[Tom]

Just a heads up we've upgraded to a new photo server (cloud.nwhikers.net). If you don't notice anything different that's good news, it means I didn't screw anything up. Hopefully the new server is not only faster but solves problems with images not loading on some networks. There is also a new option to view EXIF metadata via the lightbox (click the thumbnail, then the downward pointing arrow to the top right):

[zimmertr]

The View EXIF feature is cool!

[neek]

[Tom]

Matt Lemke may be the only one direct linking. It would be easy to do a redirect but I wasn't planning to renew the nwhikers.org domain in perpetuity so figured 6 months heads up would be plenty of time, and a redirect wouldn't be possible after that. That domain was just a stop gap 5-6 years ago when we needed to find a place to back up all the flickr images. I found a cheap shared host with "unlimited" storage and it came with a free domain. That eventually morphed into a backup of all external images, and then a place to upload images directly. Now that we have transferred the ~1.5 million images to a new server (and backed them up elsewhere) no plans to use that domain for anything else so going to let it expire.

[Prosit]

When you research trips in other parts of the country, and use forums for those locations, you realize just how good the features of the NWHikers forum are. It’s intuitive and allows you to tell the story of a trip, or to read one, without the software getting in the way of the tale. Features like the photo server contribute to that seamlessness. Having no ads is also a big bonus, allowing users to focus on what they came here for. Good search capability provides the gateway to a wealth of information, experience, and inspiration. Thanks for your efforts and dedication to the site Tom. It’s well appreciated!

[Tom]

Thanks, we do some non-standard stuff like = sign below the img tag for captions which I think confuses some folks, but apart from a slight learning curve, I'd agree it easier to post narratives with lots of images than with "modern" forum software. I've been tempted to change things so the first line below an image automatically becomes the caption which might make things more intuitive.

[Tom]

[Prosit]

[zimmertr]

[FiveNines]

Is it possible for users to upload photos to nwhikers but decline to share exif data?

[Tom]

Yes, I could add an option for that.

[FiveNines]

I would appreciate that, Tom, but understand if it's a low ROI project for your core user base. Thanks for the consideration here and the long-term upkeep of nwhikers in general.

[Tom]

In the interim, if you don't want to share EXIF, you can use copy / paste to upload images. To do that, display the image on your screen, copy it to the clipboard, and paste the bitmap into your post. For example, I did that with the sample image above and voila, no metadata.

Unfortunately it's not so easy do on mobile, at least not in the google photos app, as it doesn't have an option to copy to the clipboard, so I'll look into adding an option.

[puzzlr]

I really like this improvement. It will save me time downloading an image just to check if there's EXIF in it. Without a GPS location or timestamp, photos I want to save are much less interesting. For images like this one where I ... * Compressed with JPEGMini * Did a 3-shot pano-merge in Lightroom and did some editing * Did some touch up in Photoshop after exporting the EXIF gets really big. I don't have a problem with that, it's quite entertaining to skim it. I bothers me a lot more that sites like FB always strip out the EXIF. I understand why it's the default. For "Name That Lake" it would be helpful to have the option to strip the EXIF in case people don't have software that does that.

https://cloud.nwhikers.net/jmqcv

[Tom]

Now that I think about it, it does open up a can of worms. The metadata has always been there, we don't strip it whether it's an upload or cached from flickr or wherever else it might be posted. But now that the metadata is more easily viewed, I can appreciate there might be privacy concerns. You probably don't want to share location uploading a picture taken with your cell phone in the back yard, so perhaps only share location for images posted in the trip report forum, with an option to disable that, or just keep it simple and add the option on the posting screen. The other metadata doesn't strike me as all that sensitive, and I can see rationale for why it shouldn't be stripped. For example, if someone puts their name in the metadata they might actually want it there for copyright reasons, but maybe not. Hence the can of worms, and why facebook and other platforms just strip everything.