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Author Topic: Ktools 4.1 Installed. What is your opinion?  (Read 13516 times)

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« on: October 10, 2012, 05:48 »
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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.
« Last Edit: October 10, 2012, 06:00 by leaf »


« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2012, 10:16 »
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Hopefully, they will come up with an improvement for it. I'd probably go out and buy the new version if it had a good improvement to the search. I'm sure I could bolt that on to my existing site.

« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2012, 14:40 »
+1
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.

« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2012, 06:18 »
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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

« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2012, 06:20 »
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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.

« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2012, 06:32 »
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You don't even have to look at the source code - just right click and view image when using the lens...  More the point is that it isn't a real "zoom" - you can't get closer than a 1024 preview of the image.

It's better than nothing, although the lens does stop someone from right clicking the smaller preview to save as a comp.

The other issue is that the preview image on the page is actually the larger zoomed image, resized via html.
« Last Edit: October 12, 2012, 08:54 by sjlocke »

« Reply #6 on: October 12, 2012, 14:00 »
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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. 

« Reply #7 on: October 12, 2012, 14:32 »
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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.

Thanks for the heads up. Did you test the update he posted on the forums?

« Reply #8 on: October 15, 2012, 14:52 »
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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.

« Reply #9 on: October 15, 2012, 17:26 »
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Out of the box, Search does not work and has never worked. As you mention, it will return results for "chairman" if you search for "chair". It also will not recognize simple plurals as being identical to simple singulars. So if you search for "cars" but your images use the keyword "car", your customer will get 0 results even if there are many potential search matches.

There are a lot of requests on the forum for a working Search. I don't think it is much of a priority, as those threads are literally 5-6 years old.

You will need to reprogram the algorithm yourself if you are comfortable in PHP. Or hire someone to do the coding for you. One suggestion I have is to get rid of all of the various choices for search (the different match options) and just go with the one which makes the most sense to a user. Then write the code changes to conform to that match option.

« Reply #10 on: October 16, 2012, 05:48 »
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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..

« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2012, 06:46 »
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Yeah, I'm quite surprised they aren't prioritizing this.  That have said on their site that other add ons like RM sales is more requested... but if the search doesn't work, I'm not sure any add is usefull.

Another example.

If I search for race car
I'll first get a pile of carpentry images, then some healte care images, then a few pages of scary halloween images, some images of monte carlo, several pages of people in an embrace, and if you're lucky you might even see a picture of a race car

« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2012, 09:16 »
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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.

« Reply #13 on: October 16, 2012, 10:57 »
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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 :)

« Reply #14 on: October 16, 2012, 11:29 »
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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.  ;)

« Reply #15 on: October 16, 2012, 12:33 »
+1
My favorite gripe on this front is that you can't search "man" without getting all results for "woman" as well, so the gender refined search is pointless.

« Reply #16 on: October 29, 2012, 14:36 »
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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.

« Reply #17 on: October 29, 2012, 14:39 »
+1
I'd suggest coming up with a way to make it easier to upgrade if you do a lot of tweaks to the php.

« Reply #18 on: October 29, 2012, 14:52 »
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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.


« Reply #19 on: October 29, 2012, 15:03 »
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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).




« Reply #20 on: October 29, 2012, 15:06 »
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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.

« Reply #21 on: October 29, 2012, 15:09 »
+1
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.

« Reply #22 on: October 29, 2012, 15:22 »
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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.


« Reply #23 on: October 29, 2012, 15:33 »
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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.

« Reply #24 on: October 29, 2012, 16:37 »
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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"?


 

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