SnowJapan Admin SnowJapan 178 Posted October 31, 2007 SnowJapan Admin Share Posted October 31, 2007 Welcome to Snow Japan 07/08! We have made a lot of changes to SnowJapan this season - far more than we have ever done before in an effort to really bring the site up to date and take some big steps forward. As well as a completely new site design and navigation for the site, there are a number of new sections, a lot of updates to existing functionality and also a completely new website for videos. Before we go into details of the updates, we'd just like to say a sincere thank you to the people who helped us out over the last 5 or 6 months. We started work on all this lot in early May and since that time a number of friends and members have given us valuable feedback and comments about what we were doing. We really do appreciate it. Anyway, below are the main updates & changes that have been made to Snow Japan: NEW SITE DESIGN: The site has a totally new design. We liked the previous design and while the new one has similiarities it is actually totally new and built from scratch - better organised, lighter, cleaner and we hope better looking as well. Every page of the site has been updated into the new look, so check any page of the SnowJapan site pages to see it. Go to any page of the site to check it out. NEW INDEX PAGE: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/index.php There is a new "index" page to the site - the one most people see on their first visit to the site. DETAILED TOWN MAPS: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/japan-ski-town-maps/index.html We have created 23 new detailed Town Maps for many of the main snow resort towns in Japan. These new town maps are based on official maps of the areas and so are quite accurate. Please note that additions to our maps will be made during the month of November and beyond to maximise their usefulness. Just 2 samples of the maps: Yuzawa: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/japan-ski-town-maps/yuzawa/yuzawa.html Shiga Kogen central area: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/japan-ski-town-maps/shiga-kogen-maruike/maruike.html MYOKO NOW DAILY REPORTS: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/daily/myoko-now.php This season sees the addition of a new daily reports section, bringing you daily reports from the Myoko region of Niigata Prefecture. PHOTO UPLOADING: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/insider/photo_gallery_image_uploader.php We have modified the Photos uploading page so that you can now upload up to 5 photos at the same time. PHOTO QUALITY: We have modified the photo mechanism to increase the quality of the photos that you upload. Photos that you upload from now will display at exactly the same quality that you upload them at. The "snowjapan stamp" will also be much smaller and less intrusive than previously and will added at regular intervals rather than instantly on upload. PHOTO SECURITY: We have taken a few steps to prevent people from "stealing" your photos. These steps are by no means perfect, but we hope are an improvement. First of all if people right click on a photo they will be unable to "save" the image. (If you wish to see the URL of the photo, click on the link beneath the photo for that to appear and copy from there). We have also made it so that other websites cannot display photos hosted on SnowJapan - if they try to, a snowjapan logo rather than the image will display. Of course you can still link photos in to threads on these forums as usual. If you have a website and want certain images from SnowJapan to appear on your website, please let us know. One other thing we would like to make clear - photos that you upload remain yours and you are able to delete them at any time. Apart from hosting them on our server, we will not use your photos for any purpose whatsoever. PHOTO GALLERIES: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/insider/reader-photo-galleries.php We have created a new "Photo Galleries" section where all of the user-defined photo galleries that members create are listed and sortable. SNOWJAPAN.TV: http://www.snowjapan.tv This season we wanted to do something with videos and we eventually decided to create a new site just for videos called snowjapan.tv . This is a very new and exciting project for us. We are confident that the site will be fine from the beginning, but it is new and quite complex and so at the beginning there might be some issues that we need to deal with. Please bear with us as this part of the site grows. Any videos that you upload to the site will remain yours and you can delete them at any time. The only initial guidelines we have are that the videos be relevant to the theme of "SnowJapan" and also no advertising videos please. You can also bring the videos into these forums. On each video on the site on the right hand side you will see the code needed to embed them into the forums. The code to use is basically [snowjapantv] videocode [/snowjapantv] [All videos that were previously on the videos section of SnowJapan have been uploaded to this site under the name "SnowJapanTV". If you are the owner of one of those videos and wish for us to delete it, please contact us]. RESORT RANKINGS: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/resort-rankings.php This season sees the launch of a totally new section "Resort Rankings" that lets you vote for any resort in Japan on 5 categories: - General - Snow Conditions - Courses/Terrain - Lift System - Apres Ski This new system allows you to do a detailed searches of the ranking data... on prefecture, any of the categories, number of votes, etc. as well as sort the information to try and make use of it. You can also view the rankings by prefecture, for example: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/ski-resort-ratings.php?Prefecture=Nagano http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/ski-resort-ratings.php?Prefecture=Niigata http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/ski-resort-ratings.php?Prefecture=Hokkaido This is new and so there are not that many votes yet. As more and more votes are cast, this section will become more useful to everyone so please go there and vote for the resorts you have been to. You can vote on each resort page, or on this main voting page: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/japan-snow-resort-vote.php Ranking information is now shown on each resort page as well as on the Resort Review listings within the site. START HERE: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/start-here.html This new page is linked to from every page of the site and we hope it will give people a simple introduction to the site and where all the information is. We plan to update and modify this page as needed. NEW GENERAL & TRAVEL INFO SECTIONS: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/general/index.html http://www.snowjapan.com/e/travel/index.html The General Info and Travel sections have had an overhaul with some re-writing and a totally new look and structure. We plan to add more information to these sections in the coming weeks. OTHER UPDATES: As every page of the site has been changed (brought into the new design), many pages have seen changes and updates to information. If you take a look around the site - especially the main sections and index pages - you will notice quite a lot of changes. SITE MAP: http://www.snowjapan.com/e/about/site-map.html We have created a new site map that shows most of the main pages of the site. ------------------------------------------------- PLEASE NOTE: Once we have taken a bit of a rest, there will be some further changes coming to the site including: - updated resort data for the new season; - links from resort listings to the relevant new maps in the Maps section; - additions to the new Town Maps; - a few changes to the Forums; - daily weather forecasts and snow depth information, starting later in November. ------------------------------------------------- As well as some of the new functionality being quite complex, we have made a lot of changes to literally thousands of pages. As such, there is a chance of some remaining bugs now that the new things have gone live and been integrated into the site. Over the next few days and beyond we will be checking the new systems and doing what we can to fix any problems that are found. If you do find any errors, or pages that do not seem to have been converted to the new site, please let us know by contacting us directly at editor@snowjapan.com. Thank you. ------------------------------------------------- Anyway we hope tha you will enjoy using all of the new content and find it to be really useful - and fun. Hope everyone has a great season. Thanks Link to post Share on other sites
spook 0 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 well done and thanks in advance Link to post Share on other sites
base40 0 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Awesome, it'll take a week to plough through all this lot. Link to post Share on other sites
iiyamadude 6 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 I'm impressed. I feel lucky Link to post Share on other sites
BagOfCrisps 24 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 wow. Link to post Share on other sites
SnowJapan Admin SnowJapan 178 Posted November 1, 2007 Author SnowJapan Admin Share Posted November 1, 2007 Good morning. Just want to post and let everyone know that while the new site is pretty much up there, there are still things to do in intergrating it all --- so you may still come across few stray links and errors. Please bear with us as we clear these issues up. nce we are ready with it all we'll post and then ask for "bug reports"! Thank you. Link to post Share on other sites
muikabochi 208 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Well done. Link to post Share on other sites
HighlyTrainedNovaTeacher 2 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 That sure is a lot of new goodies. Otsukaresama! Link to post Share on other sites
grungy-gonads 54 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Excellent. a whole new video site, that will very probably ROCK. The rankings thing looks good too. Those maps look useful too. Good to put accommodation on there, you probably have that planned. Nice work! Link to post Share on other sites
big-will 7 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Top notch job. Will we need different login for the video site? Link to post Share on other sites
SnowJapan Admin SnowJapan 178 Posted November 1, 2007 Author SnowJapan Admin Share Posted November 1, 2007 Yes you'll need to sign up to the tv site if you want to view lots of videos or upload. It's really extremely simple: http://www.snowjapan.tv/signup.php Guests on that site have a limited time before exceeding a usage limit. If you sign up and login you'll get far more. We'll be adjusting these settings as we see how things go with it all. We'll also be adding more "help" info today and in the coming week..... Thanks! Link to post Share on other sites
cheeseman 1 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 I'm a little disappointed to not see more cheese content, but apart from that it looks like there are a ton of big changes. Well done indeed. Remember to take a rest with some wine and some cheese. Link to post Share on other sites
Domokun_72dpi 0 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 I love it SJ. This is a brilliant community, and you are servicing every need to the utmost. I agree with cheeseman tho, and maybe some lime green =) keep up the awesome work, we all really appreciate your efforts... Link to post Share on other sites
joshnii 2 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Hurray! And reports from Myoko is a nice addition too. Link to post Share on other sites
rach 1 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Great stuff. I see you are going to add to those maps - they are awesomome. Every year you seem to add more and more when you don't actually seem to need to. I really like the way you do that, it's impressive. Link to post Share on other sites
SKI 15 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Fantastic work. Aren't we the lucky ones. Link to post Share on other sites
snowboarding-sally 0 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Video site thats so cool. I hope people will upload their vids there it should be a great new addition. Link to post Share on other sites
2pints-mate 0 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Whooah. I need a week off work! Link to post Share on other sites
yamayamayama 2 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Really fantastic. You guys should win proper website awards love the way you keep on pushing forward (more than you need to). Link to post Share on other sites
Ken of Kentropolis 0 Posted November 1, 2007 Share Posted November 1, 2007 Awesome updates. I see Niseko is already raking in those votes more than anywhere else.... Link to post Share on other sites
snowbender 3 Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 very nice! I'm glad you brought the site to the center of the browser as well Link to post Share on other sites
iiyamadude 6 Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 Great work folks. Those maps are truly excellent. Get some more info on them and they will be 10 * Link to post Share on other sites
zdlfskdladealijfsxdfk 0 Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 Spent a bit of time today looking through all this. Great work - and so much of it. I really do like those maps you have come up with. New site design looks good as well. Link to post Share on other sites
fish&chips 0 Posted November 2, 2007 Share Posted November 2, 2007 The last time I was on here was about 3 or 4 years ago. Couldn't believe how much it has changed. A good thing, it's a wicked website. Japan and people interested in the snow here are real lucky to have it. Link to post Share on other sites
actually 0 Posted November 5, 2007 Share Posted November 5, 2007 actually, well done on an truly excellent job. all we need now is the snow, actually. (sent a mail with a one link misses I have spotted). Link to post Share on other sites
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