Social, revamped.

Bongiorno!

As you know, sharing your social identity is a fundamental feature of Pictually. Moreover, I feel it was definitely time for an update.

The social icons have been completely revamped, courtesy of the awesome people at IconDock (http://icondock.com/).

And that’s not it! I’ve taken the time to add a few new names to our social lineup, now 38 strong. The newest additions:

About.me, Designbump, Photobucket, Picasa, Posterous, Quora, Reddit, and Yelp

What are you waiting for? Time to update your profile!

See you soon,

Julian

Concerning Curiosity (not the rover)

Hey there! It’s been a while!

A quick announcement before we get down to business. Besides a revamped home and user panel, members can now register on Pictually through Facebook and Twitter! The wait is over!

For those of you who registered before the update, I am planning on implementing a feature allowing you to transfer to the new 1-click login system. However, if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait, shoot me an e-mail and we’ll make the move individually ASAP!

And now, for the business end of the post. I felt it was high time I satisfy your curiosity and publish a couple stats! So without further ado:

  • 600 000+ hits since May, with a current average of 70 000 hits per month.
  • A current average of around 1400 different visitors per month with 2200 total visits.
  • The site boasts just under 1100 members.
  • The next big step will be premium accounts, offering more functionality, space, layouts, a mobile-optimised profile, analytics, and eventually more.
  • The audience is predominantly American, French, Swedish and Spanish.

None of this would be possible without you, and therefore I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of you who have made this possible.

So thanks!

Julian

Infinity and beyond

Howdy!

I’d first of all like to thank everyone for the positive feedback thus far, and I’m glad Pictually has made even the slightest of impacts. In the spirit of this gratitude, I’d like to quickly go over a few of the features with upmost priority which will be added in the near future!

  • Social integration for sign-ups. E-mails and passwords are a drag… I hope to add atleast Facebook and Twitter integration as soon as possible, allowing you all to log-in and sign up with the single click authentication that we have all come to love so dearly!
  • Enhanced image security. Plagiarism and theft aren’t cool, and Pictually should do its best to protect your work. Legally, your images are protected under a Creative Commons License. However, in order to prevent physical theft, a couple features restricting the copy of images will be pushed live, such as right-click copy restriction (à la Flickr) and optional watermarking options.
  • COMPLETED! Public contact by mail. You might have noticed that you have the option to allow contact by mail from your profile page. By default this feature is disabled. In the near future this feature will be fully available (optionally), alongside with Re-Captcha verification to effectively stop spam.
  • COMPLETED! Finally, image organisation. I have received several requests for the ability to modify the order in which images are displayed, be they in the album or on the featured page. Soon, users will be able to customise this order with the simple click of a button!

These are a mere few of the exciting features I intend on releasing this following month. Pictually is constantly evolving, becoming harder, better, faster, stronger. None of this would be possible without you, so again, thanks!

If you have comments, suggestions, or concerns you would like to voice, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail over at hello@pictually.me. I’ll try to get back to you ASAP!

As always, Pictually loves you.

Auf Wiedersehen,

Julian (Founder of Pictually.me)

[New achievement] 1k users!

Bongiorno!

With exams taken care of, I am happy to announce that work on Pictually will resume ASAP. But first, a quick announcement:

Pictually has officially passed 1000 registered users! Awesome!

A few specs: Pictually’s 1000th user is Ludmila Chaves, who registered on the 1st of July 2012. Congratulations! 

Thank you to all of you who have made this possible, stay cool!

‘Ta luego,

Julian 

The Word on the Tweet

Why, hello there!

Just a few quick announcements from me this time:

  1. Out with the old, in with the new! Pictually.me now sports an awesome new home page! In my opinion, the old home page was a little too cluttered. This new update should change that and hopefully streamline registration.
  2. Equally as important, a few modifications were made to optimize image load times on individual profiles. Images now will have a maximum width of 1500px or a maximum height of 1000px. All new images will be automatically updated, however those uploaded previous to these changes will remain unmodified. Re-uploading your old images is suggested if you feel load times are too slow.

That’s about it!

Stay tuned for some awesome future updates!

Ta luego,

Julian

A Fresh Batch of Updates #2

Guten Tag!

Update time!

I’ve received a couple requests allowing individual profiles to be a little more customizable. That being said, I’m happy to announce that you may now change the colour scheme of your pages, as well as the title font and size!

These are just the start, but hopefully they’ll have a positive effect on how you use Pictually.

To modify these parameters, head over to the “Display settings” tab in your user panel. From there you shouldn’t have any problem modifying your page to your heart’s content.

Teaser alert: in the future, the possibility for different page layouts.

Stay tuned for future updates!

Auf Wiedersehen,

Julian

A Fresh Batch of Updates #1

Bongiorno!

I’m excited to announce that Pictually now sports awesome new search and shuffle functionalities!

Search can be accessed from the home page and individual profiles, and allows partial searches for both users and pages.

As for the shuffle functionality, a neat icon is now present on the sidebar of user profiles. Clicking this icon will show an entirely new user! A couple criteria however dictate what the random profile will be. All random profiles include images, a description, and social icons. This basically ensures the quality of the profile you’ll access!

So to those who’s profiles don’t yet meet the criteria, get to it if you want to become a part of the fun!

These two fundamental features will be progressively ameliorated, future updates being no repeating users in shuffle, better selection criteria, and a pop-out functionality for the search bar.

Enjoy!

Tschuss,

Julian

Technical difficulties

It would seem that for a little while today Pictually was down due to technical difficulties host-side.

Although this isn’t a regular occurrence, it is possible that this happen again in the future.

I ask you simply to remain patient should this be the case, and I thank you in advance for being so!

Merci!

Julian

Announcement time!

Bonjour!

Unfortunately in this world, alpacas running on treadmills are not a viable solution to server space costs, especially considering the support Pictually.me has received these past few days.

To try and counter this lack of alpacas, Pictually.me will in the near future start limiting the currently unlimited space users have.

Consider it essential for the service to thrive (until we can find some pretty damn fast alpacas, that is).

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact Pictually over at hello{at}pictually.me!

On that note, fare-thee-well,

Pictually.you

A quick thanks…

Hey all!

I’d just like to take the time to thank everyone for their patience, invaluable contribution and support thus far. I have received numerous suggestions and a few bug-reports that will both undoubtedly help make Pictually awesome.

Keep up the good work!

Pictually loves you.

Julian