Friday 16 December 2016

The All New SSP Gallery and the RPAC Holly Run 2016


Screenshot of the new gallery home page

It's new, and yes, it's shiny shiny !!

YES ! - After almost 13 years we have changed where the Sussex Sport Photography Gallery is stored on the internet. It's been an 18 month project to source, test, design, agree and set up the new gallery - which is now complete with all the events from 2016.

You can find it here: Gallery.SussexSportPhotography.com

(NB This is just the gallery changing place - the www.SussexSportPhotography.com homepage is still the same)

And we have today (Thursday) changed where the internet points - so that all the old web addresses will send visitors to the new gallery - so http://Gallery.SussexSportPhotography.com so really, nothing much has changed in terms of finding your photos, but so much has in reality !

So several things you should know:
The start of the RPAC Holly Run 2016
yes - the RPAC Holly Run gallery is live and is here :
http://sspimg.com/RPAC-HollyRun-Gallery-2016


And now - Everything you ever wanted to know about the new gallery:


Discount code until Boxing Day - NEWSSP50


1. NEW GALLERY DISCOUNT OFFER

As a special introduction to the new gallery we have for you a special 50% discount code, valid until Boxing Day: NEWSSP50

use this at the checkout in the coupon code box - in the order summary.

That moment you wanted to get a friend their photo - here's that chance for you - and to get an easy Christmas present for them. Don't get caught out without something for your friends - you can easily order one on your mobile whilst you're at that party or bar or Christmas meal and send it to them during the evening. It's that easy now !

It is a completely new gallery - so you will need to register with it as a completely new user - your previous accounts are still safe on the Thirdlight gallery (and you can check that here if you need to on antbliss.thirdlight.com because we are still keeping that live just in case it all goes Pete Tong)- but that is that gallery and this is this gallery - so you have to register all new. Sorry about that - it's a Data protection thing, for your protection.

By the way, for various reasons the website doesn't add VAT until it knows where the customer lives and has to adjust that accordingly - (one reason is the EU directive on digital sales, but less on that eh?). We have adjusted all our prices that are shown so that the final price is almost exactly the same as they were on the previous gallery. Prices have been about the same since 2008. Not bad value really, we should have put them up 50% at least in the past 8 years... but I digress.

yes - we take PayPal now !
2. PayPal

We now use PayPal to complete checkout payments - which means we can take all payment cards where you don't need a paypal account, (and yes, even Amex too)  or you can pay with PayPal accounts - which makes things super easy and quick.


3. Lightboxes

Light what ? - if you have an account on the new gallery you can create your own custom folders of images which are stored under your account details. This means - when you come back to the gallery - voila ! they are still all stored there for you.

It will make it easy for you to create your own collections from races we cover for you, or perhaps even your friends or team mates. You can also share these with friends so they can see your favourites too, or they can add theirs into them so you can have a collective folder together and store your fab favourites - and then know what to buy for each other !
So give the lightboxes feature a try out.


The latest colourful watermark with licensing information included for free

4. Improved image security

This probably isn't the news that a great many of our gallery viewers wanted to hear - but the new gallery has much better protection against image theft (even with the unlicensed watermarks on), which hopefully on the up-side means we will have less reports from Facebook about unlicensed use and accounts being closed for breaking FB terms and conditions. Nobody likes that !


5. Fully Searchable with your race number

Yes, all the gallery cataloguing we do using the race numbers (which is a massive task after every event) is still valid for all our galleries - so you can just use the search box at the top of every gallery to search by your race number and find your photos.

One word of caution - if you do click all the way down to a subfolder of an event - you will only be searching the subfolder of that event - so make sure you search at the top level for your event.

6. Instant Large digital file downloads and permanent Order History
on you user account so you can just log in again to get them if you need to.

Yes all digital orders are permanently stored against your user account details - so if you ever need to come back and get them (when your hard drive dies and you don't have a backup - this happens to our customers much more often than you would think) - then they should all be stored nice and safe for you to come and get them again !

7. Custom Crop your prints 
how you want to - yes - in the order basket - you can select how you want your prints to be cropped - so if you don't like that shot with Mo Farrah's arm flapping on the edge of your shot at the finish line, crop your print to fit accordingly and voila !!
no it's not an Advent calendar - it's the new simple gallery browsing page - just pick an archive year to reveal the chocolate

8. Easy to navigate by Year and Month
Our new visual gallery layout, with years and months in a simple nested layout - as long as you can remember roughly when your event was - you can navigate to it and find what you want - gone are the distant days of squinting at a list trying to find your event as tiny text.
If you're feeling particularly brave, you can even search at the top level of the gallery with a key event word and your race number to see all your photos - without even having to click to the event itself - how good is that ?!

And yes - you see a lot more years listed there - not all the galleries are loaded behind them - but there are lists of what happened in those years - so if you need an event reloaded from as far back as 2004 - we can now do that for you ! If you want to see how slim and handsome you were 10 years ago - we have all that for you too, just a few days upload away.

You will also see that all of 2015 gallery is uploaded on our other archive gallery

9. Easy Facebook Sharing

If you like your photos and want to show your friends that you were out and about doing things at the weekend - as quickly as possible - then have some cure for your FOMO and use the Facebook Share button at the top of each page - and instantly get a thumbnail with a direct link to your photo on the gallery - on your Facebook Timeline.


10. Easy URL link sharing

If you want to just copy a web address URL and share it with someone - it will now work (and it was one of the annoying design problems with the old gallery when this didn't happen, we have been trying for years to solve that one).

And even more clever - you can even share a search URL with a friend - so they can see all your search results easily too.

11. Event Webmasters
You can put a gallery search box to your specific event gallery directly onto your webpage - making it a great integrated user experience for your runners. It's even possible to code search URL's into results so a single click on a results list takes someone to their results - it can't get any simpler...


and here's how http://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com/page2

12. When you've had a good look and used the discount code 
Please do us a survey and tell us how it worked for you ! - https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/TZ9YZ7B


And now some photos from The Holly Run for you to enjoy
Heavy Mist hung over the race at 10:30am for the biggest race of the day - the U11 boys run

Excellent finishing by Number 1

By the second race at 10:50am, the fog had lifted completely

The Morhens didn't much care for the races as the pond steamed off

12 starters in the under 15 boys race. Not good enough frankly. Where were you all eh ? This needs sorting out !!

Fresh from his intercounties race the day before, Felix smashed the field apart

Always good to see a strong effort at the finish - Walton AC turned out in force


Everything was going well for Murray

Hello from the woods

Double thumbs up in the depths of the darkness

Good to see some fancy dress on the course enjoying the fun

Another years running is over and the relief is palpable

So enjoy the discount code as an early Christmas present from us all here at SSP, and enjoy viewing through the last years images and please complete the survey and give us some feedback so we can improve it even more for you !

Please do us a survey and tell us how it worked for you ! - https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/TZ9YZ7B

Until next time - which will be New Years Eve at the Longmoor Brutal - see you there ? and burn off some guilt before the new years eve party, somewhere down the A3 ?

Anthony, Sally, Tony, Hayley, Rosanna, Paul, Mike, Hannah, Ben.


Thursday 8 December 2016

The Hogs Back, Seaford Striders Mince Pie and Mapledurham Ten 2016 now live

The Joy of the Hogs Back as expressed in dance and the Mannequin challenge

Three races this weekend that have all been hosted first on our new and improved gallery (we have also put them on the old gallery just for thoroughness).

You can find ALL of 2016 events easily from this navigation page here for all the years we have covered http://sspimg.com/new-SSP-gallery


Go to this weekends latest galleries in the table below, and click on the next events listed if you're interested in taking part, getting fit, having a fantastic lifestyle, or escaping the family for varying amounts of time...

Date Event name Gallery Link
Sun-04-12-2016 Seaford Mince Pie http://sspimg.com/SeafordMincePie10-2016
Sun-04-12-2016 The Hogs Back http://sspimg.com/Hogsback2016
Sun-04-12-2016 Mapledurham 10 http://sspimg.com/Mapledurham10-2016-Gallery
Future Events
Wed-07-12-2016 HPPC Rugby Tournament http://sspimg.com/HPPC-U9-Rugby-Tournament-Gallery-2017
Sun-11-12-2016 HollyRun https://www.rpac.org.uk/index.php/2015-02-28-17-16-06/the-holly-run
Sat-31-12-2016 Brutal Longmoor http://sspimg.com/Brutal-Run-Entry
Sun-01-01-2017 Serpentine 10k http://www.serpentine.org.uk/pages/nyd10k.html
Sun-22-01-2017 ETL Denbies10 http://www.eventstolive.co.uk/events/information/denbies-10m

The New Gallery
has taken almost 18 months to conceive and construct, brought on by our current supplier deciding to pursue "corporate internal use" image galleries and to remove e-commerce functionality - which of course - we think is quite an important part of our business ! (well we would give them away instead if doing stuff for free was a viable business model, but it isn't...)

The upshot of all this change is we now have much larger gallery storage, can accept Paypal, and faster and larger direct downloads and new user accounts which holds your order history on this new gallery. Plus lightboxes - which are a great way to create a running diary of all the images we have taken of you over the events, making it easy for you to keep a record of your running (albeit with watermarks).

New Directions
In the next few weeks we will be changing the web redirection for the gallery.sussexsportphotography domain to point to the new gallery (It's a CName thing). Old gallery links with this front part of the web address will come to the new gallery - but to an error page, but also with a navigation link to get to the http://sspimg.com/new-SSP-gallery and most people should be able to find themselves a way around from there.
You may have also noticed our new "sspimg" link shortening - which we think looks a bit better than a bit.ly

Here's a few pictures from the weekend for you !

First up the Hogs Back near Guildford:

Rory had a tight hamstring so went for a drive instead

A strong start out of the blocks 

all looking good, they had yet to meet the Hog

The eyes have it

Photobombing your own photo doesn't count does it ?

All looking good at the finish

all the way to the finish

What happened next? Cartwheeling to the finish...

 Meanwhile over at Peacehaven - the Seaford Striders Mince Pie 10

Fab views and blue skies, but chuffing cold

On his annual mission

It all seemed so good early on

Definitely gloves weather !

Fancy dress all the way

Guns out

Top Christmas jumpering

A very fast Worzel Gummage

A great Christmas top

The blue nosed reindeer

When Mrs Clause comes to the south coast

Top antlers

running as a complete tree and her helpers

By mile 9 and it wasn't going so well

There's laws against this sort of thing

Top tinseling

Getting good air

Santa is on his way...
and finally over at the Mapledurham Ten - some off-road on path countryside action

All good at the start on the way out on the first loop

Headphones and reindeer hat - fantastic!

Always good to see you !

surprise !

Strong finishing

Won't be late for work this Christmas

Good celebrations at the finish

Prizewinner for the biggest Christmas turkey thighs

flying in for the double arm raise
So get yourself over to the new gallery to see how that works out for you, we're still making some final tweaks and turns to how it flows and little changes here and there so every bit of feedback counts http://sspimg.com/new-SSP-gallery

Until next time, enjoy the warmer weather for training.
Anthony