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SNOWJAPAN 07/08 - SITE UPDATES - New for the 07/08 Season


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  • SnowJapan Admin

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:

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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].

 

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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.

 

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START HERE:

http://www.snowjapan.com/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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

 

 

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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;

- a few changes to the Forums;

- daily weather forecasts and snow depth information, starting later in November.

 

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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.

 

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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

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