defaults to 'newest uploaded' so you can get some really irrelevant search results - still a disapointment  

Wow.. That's a big issue imo.. I am going to get a new CMS when I have time to work on it and implement it on my other site probably in a few weeks, and this is a good warning.. I will keep an eye on this.. if corrected will get ktools, if not then some other CMS..

It's a shame because ktools looks like a good solution.. but this issue is IMPORTANT..

Wow.. That's a big issue imo.. I am going to get a new CMS when I have time to work on it and implement it on my other site probably in a few weeks, and this is a good warning.. I will keep an eye on this.. if corrected will get ktools, if not then some other CMS..

It's a shame because ktools looks like a good solution.. but this issue is IMPORTANT..

Your site seems to do it as well. A search for key gives you key, turkey, keyboard.

I am not too happy about that so I am considering ktools for my other site..

the next CMS "if I am getting one", needs to be better than the one I already have..

If I get ktools before these issues are sorted, all it will do is annoy me

LOL. It seems like there is always something to fix. 

We understand there are people that need particular features faster than others, but we do prioritize on the amount of request we get for something. Right now the top two are rights managed and batch editing. Batch editing is actually the number one request. There are 6000 people using photostore and for the most part everyone has ideas on what they need or want.

We are working as fast as we can on it. We just got the contributors addon done in 4.1. Then we did 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 which had some fixes. We are currently working on 4.1.3 which will have fixes as well. A lot of stuff was added or changed in 4.1 that we may have to do a few small minor updates to fix any issues.

After that, when 4.1.x is stable enough we will be working on 4.2 which will have the next big feature.

I'd suggest coming up with a way to make it easier to upgrade if you do a lot of tweaks to the php.

That isn't physically possible. Any time you add code to a file (regardless if php, html, etc..). Then we release a new file, you will have to go back and add your code to that new file.

Quote from: sjlocke on October 29, 2012, 14:39

I'd suggest coming up with a way to make it easier to upgrade if you do a lot of tweaks to the php.

That isn't physically possible. Any time you add code to a file (regardless if php, html, etc..). Then we release a new file, you will have to go back and add your code to that new file.

If you organize things differently - as opposed to having users just edit your files - of course it's possible. Otherwise big code projects would all have to do massive cut and paste jobs every time updates in dependencies occur. And they don't.

Without any sort of scheme for integrating changes, kTools can't really be a platform for users to build on, just something for them to use as is.

It is easy to modify (providing you know css, html, php, or what ever it is you need to modify), just not easy to upgrade after the fact nor do we claim that upgrading a customized store is easy. Then again that really depends on how much you modified, if not much then it would be easy to upgrade, if you modified every file then it will be a lot of work.

You can view a list of changed files in your ktools.net account where you download the upgrade packages. Log into your ktools.net account, click on the version history / upgrade link under photostore 4 menu to the left. Then on that page click on the "changed files" link just under each package to see what was changed in that package. Althought this list doesn't actually show the code changed like we use to in version 3, it will still show what files were changed for that version.

Sorry for another post right away, but here is something I should ask you guys.

Jon is working on a relevance system for the search this will prioritize the results to where "men" would show top of the list, and things like "women" will show later in the list. Unless you do an exact search then it would have to be a 100% match (men = men, nothing else).

That sounds reasonable. Would you get results for "men" and "man" first or just "men"?

Quote from: Ktools_Jeff on October 29, 2012, 15:22

It is easy to modify (providing you know css, html, php, or what ever it is you need to modify), just not easy to upgrade after the fact nor do we claim that upgrading a customized store is easy. Then again that really depends on how much you modified, if not much then it would be easy to upgrade, if you modified every file then it will be a lot of work.

Well, yeah.  The point is to have a system that allows some sort of easier way of upgrading then viewing two files side by side to see what lines changed and copying and pasting and missing code.

Quote

You can view a list of changed files in your ktools.net account where you download the upgrade packages. Log into your ktools.net account, click on the version history / upgrade link under photostore 4 menu to the left. Then on that page click on the "changed files" link just under each package to see what was changed in that package. Althought this list doesn't actually show the code changed like we use to in version 3, it will still show what files were changed for that version.

Yes, I see that "Changed Files" is a clickable link.  Sorry about that.

If you are looking for software that can compare and merge, there are a lot of free software out there already that can do this. Like for example winmerge for windows, I'm sure there are others.

I actually use a paid one called araxis merge.

Quote from: jsnover on October 29, 2012, 15:06

Quote from: Ktools_Jeff on October 29, 2012, 14:52

Quote from: sjlocke on October 29, 2012, 14:39

I'd suggest coming up with a way to make it easier to upgrade if you do a lot of tweaks to the php.

That isn't physically possible. Any time you add code to a file (regardless if php, html, etc..). Then we release a new file, you will have to go back and add your code to that new file.

If you organize things differently - as opposed to having users just edit your files - of course it's possible. Otherwise big code projects would all have to do massive cut and paste jobs every time updates in dependencies occur. And they don't.

Without any sort of scheme for integrating changes, kTools can't really be a platform for users to build on, just something for them to use as is.

Yep, that's my point.  Having to go through dozens of files to find what has been changed or added, and copying and pasting, makes upgrading more often then very occasionally, a true pain.  Because you'll miss something, and things will break, and it will take forever to fix.  Especially since one of your selling points is "easy to modify" or something like that.

Also, a list of files that have been changed by you would be good - that was never populated in the current release.

Yes, that is the issue I ran into Sean.

There have been 2 upgrades to Version 3 of Photostore since I purchased it, including the Smarty update. But I have put so much work into customization that I cannot upgrade, or everything will be wiped out. I don't know that there is any way around this issue.

It's also the reason I chose not to purchase Version 4. V4 does a lot of functions that I wanted, and it just looks a lot better. But I can't tell you how many hours went into the customization of 3.8.8 and I'm not going back to Step 1.

Search relevancy for words is a great idea but what really needs to be looked is searching with multiple terms. If a customer types in three words for example: woman shopping

The first results should be images that include both of those terms.  As it is now on my site I'd get a few dozen images that only have the keyword woman above images that are tagged with all three. This is a major issue. 

Secondly, I am personally finding that customer service could be better with Ktools.  It seems like there is a somewhat defensive approach of "our software is fine, the users are just being picky and/or don't understand."

I get that developers would rather spend time developing new features than dealing with support issues, and probably get a lot of what they consider dumb questions, but in my experience the general tone has been more along the lines of "the customer is probably wrong" than "what can we do to improve." Just some honest feedback.

just popped your question Sean to our webmaster at work- his reply, "Not sure how they set up their database that way. that makes no sense at all. hopefully if keywords are identical ("flower" and "flower") there are not duplicate rows in the database. From a performance issue it shouldn't be too bad if the dbase is properly indexed. but it seems strange to me to have 30K in keywords alone."

just popped your question Sean to our webmaster at work- his reply, "Not sure how they set up their database that way. that makes no sense at all. hopefully if keywords are identical ("flower" and "flower") there are not duplicate rows in the database. From a performance issue it shouldn't be too bad if the dbase is properly indexed. but it seems strange to me to have 30K in keywords alone."

It's not how I did it in the project I was working on - I had a table of keywords, and a table of images, and a table that linked the images to the keywords.

Yes, there are duplicates galore.  A row with "female" for every image that has it as a keyword.  I don't want to attempt to change and rewrite this paradigm, as I'll never get anything shot again.

Although, I guess some table has to have one row per image/keyword pair up.  If it's 50k in one or 50k in another...

I'm ok with "run" not coming up with a search on "running", though.  I more like the exact match.  I've taken out their search for "LIKE '%keyword%'" against the keyword table to be just "= 'keyword'" as I've read wildcard searches are extremely heavy.