TruckingTruth's Member Photo Gallery!

Ok folks....we've been talking about setting up a photo gallery and I now have a very primitive version up and running. It's minimally functional, but it's functional. Before I start adding features I want to make sure that the way I'm processing the photos is going to hold up across the multitude of devices we'll be working with. So anyone who has an extra minute or two I'd really appreciate it if you'd shoot a photo or two this way to get the ball rolling. Send them from anywhere - phones, digital cameras, tablets, or desktop computers - doesn't matter. They can be photos you already have on your device or fresh photos you want to take now.

Here's how it works:

All you have to do is email your photos to:

photos@photos.truckingtruth.com

Note: You must email them from the email address you use to login to TruckingTruth. That's how I know who sent the picture. If you send them from an email address that's not in our system I can still keep the photos and display them but I won't know they're yours.

If you'd like to add a caption to the photo when sharing it, simply enter the caption into the subject of the email, not the message. The reason I need the caption in the subject is because the message itself will have email signatures, images, privacy notices, "sent from my iPhone", and all kinds of other baloney that I won't be able to distinguish from the actual message itself. So send the caption in the subject of the email.

But the caption is optional. Once you upload your photos you will be able to edit the information on them at any time, including:

- the date the photo was taken
- the location of the photo
- the caption
- tags for the photo

...and we'll see what else people would like to add as we go. But I don't have the editing features setup yet.

On a happy note, 95% of the pictures I receive will have mountains of information built right into the photo. If your phone/camera settings will allow it I can automatically retrieve the date and time the photo was taken and the geographic coordinates of where it was taken. That way I can display the photos chronologically, on a map, by member name, and all sorts of cool ways.

One last note - and this is a bit technical so if you don't know what I'm talking about just ignore it....

If you have an email signature that contains images and they are transferred as attachments they're going to get put into the photo gallery. So if you send in a photo and find several photos being added every time then your email signature is causing that. There isn't any way I can distinguish between your actual photos and your email signatures. So the only way you'll be able to work around this is to remove the images from your signature or delete them from your gallery every time you submit images. Again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, ignore this for now. We'll work through it if the issue comes up.

So that's it! We have begun! You can send more than one photo at a time if you like. Let me know if you have any problems. You should also receive an email confirmation after we receive your photos and they will be instantly available in the photo gallery.

So to sum up:

1) Send photos to photos@photos.truckingtruth.com

2) Add a caption if you like as the subject of the email

3) Done!

Visit our Photo Gallery and check em out!

Thanks!

Is there a way to use a pic I posted as my profile pic?

Is there a way to use a pic I posted as my profile pic?

Not a simple way yet, but that's one of the features I'll be adding. When you're viewing your photos you're going to see an option that will say something to the effect of "Use this photo as my profile pic". You'll click on that and BAM - it's done.

For now, you can either tell me which picture you'd like to use and I'll set it for you or you can do this:

1) From the photo gallery, click on the image to open it

2) Right-click on the image and choose "Properties" or "Image Properties" and look for the source of the image. Should be a full address like:

//photos.truckingtruth.com/pics/31/1394012294.0361.jpg

3) Copy the source of the image

4) Click on "Menu" near the top right of the screen and choose "My Profile"

5) Click on the link at the top of your profile that says "Update My Profile"

6) Then paste the image source you copied a minute ago into the form where it says "Avatar Address" and hit "save"

That picture will now be your avatar.

I'll have the easy version of this up and running in a few days.

As photos come in I'll be tweaking the settings a bit and making sure everything is functioning well. Over the course of the next few days to a week I'll be adding features continuously.

It worked thanks.

Awesome!

You're going to be crazy out of your mind keeping up with this. Hashtag is going to compile a giant gallery of pictures.

Women and their pictures... Never will I understand!

You're going to be crazy out of your mind keeping up with this. Hashtag is going to compile a giant gallery of pictures.

Women and their pictures... Never will I understand!

I hope a lot of people amass huge galleries! That would be great!

Actually I don't have to keep up with it at all. I've written the code to automate the entire system. The pics come in, they get processed into different sizes, it figures out who sent them, puts em in the file system, and the info goes in the database. I don't have to do anything at all manually. And from the preliminary pictures that have come in it looks like I'll be able to store close to 1,000,000 photos on a 100 GB drive. It's probably going to take a little time to get that many.

I'm seriously excited about this though. We've already gotten some really cool pics and it's only been a few hours. I'm hoping I've made this system quick and easy enough that people won't mind snapping some cool pics when they get a moment. I mean, the whole process can be done in about 30 seconds. It's effortless to email a quick pic. And if you're on your home computer you can send in bunches of pictures at a time. You don't have to just send one at a time.

Note: PLEASE don't send hundreds of pictures at a time!

Keep the limit to maybe 10 at a time right now and I'll let you guys know how many it can handle when I test it. The limit at one time might be 25 MB per email so that would limit how many you can send. It will depend on how high the resolution is set on your camera.

But I love seeing people's smiling faces when they get their CDL or they're standing in front of their first truck all shiny and sparkling in the sun. Personally I was never one to take a lot of pictures. But here on TruckingTruth I really get a kick out of getting to know everyone and seeing them progress through the early stages of their career. It's such a blast for me. The pictures are a ton of fun to look at!

So send pictures people!!!!

Oh, and lastly - don't worry. Right now the actual page that shows the photos is just super, super basic. I have a long, awesome set of features planned that I'll be rolling out over the next few days to a week. So every day you should see new features in the gallery. I'll announce em as I build em. But I just didn't want to get too ahead of myself with features until I received some pictures to make sure the system is processing them properly across all devices. So far, so good! So I'll start adding more features tomorrow.

Now get out those cameras! I wanna see some pics rollin in!!

Ok so we've had some photos come in and I'm pretty pumped about that! Now what I'd like to do is get some ideas for features you guys would like.

The biggest challenge is making it easy to find photos you'd like to see. Maybe you want to see mountain scenery. Maybe you'd like to see the latest photos that came in. Maybe you'd like to see all the photos from just one of our members. Maybe you'd like to see photos of the first truck that people were ever assigned as solo drivers. There's a lot of options. So one of the things I'm going to do is allow people to tag photos. I'm going to come up with a pre-defined set of tags to choose from and at the same time let people type in their own if they like.

So the first question is "What pre-defined tags should we use?" I'd like to hear some ideas for photos you guys would like to see and add to your collections. Here's some of my ideas:

Pics From Truck Driving School
Got My CDL!
My First Day On The Road
My First Training Truck
My First Solo Truck
My First Solo Delivery
My One Year Anniversary
Meeting TT Members On The Road
Pictures Of Me
Pictures of Family
Pictures of Home
Beautiful Scenery
Funny Pics
Selfies!

Can you guys think of any other events or types of pictures you'd like to categorize? Lay em on me!

The second question I have is do you guys want to be able to categorize your photos into albums? Personally I feel the tags might make this unnecessary because you can tag photos any way you like. So you can group photos by tag the same way you would be album. But maybe you guys prefer to have both albums and tags? Let me know.

The last question also pertains to finding photos you would like to see. Now without a doubt we're going to get some real gems. I mean, photos that make you think, "OMG everyone has to see this!!!!!" the first time you see it. This brings up two possibilities:

1) Would you guys like to be able to somehow vote on photos - maybe a thumb's up or a "this is awesome!" button so that over time people can view people's favorites?

2) Would you like to be able to mark photos as a "favorite"? It wouldn't just be limited to your photos. You could mark any photos as favorites. That way you'll be able to find them quickly anytime you like. And only you would know which ones you marked as favorites.

So to sum up:

1) Any ideas for pre-defined tags?

2) Should we use albums or not?

3) Would you like a "this is awesome" button for photos?

4) Would you like to mark photos as "favorites"?

I'll be adding more features today to the gallery and I'll let you guys know when I have something new.

Thanks!!!!

Brett this is great. At least now I can post pics. Just wish I could figure out how to post the city I am headed to on the tracker.

Brett this is great. At least now I can post pics. Just wish I could figure out how to post the city I am headed to on the tracker.

I didn't build that option into the system. I just figured the state might be good enough to get an idea where people are going. I could easily add the city to it also though. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like anyone is really using the TT Tracker all that much. I like looking at it to see where everyone is, but other than that there's very little activity.

Ya know, I just thought of something that might make it much easier to use the tracker. I could easily setup a system for emailing in things like your destination the same way we're emailing photos. For instance I could set it up where you send an email to dest@dest.truckingtruth.com and for the subject just type "Memphis, TN, 3/10" and hit "send". I would receive that and update your destination as Memphis, TN on March 10th.

I could even setup the system so that you could GET information that way. Like I could setup an email address so that you could retrieve everyone's destinations by email. For instance you could send an email to tracker@tracker.truckingtruth.com with the subject "All" and it would instantly return an email with a list of everyone's destinations:

Jimmy2121 - Memphis, TN March 10th
JohhnyRay - Dayton, OH March 9th
BillyBob - Dallas, TX March 11th

You could do the same thing but put a person's username as the subject and get their information, including a map of their current location and their destination.

I'm trying to think of ways to make it super quick and easy to interact with each other from the road. I'm always begging for ideas so if anyone has suggestions or ideas let me know!