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Fotopic

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midlandred

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Hi all

Anyone else p155ed off with Fotopic - the search function continues not to work, help tickets go unanswered

I'd like to move to another such site, but would there be a way of migrating the images downloaded to Fotopic onto another site?

I don't really fancy starting all over again!

And does anyone recommend a hosting site with similar functionality to Fotopic?

Cheers

MRed
 
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Matt Taylor

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Fotopic is a complete waste of time at the moment, but there is a replacement on the horizon.

http://pikfu.com/

It is in Beta testing at the moment I think and the guy behind it is the same guy who started fotopic, as a result it should have the same kind of functionality as fotopic and I understand that you will be able to transfer your fotopic galleries to the new site.

They have a Google Group if you want more info:

https://groups.google.com/group/former-fotopic-users/topics?hl=en
 

anthony263

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fotopic is mostly dead. the search option hasn't worked since at least december.

I have already started removing my pics and uploading onto flickr
 

Matt Taylor

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That is a good idea, but I don't like the layout of Flickr and I don't fancy uploading the 7000 shots on Fotopic.
 

midlandred

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Thanks Matt for the info - that sounds interesting if galleries could be downloaded
I don't particularly like Flickr, and certainly don't want to download several thousand images for a number of galleries

MR
 
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Can't even log on to the fotopic website at the moment, says web address could not be found. It's a great pity if that's the end of it, it was a fantastic resource when it worked.
 

45669

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Can't even log on to the fotopic website at the moment, says web address could not be found. It's a great pity if that's the end of it, it was a fantastic resource when it worked.

This seems to be happening more and more frequently. It usually comes back to life again after a while so, hopefully, it wil come back on again later today.

It isn't very satisfactory though. Like others, I am beginning to wonder whether there are better alternatives.
 

almark

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Certainly I will be trying to transfer my gallery to Pikfu when its complete,can't afford to lose captions for 12k of shots
 

45669

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Fotopic is a complete waste of time at the moment, but there is a replacement on the horizon.

http://pikfu.com/

It is in Beta testing at the moment I think and the guy behind it is the same guy who started fotopic, as a result it should have the same kind of functionality as fotopic and I understand that you will be able to transfer your fotopic galleries to the new site.

They have a Google Group if you want more info:

https://groups.google.com/group/former-fotopic-users/topics?hl=en

Are there any members of the Google Group on here that can tell us if there is any news regarding today's disappearance?
 

Oliver

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Fotopic is a complete waste of time at the moment, but there is a replacement on the horizon.

http://pikfu.com/

.....and I understand that you will be able to transfer your fotopic galleries to the new site.

But if Fotopic never returns there will be no direct way to transfer galleries to PIKFU or any other system. Presumably most of us have the jpegs of the photos we've loaded, but recreating correct captions will be a nightmare.
 
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adamp

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Pretty gutting when your hard-drive breaks - all data is lost, and then your only hope being Fotopic, zaps into thin air...bad times!
 

theblackwatch

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Pretty gutting when your hard-drive breaks - all data is lost, and then your only hope being Fotopic, zaps into thin air...bad times!

Should always have a back-up! Memory sticks, external hard drives, CDs/DVDs, etc - there isn't really an excuse for not doing so.
 

adamp

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Should always have a back-up! Memory sticks, external hard drives, CDs/DVDs, etc - there isn't really an excuse for not doing so.

Ohhh dont you worry I realise that now!! Not too sure why I didnt at the time either! Very big lesson learnt....ALWAYS back your data up folks!!!!!
 

RPM

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I've still got all the thousands and thousands of pictures backed up. That's not the issue. It is the captions, introductory text in each section, and the time taken to organise the sites and upload everything.
 

33056

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I've still got all the thousands and thousands of pictures backed up. That's not the issue. It is the captions, introductory text in each section, and the time taken to organise the sites and upload everything.
Exactly. I have decided to go with Zenfolio ( shameless plug ) ! Uploading the stuff is a doddle, just drag and drop, but writing the captions is a bind; though it is actually easier than Fotopic was as you type in a box and can see the complete text you have written.

One good thing is that it has forced me into doing a "spring clean", I had been thinking about going through Fotopic for ages and clearing out some of the rubbish on there - now it has been forced on me, I just have to try and remember to weed it out before hitting the upload button
 

merlodlliw

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Copy is put up with permission http://www.nwrail.org.uk/nwnews.htm

Many hundreds of rail enthusiasts, including several contributors to this site, have in recent years developed their own very successful pictorial websites, some of them very comprehensive and scholarly, using the Fotopic service (www.fotopic.net), only to find that on 9 March their whole site disappeared from the Web and at the time of writing (21 March) has still not re-appeared, all fotopic.net addresses report 'not found.'

Fotopic was started some years ago by a Yorkshire-based couple, who had developed it originally for their own use and then decided to offer it to the public as a free basic service with the option to pay for more disk space and other added features. In 2008, without much publicity at the time, they sold it to a rather faceless company called 'Snappy Designs' who, we understand, recently moved the servers from Yorkshire to the London area.




Since the loss of the service, nobody has been able to make any kind of contact with the operators, and no announcement was made about what has happened. Has the machine been struck by hackers, or stolen, or has the company failed, or what? Very strange and worrying, especially since there are user contact details stored on the server. There is a Facebook page which seems to be the place to find discussion about the situation.

Our sympathies go to those whose work has gone missing - some of our own small collections are among them. A number of the links on our pages will no longer work, but we'll leave them there for the time being, just in case.

Bob .
 

RPM

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Exactly. I have decided to go with Zenfolio

I've opened a trial account with Zenfolio but I'm a bit half hearted about it. Can I risk redoing all that work only to find that hosing site goes belly-up too?:|
 

ralphchadkirk

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I've opened a trial account with Zenfolio but I'm a bit half hearted about it. Can I risk redoing all that work only to find that hosing site goes belly-up too?:|

That's the risk you take when put stuff on the Internet. The only solution is to own and run your own server and keep it in your house.
 

Mojo

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Or another option may be to buy webhosting and install a free gallery like Coppermine or zenphoto.
 

matt

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You're still at the mercy of the hosting company.

But its easier for you to back up your sites if you use coppermine etc as you can also back up your database as well as your photos.
 

Mojo

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With Fotopic you could do both...
But what format could it be saved in and how easy can you do it?

In the extremely unlikely event that a reputable hosting company goes Awol, if you have a backup you can upload everything back onto the net and have an identical website in the time it takes to upload the files you have stored locally. To restore the SQL database, including settings, captions, gallery names, etc. using a simple tool would take less than 60 seconds.
 

ralphchadkirk

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But what format could it be saved in and how easy can you do it?

In the extremely unlikely event that a reputable hosting company goes Awol, if you have a backup you can upload everything back onto the net and have an identical website in the time it takes to upload the files you have stored locally. To restore the SQL database, including settings, captions, gallery names, etc. using a simple tool would take less than 60 seconds.

I'm not sure what format it does it in, but it could be easily done.

The backup process is easier with a hosting company - just reupload your home directory, and re-import the SQL file into your database using BigDump or similar, but you're still at the mercy of the hosting company, and if you didn't make backups of your Fotopic, who says you will do it with your server? It's more than likely that you think it must be safe now I've paid sometime, but it's a false sense of security.
 

matt

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When I used a fotopic backup tool in the past it saved the captions as a text based file so the captions would have to be individually typed back onto a different site.
 

Mojo

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The backup process is easier with a hosting company - just reupload your home directory, and re-import the SQL file into your database using BigDump or similar, but you're still at the mercy of the hosting company, and if you didn't make backups of your Fotopic, who says you will do it with your server? It's more than likely that you think it must be safe now I've paid sometime, but it's a false sense of security.
Well firstly you're acting as if the chances of a reliable and trustworthy hosting company going down forever is likely. It isn't. Fotopic was a largely free service with additional features which you pay for. Pick a hosting company and you are much better protected against someone running off with your money (and data). You're probably more likely to lose your data in a server stored at home than one which you pay a hosting company for (especially one which does constant automatic backups).

Secondly, I'd imagine you're much more likely to carry out your own backups on a website than Fotopic because:
1. The backup tool isn't hidden away at the rear end of some website somewhere
2. The backup tool doesn't produce the backup in an Dickensian structure which won't ever be of any use ever again unless you're willing to spend hours (or days) re-inputting everything it's saved
 
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