Update 02/03/2014

[shmax]

Well, the photo stuff solarsail and I have been working on for the last month or so is live, and despite a few hiccups seems to be working. I know that the site still looks the same as it did, but there have been a few subtle changes:

- all photos now have unique ids, and all photos live in the same directories. Before, the part photos were in /img/transformers/figures, and the sku photos were in /img/transformers. Now everything is in /photos

- there is now a static.shmax.com subdomain that I serve the photos from. This lets me get around path conflicts, so I can use the /photos directory without colliding with the /photos page

- photo urls are now prettier, and don't require the modulus bucket we had before. So instead of /img/transformers/large/3000/3048.jpg, we have /photos/large/2048

- I've also created a special dynamic url pattern. For example, this image url:
http://static.shmax.com/photos/sku/9813/tank/l/front

will always refer to the front photo of "tank", no matter what it's set to. Know what I mean?

- the "sku_photo" and "part_photo" pages (mod-only) have collapsed into a single page, "photo".

- I've added a "photos" tab to the profile page. I think this will evolve into a "submissions" tab very soon, with photos being only one of many types of info present

- when uploading photos, I no longer use that cockamamie temporary img directory--real photo records are created on the spot. The downside of this is that I still need to figure out how to clean up the duds that people upload

All of the urls throughout the site have been updated to use the new model, but old-style links will still work (with forwarding to the new format).

[Antron007]

As far as those duds go. Im assuming you're keeping track of all of this info in some sort of data base. You could add an approved (y/n,0/1) field to the table and add, if (approved = yes) to the display query.

[shmax]

As far as those duds go. Im assuming you're keeping track of all of this info in some sort of data base. You could add an approved (y/n,0/1) field to the table and add, if (approved = yes) to the display query.

Oh, absolutely, that's been in there since the beginning. By duds, I mean photos that people upload using one of the photo widgets on a modify page, but don't commit to by submitting their changes. As of this writing those photos just sort of linger in the database doing nothing. I'll come up with some system for expiring the ones that have been sitting around for a day or so with no action.