New Feature ~ COLLECTIONS!
Posted by Justin Case — 3 Jun 2012
Once again, JPG'rs - we're reaching out to let you know about a few new toys...! We've been busily working on some 'plumbing' and 'foundation' around the site and, while you might not see or notice a lot of the details, the fruits of that 'behind-the-scenes' effort are starting to show.Late on June 1st (or early on the 2nd, depending on where you are), we opened up a new function for our JPG
users... COLLECTIONS!Kind of like our 'favorites' function, 'collections' lets you add images to lists. The cool thing about collections, though, is that you can have any number of collections that group images together. So... let's say you want to build a collection of great landscapes. You might have a collection called 'landscapes' to which you'd add all the great landscape images you come across on the site that inspire you or that you just want to come back to. Maybe you want a collection called 'portraiture' or 'buildings' (and we're sure you can guess what might go into each of those!).
Another great aspect of collections is that they can be either PUBLIC or PRIVATE. If you want to share your collections with other users, simply mark each one as 'public'. If you've got one you'd prefer to keep to yourself (maybe it's a collection of images for inspiration on a story you want to post on JPG and you don't want anyone to know what you'll be writing about or you just don't want anyone to see the collection until its just right)... just mark it 'private' and only you will be able to see it (when you're logged in, of course!).
Along with this addition, we've moved and enlarged the
icon for adding to your favorites list. Both favorite and add to collection are now icons above each image throughout the site, next to the Spotlight This and Enter Shoot Out buttons as shown below.
There are a couple ways you can create collections.
First, if you're signed-in to the site and you're viewing a photo, you can click on the
icon above the image. That will bring up a window that will allow you to either i) create a collection to add the image to; or ii) if you already have a collection that you're ready to add to ... to add it to that collection. Here, you can also (when creating a new collection) determine whether the collection will be private (visible to only you), or public (visible to anyone in the community viewing your collections).Next, if you go to your profile page, you'll notice a new tab. Next to Photos and Stories, you now have Collections as shown here:
There is a 
icon on the Collections tab. If you click on that icon, you can create a new collection right there.
icon on the Collections tab. If you click on that icon, you can create a new collection right there.You can easily jump to this area on your profile page with 1-click, if you use the 'drop-down' on the navigation bar (at the top of the page) under "PROFILE" and choose "My Collections".
From the Collections tab on your profile page, you can also administer your collections. You can create/delete collections. You can edit titles and descriptions. You can click into any collection and remove individual images. You can make the collection 'private' or 'public', as well.
Now, a few 'housekeeping notes'.
1) If you're collecting images that have been flagged 'not-safe'for-work (NSFW), those images, to any user that has their safe-filter correctly set, will appear with the grey NSFW graphic overlay. If that filtered image is the thumbnail for the collection, your collection may have that overlay. That's why a good, descriptive, title will be useful.
2) If you've got a collection and one of the images in the collection is deleted by the user that uploaded the image, it will be removed from your collection. If the image is hidden by the user, it will still have a 'placeholder' in your collection, but it will indicate that the image was hidden. That way, if the user un-hides the image, poof! it will be back in your collection.
We're sure you will come up with uses for collections that we've not even considered yet, but... We're working on some other changes that may very well make collections very useful to you, even beyond what we've touched on above. So get busy. Check it out. See what you can do with it and let us know if you have any thoughts on how we can improve this feature or other areas around the site.
On a final note, as we mentioned a couple months back, we're working on some other big changes. Over the next couple weeks, we'll release some other updates that may be larger changes. This is the first in a wave of upgrades that will make the site more useful to you than ever and provide a better overall experience. We can't wait to share these changes with you and hope you'll love them.
In the meantime, happy shooting ~ and sharing!
