Shipbucket

Gollevainen and I are pleased to announce that work (by a paid, for-hire professional developer) is about to begin on completely revamping the Shipbucket website. The new website will feature searchable, indexed drawings (each with revision history attached), author profile creation, a basic "parts control" system, and most importantly, approved members will receive up to 50MB of drawing storage space on the Shipbucket server itself. This means you will not have to use imgur, photobucket, tinypic, imageshack, or any of the other image hosts for your Shipbucket work!

Further details will follow as we build the system. Once the new system first gets brought online, we will be recruiting a small cadre of "approvers" who will have edit access to the archive and be responsible for approving/rejecting user-submitted drawings. The initial setup for this new, database-driven system will likely require an "all hands on deck" approach and we can basically guarantee that anyone who has contributed any amount of drawings and remained relatively active will be chosen for this group.

In the meantime, you can support this effort by sending donations to the Shipbucket paypal address (administered by Gollevainen and I) to help cover the cost of the contracted developer's project time. Gollevainen and I will be funding this rather large effort from our own pockets, so any assistance from the community will be appreciated. Gollevainen will be posting his paypal details for those interested shortly.

If you have any questions about this process, please post in this thread.

edit:

Some clarifications (after a lengthy discussion below):

1. The "50MB of personal storage space" figure is not set in stone and this amount will change as we evaluate the needs of the community. Depending on hosting requirements, we may actually be able to provide an unlimited amount of storage space to approved users.

2. Donations to Shipbucket to help cover the cost of this project will earn membership in the "Admiral's Club" membergroup as well as a red user title (if you choose). We will explore the option of having tiered storage space available to those who donate.

3. Expected timeframe for completion of this project is early summer 2017.

The donation paypal address is: [email protected]. All assistance is greatly appreciated!

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

Great news! I think this is good for SB!
Few questions/thoughts:
* Are we getting rid of trolls with this solution ?
* Are we having closed sections (excluding beginners-section) with password? I think we should

Shipbucket is a brand nowadays and honour for that belongs to Colo and Golly. To preserve that, we'll need all of us here; enthusiasts for drawing ships & planes & vechicles & guns etc.
I've donated 50€ for SB earlier; How much you are willing to pay?

Sounds interesting (though we all heard interesting announcements here before, didn't we?), and I am willing to donate if it's at last bring some meaningful results.
That said, while I am aware that exact cost might not be known at this point, could You give us all at least some basic idea of what amount of money is approximately needed, at least by order of magnitude?
And one more thing - in general, it would be certainly prudent not to have this new website "designed by a popular vote" (because as they say "camel is a horse designed by a popular vote" - or "by a committee" in other version), but are You planning to allow some expression of opinions by community about specific elements of functionality (what users think will be most needed or how they think it should work etc.)?

P.S. Don't want to criticize, but my combined SB and FD works are already in 48MB range (ok, FD is some 44MB of it, and that includes some yet-unpublished stuff ).

This is not a democracy, this is an dictatorship


only 48Mb.... I have Gb of Gb of drawings that I have posted, haven't posted yet and drawings that I will not post...

Can you elaborate on what exactly this means? I'm not really sure.
We hadn't considered this, but I don't think there's any reason we would create closed sections of the forum. At the moment there is no change planned to how the forums are operated or organized.
I absolutely agree and understand - this "announcement" is hardly new. The difference this time is that we have contracted a professional developer (not just a friend of mine or a roommate who wants to code for free) and results will actually be delivered.
I would prefer not to discuss the specific amount in public, but the rate is in the thousands of USD - this is to ensure quality of the delivered product and later support after the project is completed.
Yes, we will certainly be listening to the community while designing the system. I have already posted a few topics about this and refined my specifications based on feedback the community has provided. At the end of the day, though, the ultimate decision for how we will organize and build the system lies with Gollevainen and myself.
This is a very nice thing to know and I'm glad you mentioned it! I forgot to clarify that this "50MB" of space we mentioned earlier is reserved for the user's personal designs and AU work; any real life Shipbucket or FD scale work will be hosted on the site's public storage without any impact to the user's personal storage space. Also, the "50MB" figure is a ballpark number until we decide what amount most people will need.

Please keep the questions and requests coming, it helps us to get a sense of what the community would require in this sort of system.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

after this is done, perhaps change the paypal over to an donation system... thus get the ability to get in some money to run the system.

It could be just a icon visible on the site, with some standard amount of money, that you can donate (so it's easy and no one is forced to guess what other give... and feel pressured to give what they believe other gives. some dollars here and some dollars there, will end up being quite a bit of dollars at one point)


We are lucky to not have advertising on this site. donation can avoid that happens in the future.

Question/Suggestion: Would we use the 50 mb for WIP work (such as works posted on the forums waiting for comments) or only for the uploading of AU/ personal designs? I personally loved the wiki we had for the personal designs, 50 mb for work in progress and stuff not yet perfected so it can be on the main site archive (or on the wiki, in case of the own designs) should be plenty IMO, but if I have to keep old stuff there as well indefenitely I think some people will get it filled pretty fast

that said, I assume space for parts and part sheets will also not go from the 50 mb?

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

I agree with the donation system. I admit I usually avoid such buttons most of the time, but I've been known to donate for things I believe in (I believe in you bucket!).
Maybe something like Patreon could work? There's probably a lot to be said about this and surely a convenient system will be found. Also, your dev will probably want to charge you for continuous support after a while.

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w o r k l i s t :
Hatsuyuki-class Escort Ships . . . <3

Yes, this is a good suggestion - I like the idea of having $1, $5, $20, $50 etc. as one-click options for donations.
The personal storage space will be yours to manage (same as you manage a personal dropbox or photobucket account). Thus, feel free to upload WIPs, later revisions, etc to this space, but be aware that you (as the owner) are responsible for cleaning it and keeping it under whatever limit we impose. Keep in mind that there may not even be a limit for established users!

I'm picturing a sort of "public" folder available for users who want their own work to be searchable in the archive, and "private" folders (that are still linkable from the forum) for storing WIPs and personal work that they don't want to be viewable to anyone searching the site.
No. Parts sheets for real designs would be considered part of the site's public drawing repository and thus not impose on the submitting author's storage space.
I like the idea of using Patreon but I think for now we'll just stick with a paypal account to send donations to.

I also would like to clarify that, at this time, donations will be treated as donations and NOT as "subscriptions" or some sort of paid rank upgrade - if you are donating with the express purpose of obtaining a forum title or attempting to "buy" a position on this website, please don't bother! *

edit (9 March): We have decided against this. Donators will receive the "Admiral's Club" (red) forum title, but no special privileges.

These are all great questions that are helping me work out "rules" for how the system will work - please keep them coming.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

As a user of the site, I don't mind it at all, but I do look forwards to the new site which I'm glad has gathered this level of interest.

Also glad that it is not possible to buy influence, though would it be possible, for a certain amount, to pay for enough server space that raises ones personal limit, either individually or as a collective?

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