All member and property data have now been transfered to the new website's database and Andrew will be switching from the old site to the new site tomorrow evening at myparkphotos.com.

Here's a brief What's New web page that will provide additional information concerning several new features. I will be updating this page constantly over the next few weeks and especially this weekend.

We still have several issues to work out with the new website and many of them will be fixed tomorrow evening before the transfer. Unfortunately, a few features that will not be ready for launch are the new "Member and Property Message Walls", and the tie in with registering and displaying photos for the Florida Wildlife Federation gallery, Florida's Birding and PhotoFest gallery, and the California State Parks Foundation gallery. However, members who are participating with these partner galleries may still go to the actual partner gallery, login, and register photos directly through their gallery without any problems.

Members will need to review their member "thumbnail" as those past personal images were smaller than those currently displayed. You may easily change your thumbnail (if necessary) through your main Admin link after logging in (See top of page member admin bar).

Thank you all very much for being so patient with us this week, and I really do hope you enjoy the new website! Please send me comments on the new website and requests for edits at any time...we've already fixed a few issues thanks to a few of you! :) Also, please review your galleries to make sure we didn't miss anything!! Thank you!

It is taking more time than I thought for us to move all of the data from the old site to the new site so it seems that we'll be down for a full week and the new site will not go live till this coming Friday, however, members may now update their galleries and register photos at our development web address of http://www.mystateparkphotos.com.

All information and photos added to your galleries on the new site will be transfered on Friday to the old web address of myparkphotos.com. And I believe that the scoring system works, however, we're going to be change the display from (10) stars to an easier (5) stars within a few days of the site going live and adding the number of scores per photo.

Again, I apologize for the time it's taking us to bring the new site online and hope you enjoy the new features.

If anyone is in the path if Ike, please be safe and we hope that you will be well.

James

A quick update to let you know how things are progressing with the roll-out of the new website. Andrew has finished bringing over all member information and property photos, but not sure about past member photo comments. Property information, member comments (we need to edit the comments to display only the "latest" comment by each member and provide a link for any previous comments by a particular member) and Google maps seem to all be transfered.

We have yet to designate old POTD, POTW, POTM and POTY photos, but we should have that worked out soon.

Andrew will be working on the site again on Wednesday and we should have the member and property "message walls" (discussion boards) displayed and ready for use at that time.

I still see some missing pages so we may have a few days before everything is back to normal and new pages are built, but the scoring system seems to work and so we should be able to have POTD winners by Thursday, after scoring photos on Wednesday!

Beginning this Friday, we will be bringing the new website online and therefore members will not be able to login between Friday and Sunday. We will be moving over all photographs, comments and property information to the new database and bringing the new website online by late Saturday or Sunday evening.

Thank you very much everyone for being patient with us as we transfer the site and as we resolve unforeseen issues!

The current web address, MyParkPhotos.com, will continue to be the main web address, and members will be able to login as normal at the top of the new site where the new member admin bar is located.

I will be providing a summary of the new website and how to find various sections tomorrow evening through the announcements, but we believe that the navigation is significantly improved with the new site and fairly straight forward.

Andrew is adding a new upload form and series of pages for displaying YouTube.com videos (Montana de Oro State Park by sonyarose8) to member galleries, park galleries, and personal album galleries!

If you do not already have a digital video recorder and would like to participate in displaying your own videos through your new gallery, here is a wonderful and fairly inexpensive product to purchase and use to promote the properties that you visit!

Flip Video

Congratulations to Dwight Morita for his photo Makapuu Point, from Makapuu Beach Park, Hawaii!

Dwight captured a perfect moment in time with a range of beautiful ocean colors, well-detailed rocky beach, and a sunlit hilltop with just a hint of the Makapuu Point Lighthouse in the background.

The photo represents this property extremely well and we're very proud to have this photograph represent the MyParkPhotos community for 2008!

Due to losing an extraordinary member today, and because of mixed feelings in the past regarding who wins and who doesn't win our community's "yearly category contests", I've decided to discontinue the POTY category winners for the coming year and opt instead for one overall "Best Photograph of the Year" winner for a special award.

We will be promoting the new site's feature for members to score daily "contest" photos for the POTD and POTW contests. And I will concentrate on judging and finding guest judges to determine our community's monthly contest winners and a "Best Photograph of the Month" winner.

I would really appreciate anyone's assistance in finding professional photographers to help our community by judging our monthly contests! Thank you!

Congratulations to all of the 2008 MyParkPhotos Photo of the Year Winners! Many thanks to all of the members who participated with MPP this past year and these 15 photographs represent literally thousands of beautiful photographs registered between August 1, 2007 and July 31, 2008.

Many thanks to Reinier Munguia, our lead judge for the yearly competition! (Read more about Reinier below)

Architecture: St Pete Pier © Matthew Paulson
Birds: Attention © Tim Harrell
B&W: Forgotten Relic © Steve Albano
Close-Up: A Bed of Pink © Terry Cervi
Event/Programs: Holding the line © Myrna Erler-Bradshaw
Flowers: Reflection in Pink © Sabrina Ryan
Landscapes: Morning, Lower Geyser Basin © Randy Baumhover
People: Precious Moment © Gerri Jones
Plant life: Patterns in Green © Barbara Socor
Recreation: Evening Shoot © Linda Hanley
Seasonal: Wrangell-St Elias National Park © Carla Farris
Sunsets/Sunrise: Natures Palette © Jeff Sullivan

2008 Best Photograph of the Year!
Waterscapes: Makapuu Point © Dwight Morita

Wildlife: Got Elk © Ernie Page
Open: Columbine Sphere © Carol Fowler


Reinier Munguia is a nature photographer based in Lakeland, Florida. His interest in photography started at the age of sixteen when he got his first camera. Since then, nature has been his favorite subject. His first published work came while majoring in Biology at the University of Puerto Rico. At the time, he was conducting studies on reptiles, but soon found a special interest in birds, to which he had dedicated great part of his life.

As a teacher, he's recognized for his enthusiasm and passion for teaching others what he knows. He is currently working at the Polk Museum of Art, where he teaches black & white as well as digital photography. His teaching experience dates back to the early 90's when he taught several courses for the University of Puerto Rico. Reinier is also involved in several photography groups, including the Polk County Camera Club, where he teaches a series all year long workshops and seminars on different areas of photography. He also conducts several field workshops and expeditions throughout the year in various locations, including Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico. His nature and landscape photography has been recognized as one of exceptional quality, with great emphasis on details.

Some of his wildlife photos are used in college textbooks, newsletters, and brochures. His passion for nature, and especially birds, can be seen on his wonderful bird photography, where he portrays the beauty of these magnificent subjects in their natural habitats.

http://www.wildstockphotos.com

Andrew and I are very pleased to give you a sneak peak at the new MyParkPhotos.com website and hope that you find the navigation and features an improvement to the old site! We still have a few weeks left of development and hope to finish by the end of the month.

To see the new (top-blue) member admin bar, please register. An email will be sent to you to activate your account. Once activated, you will be able to login and see the member admin pages.

http://www.mystateparkphotos.com (This name is a placeholder until we're finished)

Any feedback would be very appreciated and please keep in mind that this is a work in progress and we're about 70% finished. Andrew also has to develop my admin before we go live with the site.

All member information should be transfered without any problems.

The Best Photograph of the Month selection will be going back to either a guest judge (selecting all monthly winners and the BPOTM winner) or myself as the administrator as we will not be able to rebuild these member voting forms over the next three months.

However, Andrew has finished developing a new scoring feature that all paying members will be able to use to vote for the POTD and POTW winners which we will be announcing through this announcement board soon!