New 'direct' server names scheme and 'direct' URLs: As you may know Atpic uses a cluster of web servers to store and serve the pictures. This is good as it allows the web site to scale well with the number of members. But we had two problems with the server names:
Changing names of FTP servers. As a user may be moved from one server to another server the FTP server name was subject to change. Now, the FTP server name will remain the same for the acount life and is: uUID.direct.atpic.com. If for instance the account User ID (UID) is 999, then your direct server will be: u999.direct.atpic.com.
Performance issues in 'hot linking'. This new server naming is also used for 'hot linking'. You do 'hot linking' when, for instance, you post a direct link to an Atpic picture from a forum. The old direct URLs were built as follows:
When a lot of users were posting images in forums using those URLs, the overhead generated by looking up on what server the picture actually was, was causing big performance issues. The new URL format is:
We hope this new convention will allow our infrastucture to serve fast the ever increasing amount of pictures hosted on Atpic. We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this change, but the decision had to be made for the future of Atpic. More information is available in the FAQ.
2008-02-19:
The immersive gallery slideshow from Piclens is now available on Atpic. Go to any gallery page with firefox and the piclens plugin, click on the Piclens slideshow link and navigate within the gallery in 3 dimensions! Enjoy!
2008-01-06:
A simple PM (Private Message) system has been released. On the contrary to Atpic Comments, a Private Message will not be shown on the web site. Non Atpic members are able to send a member a PM but will have to leave a valid email address to be contacted back. Atpic members can contact other Atpic members using a PM and their email will not be shown to the recipient of the message. Atpic administrators will also use the messaging system to contact the members. Indeed we have been answering support questions asked by Atpic users and the answer mail has never been received. This is the case of many users having an email address at hotmail.com. It seems the hotmail.com anti-spam software blocks many valid mails. The system look and feel will be improved over time. As for comments, an email notification will be sent to the message recipient each time a new PM is created. You can read your Private Messages once logged into your account by clicking on the 'pm' link.
2008-01-01:
A new slide show written in Flash is now available. This is an easy way to include your pictures in other web sites. It is aslo a nice nd interactive way of presenting your photos. More details can be found in the wiki.
2007-10-20:
Unfortunately, due to performance issues, we had to change the way Atpic documents are hotlinked. The simpler but less efficient scheme based on the 'raw' URLs has now been replaced by a more involved but much more efficient scheme. The new scheme based on a new hostname 'direct.atpic.com' is described in the FAQ and direct URLs are displayed on each document presentation page for easy cut and paste.
2007-09-10:
Yet another cool Atpic feature: How many times a day do you visit Google home page? Wouldn't it be cool to view one of your pictures each time you visit google.com? Well, at Atpic, we thought it would and we created google.atpic.com. Each time you visit this page you will see in background a picture hosted on Atpic.com. You can choose between a random Atpic picture, a random picture made by an Atpic member (you for instance), a random picture within a gallery, or a predefined picture. The result of your google search will also have the picture as background. More information is available in the FAQ. Come to Atpic's blog to discuss this new coolest feature!
2007-09-08:
Atpic has now its blog: blog.atpic.com. It is hosted on blogspot.com (Blogger). News will be cross-posted on the blog: This will allow Atpic community to leave comments about the new features.
2007-08-15:
Two new resolutions of image files are now available: 350 pixels and 70 pixels. Do you like the new Atpic home page look? We have used those two new formats.
2007-08-15:
The FTP credentials have been simplified: The username and password used to log into your FTP server are now the same as the username and password used to log into your web account mangement page. Please keep in mind we have several FTP servers and that if you try to connect to a FTP server your acount is not associated with, the login will fail.
2007-05-19:
To better serve Atpic users, a new server has been added to Atpic cluster. Users on the server user1.atpic.com have been moved it this new server called user2.atpic.com. This should be transparent to users except for FTP transfers. To upload documents by FTP, those users should now use user2.atpic.com as FTP server. This information is reminded in each account in the FTP tab. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions about this move.
2007-05-10:
The interface to move mutiple pictures uploaded by FTP into a gallery has bee made more robust. The job of generating the thumbnails for each picture is now a process running in background. This is to avoid timeout issues when resizing a large number of pictures. You can now select hundreds of pictures in your FTP zone, press the submit button and go peacefully to have your cup of tea or even take more pictures!
2007-04-19:
The tree navigation has been improved. Now, thumbnails for subgalleries are shown in the prent galeries. When a gallery has several children and is itself child of another gallery, the thumbnail in that top gallery corresponds to the picture with the highest priority.
2007-04-02:
You can now create subdirectories in your FTP zone and load the documents from those subdirectories into your galleries.
