How to use new features.

In case you have not yet notice the beloved creator of CoinTalk @Peter T Davis has provided us with TWO new Features. They can be found right next to "Forums" at the top just below the CT logo. They are called Gallery and Showcase.

I will first teach you about the Gallery. Here you will be able to create an album and upload photos of your coins there. So without further due here is the Gallery.
It has been a few hours since launch and some members already created some neat albums. I have created the NGC and PCGS Registry sets albums. Within these Albums any member can post photos there. The default setting is that only you can upload photos but you have the option to change that. Now if you want to add photos of your registry set to the page simply click add photos and then select the file from your computer and they will upload to the album.
Next if you want to create your own Album click on Create new album at the top right. You will be taken to a page just like the one shown below.

I wrote down some information before I took the picture. I will expand of "Streams". These are essentially tags that allow people to find your album quicker. For instance if you write Morgan dollar in the streams box everyone that searches Morgan dollar will see your album under the search results. Please note that if you want to add more than 1 stream you have to separate them using a comma,

So that is all there is to it for the Gallery feature. But there is one last thing. not only can you add photos but you can also upload videos as well. I think this could be a great educational resource fairly soon.

Moving on to the Showcase. The showcase feature is a place where members can rate your coins on a basis of 1-5 stars. If you want to add your coin to the showcase click on create item.


So once you click on create item you will be taken to the page below.

Just as before I added some information inside the photo that you should read. once you fill out the General information, description, and name of your coin it is time to upload some photos. Click on Upload images to Gallery in the bottom middle. Then select the files from your computer. Once the photos finish uploading click on create item. Your Coin will now be displayed in the showcase.

The next step is the rating feature. Once you uploaded that fancy coin that is going to make everyone drool you get to sit back and see what the CT community thinks. They can rate your coin in the showcase anywhere between 1 and 5 stars. While you wait to see if your coin is the best around you can vote on other members coins in the showcase. To do this you must click on the coin that is in the showcase.






Once you finish examining the photos and reading the General information click on Rate this item at the bottom middle. As soon as you do that a small box appears allowing you to rate the coin 1,2,3,4,or 5 stars. Once you decided on how many stars a coin receives click on submit rating and you are done!


Rate carefully as you can never revise your rating.

The next part to the showcase feature is the alerts. The red flag will display above the showcase tab and not under your actual alerts. If you find that these alerts are annoying just make the following changes shown below and those alerts that you don't want will be gone.



That's all there is to it with the showcase feature.I think this will be a very popular feature among the community. The reason being is that I believe it is a great way to show off our prized collections but at the same time decide who has the greatest coins in town. So there may be some competition around here with everyone trying to get the best coins to get the highest ratings. it should be interesting.

I hope everyone enjoys these new features. Give thanks to all of our CT supporter Members that made these features a reality on CoinTalk.

 

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The showcase seems an interesting addition to CT. What's the general vision for it? Seems a bit redundant to the albums pages and that a members albums link is hidden in the tabs on a users profile page behind the "photos" tab. Just seems like a lot of excess navigating points. For example...

When navigating to the "Showcase" one lands on a 'gallery' type page displaying many different images. Clicking on a thumbnail image there that interests you, you land on the tab for "General Information" rather than an enlarged coin image or any coin image at all, and it seems in some cases there may be little to no "information" there meaning you have to hit the image tab to display the visual content that likely drew you there.

Is there anyway to rearrange things so that users land on the image rather than the info page for those who post no image in the general information page, or to merge information and images onto just one page(tab)?

Will other tabs be added?

How does the "rating" feature work-- will one's rating perpetually accumulate over time based on hits by unique users or does it "close" like a poll after some period of time? It seems that with "rating this item" the system is intended if only images of just one item are posted, however, some Showcase items already contain more than one item, such as 'Gold Buffalo herd', containing an array of coins in one image file, plus a stamp, a souvenir card reproduction of "Pablo" from the $5 note, et al. In this case the overall rating is for the entire showcase and not an individual coin or note. So I was curious what the overall difference or point of the rating feature is for other than acting as a glorified range to a simple "like" button. Rather than this system counting likes, it's somehow over time tallying, in a hidden(?) fashion, the number and value of likes in a 5-star system, and cumulatively showing a rating, rather than number of unique likes. A Like is just a Yes vote, but a 5-star rating system becomes what...?

Also, so far I don't see uploaded images in Showcase pages that can be enlarged by clicking on them the way images in other parts of CT threads do, is that not possible here?

 

Things about uploading photos... Showcase vs. Albums (Create an Album).

It appears options for uploading photos differs in these two features. It is limited to locally uploading images from a desktop file when you "Create an album" but in Showcase you can upload photos locally stored on your computer using the 'upload photo to gallery' button, which then creates a tabbed page of images posted in the Showcase, or you can enter a URL in the "General Information" box, allowing remotely stored images to appear in this tab.

In Showcase, on the General Information page, I could upload via a link (URL) to images hosted on other sites, the way I post all of my images to CT, from a Photobucket account. In this aspect it's just like commenting in any forum thread and adding a link to the body of your post. When doing this, the Showcase item doesn't have an additional tab for "photos", just one General Information page.

However, in attempting to "create an album" there appears to be no way to link images hosted on other sites, limiting those of us who post images in this way.

Furthermore, just after creating a Showcase the item wasn't added immediately. Is there a delay before it appears on CT? The only way to find the Showcase item I added was to hunt though the links on my user profile page.It's there and viewable but not in the location where I thought I created the Showcase.

Incidentally, will the ability of a user to "edit" expire the way forum threads do after a set period of time? Or can a showcase item be deleted at any time, say if one sells the coin or has other reasons to remove it from the forum/showcase?

I have to say that having so many tabs all over for images we host is a bit confusing knowing which one is doing what. I note that we now have two tabs on our profile page for "showcase" and "photos" and inside "photos" you have "albums" and "photos" (again) and "videos" and "tagged photos"... then on the top of the CT pages you have "gallery" and "showcase"... is anyone else feeling dizzy from so many options for the same thing, yet?

 

Regarding Showcase categories, when selecting a "category" some distinctions for Paper Money would be nice to include as it's an active part of CT. At least U.S. and World banknote categories, but perhaps sub categories for U.S. notes such as Colonial notes, Federal Reserve Notes (large and small sizes), National Bank Notes (L/S), Legal Tenders (L/S), Confederate, Souvenir Cards, Checks, Stock Certificates, Tickets, etc. Likewise, Exonumia: Medals, Tokens, fantasy coins, elongated, replicas, et al. would flesh this out more to include the interests of the wider forum users.

 

So it's over 40 minutes since I uploaded an item to Showcase and it's not yet displayed in the "recently added" batch. However, it appears on my CT user profile page Showcase list, here. How long should this take to be added to the "main"(?) Showcase section?

 

Now someone has liked the item I posted in the Showcase, but I still don't see the item (link above) IN the Showcase section when I click that link at the top of the CT page. Why is that? Other new items are starting to appear there. Not sure why I don't see the one I put up there.

 

Yes, it's there, but it's not here:

https://www.cointalk.com/showcase/

I had used the "create item" link, ON that page.

 

That's puzzling and misleading to call it a showcase with a buttom to add an item ON that page, if you create something that will not be shown there. How are people to find what you added and view it to get it to appear there?

Shouldn't it at least show what was "most recent"(ly) added to that section, at least in that one strip of images? I saw other "recently added" show up there after I uploaded an item.

 

It occurs to me that if I place the URL to my coin image in the "General Information" box and do not click the button, "upload images to gallery" that my image will not appear in the Showcase link, even though it does appear in my user profile page under the Showcase tab. However, to use that "upload images to gallery" link seems to require uploading images locally from your computer without the option to upload via a URL, remote from another image hosting site.

Does that concur with others' understanding of how this works>?

 

Following a test upload, an image uploaded manually by attaching a file from my computer via the "upload images to gallery" button, the coin image now displays in the Showcase "recently added" list of images. Buy posting the image URL hosted on Photobucket into the General Information box the coin image appears there and in the "Image Gallery" due to the file attached and upload from my computer.

So without using "upload images to gallery" despite starting out on that page to "create item" your upload just goes to a Showcase link on your profile page(?)...

What still confuses me is that previously the image which wasn't displaying on the main Showcase page, was attracting views, but I don't know where it was visible since it would not appear ON the main Showcase page.

 

Yes the showcase feature requires you to upload the photos from the files in your computer only. If no photos are displayed in your showcase or album it will not appear under recently added.

 

This seems rather limiting to only accept attached files from a computer, since many users upload from image hosting sites like Photobucket and others may opt to use those services especially if traveling, at a coin show or solely using Apps to access coin images via smartphones and tablets rather than desktop/lap top computers. I don't use Taptalk but am curious how this feature will or wont work for those users, too. Something else to pass onto the developer to perhaps expand the ways in which to share images in the Showcase/Gallery features.

 

So it looks like 20 images is the maximum you can have in a "showcase" album.
So if you have more, you create album 2, 3, 4, etc

 

I noticed that in Showcase > Create Item the number of allowed individual image files was 10. (see screen shot attached)


"Albums" only seem to exist under the "photos" tab in the users profile page, and despite uploading an image to the Showcase, that image file (photo) does NOT appear in my "photos" tab in the user profile page Albums/Photos/Videos display.

Very confusing!

 

There's a red flag with a number above the the showcase icon, how do you get rid of it, the number keeps getting bigger, when you click on your inbox tab after you open it the red flag go's away.

Also since you are doing a lot of new stuff could you install a live P Metals price banner, so i don't have to leave and find a moving price. Thank you for what you do..

 

If using your phone at a coin show you can upload files from your phone if you are using cointalk in the phone's browser. Can't say for tapatalk I'll go ahead and test it right now.

 

I inquired about and pushed for the precious metals thing for a long time and nothing ever came of it either. Seems like a simple widget to add, especially useful for the PM forum area of CT.