Class Site Proposal

Class Site Proposal

Worth a Thousand Words (working title only)

By Megan Swaine

Everyone has one sitting on their mantle- some of them are self-explanatory, but some of them are not. Some of them have a story that only the person who owns it can tell. But through sheer ties of emotion, the impact of a photo can be so much more.

So what if, everyone could share those stories? They can encourage each other to more closely reconsider the moment in time which a photograph captures.

I propose a site where anyone and everyone can share their favourite photograph and the story behind it. They can explain why a specific photo is unique, or what makes it particularly special to them. The emphasis of this site will be the stories- we can’t stop people from spinning yarns, but in the tradition of storytelling, if the story is good, it won’t matter. In many cases though, truth is stranger than fiction, so people need not invent to have a good story to go with a picture.

Audience

My target market is mature, serious individuals that have a story to tell with a picture. There will be a section for more humourous or crudely-minded individuals, but generally the reading level doesn't matter so long as the story is told in the best way the storyteller can. It’ll be the sort of site that people can just browse into to look at, or register and start uploading pictures themselves. Users can register to the site, create an account, and log on every time they want to upload photos and stories. I would like to see a comments feature and a rating option for each photo, so we can keep track of the most popular pictures. I would also like to have web forums that can discuss various aspects of the site or photos that they’ve seen on the site or anywhere else, for that matter. The audience of this site is defined by a common interest in stories.

Content

This site is about pictures (photos) that have a story behind them, or relating to them. Therefore, the bulk of the content will be photos with accompanied text. The newest ones will be linked on the main page, with ratings and any warnings about sensitive content. The rest of the photos will be stored in the 'archive', to be organized by date, category or rank (these options will probably be in small drop-down menus at the top of the page). There will also be unique sections – Fiction, 18+, etc. that will be organized in the same way. It will all be displayed as regular text and images using HTML, with a little bit of javascript where necessary, and whatever coding is required to do uploading, posting comments, etc.

Layout

The site will be organized with a standard top nav interface, and some very subdued colours like browns and beiges. I want to give the look and feel of a classic photo album, but in a way that is still very casual. The user will navigate the site in a standard way via mouse on the top-nav menu, which will link to the main sections of the site. Hopefully there will be background graphics that reflect the theme, but will be passive enough to not make the site look 'tacky'. For instance, maybe if the background was parchment texture, and the pictures had little photo corners.

Architecture

The main sections of the site will be, the main page, the archive (which will be divided into three parts), the members section, the message board, and a contact page for the administrators.

The main page will have the top nav, 'photo of the month', newest pics and a small 'updates' sidebar on the right. All photos will have a maximum size allowance, and will automatically be placed on the left in the centre space of the page, with the corresponding text (maximum of 1000 words) on the right. The archive page will have the top nav, as well as an additional menu to navigate through the different photo sections. All of them will have a small drop-down menu to organize the photos by date, rank or name. Since the site is not hugely complex, it would be most convenient for the user to be able to access a large percentage of the site from any given page.

All of the members' profiles will also allow users to see a list of all photos a specific person has posted.

The site will be made using HTML, and javascript or whatever is necessary for uploading pictures, posting comments, etc.

Maintenance

The site will be kept live by users constantly adding new stories/pictures which will appear on the main page. There will be necessary moderation of the message boards, as well as troubleshooting any 'bugs' that there might be in the website (there will likely be a section on the message board pertaining to this), as well as taking suggestions. The site will exist as long as people keep posting, and if that stops then it will hold no purpose. Topics will probably remain more or less constant, but will only change with historic context.

Marketing

A good marketing strategy for this sort of site would be to find a prominent ('branded') camera or photo-related company to link to. This would vastly increase the options available for advertising. We could also do simple/basic advertising like posters and word-of-mouth. Similar types of sites are photo-logs (kind of like a blog and a photo album combined) like fotopages.com. These are often used by people who travel, and want to exhibit pictures they've taken, or people that just generally want pictures to go with their text in a journal (or want more pictures than text). Another similar site is foundmagazine.com, which is a site/magazine focusing on found items like photos or notes that are interesting or could have a story behind them. It uses random items and turns them into art. This proposed site would differ from the photo-logs mainly by focusing on the story aspect, and the idea of it being a comprehensive photo-album, rather than a journal. It would also differ drastically from foundmagazine.com for the reason that it is not strictly art based. Tie-ins would be possible for either one of these, but mostly as a linked site with similar subject matter. Again, finding a large, photo-based, but specifically family-oriented company would also be useful in promoting their online presence.

Roles

To build this site, somebody with general experience in HTML can do most of the coding , but someone with more complex know-how will have to design (or employ) the code for registration, image/story submission, the message board, and the ratings system.

Someone would have to design the visuals- background images, colour co-ordination, etc.. There will also have to be people to handle Moderating, troubleshooting, money (for bandwidth and webspace and such) and marketing. For marketing someone will have to design flyers and find a photo company that might like our idea.

Example

This whole idea sprouted from the redesign of my personal photo gallery at: http://phinuxfoto.blogspot.com/