Major New UK Astronomers Features!

[Grant]

Hello everyone!

I'm very excited to officially launched two major new areas of the UK Astronomers website - I've been working very hard on both for the past few weeks so hopefully you will find them useful!

File Sharing

There has been a few requests for this in the past and its a feature I've wanted to add for some time! The idea is, you can upload your raw files to the UK Astronomers site to share with other people. For example, I've uploaded a stacked image of M42, its comes to over 40mb, you can download it from: http://ukastronomers.com/ukastronomers/action/download_files/fileid/1 feel free to have a play around with the processing

The accepted file formats are: 'zip', 'tiff', 'jpg', 'gif', 'png', 'cr2', 'raw', 'crw', 'fits', 'rar', 'pdf', 'avi', 'wmv', 'mpeg', 'psd', 'tif', 'tiff' if anybody has additional suggestions for other file formats, just let me know.

Regular users will currently get 250mb of storage space, advanced users will get 1gb of storage. Files will be monitored so please do not upload files that you do not own the copyright to - they will be deleted and your account removed.

Hopefully this feature should make it much easier for people to share their raw captures with others.

Buy/Sell Area

The most exciting new addition to the UK Astronomers site - a buy/sell area for astronomy goods. The main features are:

-For Sale, Wanted Archive Sections

-Quick loading product description - you don't have to leave the listings page to see the description.

-Maps - google maps show you where the item is located.

-Spam Protection - your email doesn't appear in the product description, instead theres a contact box (like on ebay) where you send the message from. There is an image captcha system to stop robots sending out mass messages.

-Featured Listings - pay £2.50 for 30 days and your advert appears at the top, in emails and on the homepage of the site.

And the really cool bit!

-Saved Searches - when your logged in and perform a search theres an option to assign a label to that search and tick a box to get email alerts. Users have a 'saved search' page showing a list of all their saved searches and the number of listings that currently match that search - so at a glance you can look down all your searches and see if there are any matches.

-Email Alerts - every 15 minutes, if you've ticked the email alerts option your saved search will be checked and any new results will be emailed to you.

-Read/Unread listings - keep track of which ones you've looked at - show only the ones you've not seen yet...

After 30 days your listing is automatically archived but you can un-archive it or archive it at any time if you sell the item.

All in all it should be really easy to use and navigate and the auto alerts will help you spot items quicker.

I hope you guys enjoy the new features! If you have any suggestions or ideas for further improvement to the site then please let me know. Also, please let me know if you find any bugs!

Cheers,

Grant

[FLO]

Onwards and upwards Grant 8)

[Jamie]

I must say Grant you are doing a grand job.

With all the ideas as well as the implementation of them....

Good on ya... 8)

[barkis]

Grant, you have just added another great accessory to this Rolls Royce of Forums.

:salute: :salute: :salute:

[Beyond_Vision]

Hats off to your efforts Grant (and any other contributers) to which must be one of the best Forums on the net.

Regards,

Kevin

[cygnusx1]

Thanks Grant, the 250MB file upload will definitely help ppl trying to get assistance with their image processing :thumbup:

[mpeniak]

Well done Grant. The two features sound very useful and I am sure they will be!

Great job mate!

Martin

[themos]

Thanks!

[CELESCOPE]

nice one Grant , a lot of work for you , but certainly this has to be the best there is now , so many features , thanks for working so hard for all to enjoy .

Rog