# Help Us Improve Fourtitude.com. Seeking Input on our Photo Galleries



## [email protected] (Apr 9, 2004)

I'm looking for some input from our regular readers about our photo galleries. With the new site we jumped to a new platform that allows for tagging, comments, cross-posting of photos, etc. This is all cool new functionality. This is all stuff we want to move towards (no other Vortex Media Group site is using a setup like this yet), but it's causing some issues because what we've created is probably the biggest gallery online to use this platform. The software is showing some stress as is the Fourtitude server. 

Our plan is to eventually move to our own platform or perhaps something better suited to the load and preferably with even more features that we'd like. Still, I'm finding that with the site up now for a few months, these features are barely being used. 

There's a second platform architecture we use at VMG and specifically on VWvortex, Swedespeed and KilometerMagazine. It lacks the cross-posting and the tagging, but they layout is more flexible and it is much, much better from a search engine optimization standpoint, which would put these photos out there, more readily found by a Google image search for example. 

As we were building this latest version of Fourtitude I'd begun to build out on this other platform and switched late (about 75% of buildout complete on the other VMG setup). That's on the server now, just dormant other than actually beginning to be found by search engines even though it's not entirely public. 

I'm weighing my options here. It'll probably be a year before we get a new platform in place. I'm debating whether or not to jump back to the other setup that looks better and has better SEO and lose (for now) the cross-posting, comments and tagging. 

For those more hardcore users of Fourtitude, I'm looking for input. Do you have a preference or comment on the new system. What do you miss about the old site? What do you like or not like about the new site... specifically the galleries. 

Thanks for the input.


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