The first public release of Lightbox7.com!

Go register an account and have your friends register ... and have some fun :) YES, TELL YOUR FRIENDS. REGISTER REGISTER.

If you have a Tokki account, this will be replacing Tokki; DISCONTINUE USING TOKKIPROJECT! Lightbox7.com has an import feature that will import all your Tokki galleries to save you a lot of work. There is also a Tabulas gallery import feature.

I'm hoping to beat the living daylights out of some of the other unnamed photohosting sites... the site's still quite young, but it's really stable!

Now I can take a 24 hour break before I get cracking on some of the missing features.

Go GO GO!



P.S. my lightbox account
Currently listening to: John Denver's Take Me Home Country Roads
Posted by roy on February 19, 2004 at 10:12 AM in Web Development | 15 Comments

Related Entries

Want to comment with Tabulas?. Please login.

MacDaddyTatsu (guest)

Comment posted on February 20th, 2004 at 08:48 PM
I lurv eet!
Comment posted on February 20th, 2004 at 07:06 AM
I uploaded a picture, added descriptions and submitted, then I suddenly remember I forgot to select the checkbox to put it in an album. And now I can't access it at all to place it in the appropriate album. :(

ling (guest)

Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 10:07 PM
Ooo..I really like the layout this time. Btw, why not tokki but lightbox7? You could have just enhanced tokki.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 11:33 PM
I could, but the site is completely different. It's like I used to have a Ford Echo and then I just sold it and bought a BMW. Both are cars, but they are completely different =).
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 03:03 PM
just some really picky things...

1. under Account information documentation (url: http://lightbox7.com/help/?docid=33) is the link "account status" suppose to be your own account status or the help documentation about different accounts types?(as you have linked as "account types" later down the paragraph)

2. while editing an album, under the the 'more options' panel on the left, clicking on 'create presentations' does not take me to the page to actually create the presentation.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 11:32 PM
Well, #1 is linked correctly, but #2 required a definite fix ;) Thanks for the heads up =)
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 01:56 PM
Some things to consider
-Most people don't know how much a service like this should cost. I would suggest minimal features for free accounts in order to promote sales.
-It may be hard to accomidate both new and experienced users. If I were you I would focus on the less experienced ones, because I think they are the ones that would most likely make a purchase.
-As soon as enough money is coming in, I would suggest allowing purchasing methods other than paypal. IMO Paypal only payment looks very unproffessional.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 02:21 PM
First point: There are minimal features. I can downgrade your account to free status so you can see how painful it is ;)

2.) Yes, that is something Im trying to do with the integrated help.

3.) I can't afford merchant accounts yet :/ but eventually i'd like to handle my own CC payments... but you need a few hundred to get the account.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 09:51 PM
I hate to say this, but the point is to make the free account painful. You want to attract users but you will do that whether you give them the features you are giving them now or if you are giving them 1/2 or a 1/3 of the features. Its very hard to be both nice to non paying customers and to be a successful businessperson.

If I had made this site and I was thinking of how I could make it profitable, this is what I would do. First I think to myself, hey I have this great site but if everyone who signs up is a free user, how will I make money? Then I realize that sticking advertising on free users sites will serve two purposes. First it will either defray costs or make me profit(example: http://imageshack.us/ is profitable with a simple service and all free users) Second it will make free users who dont like advertising next to their pictures want to update their account. How to implement? Since free users can't template the pages themselves this shouldn't be a problem.

Next I would evaluate the plans. What kind of person has 100 images that require 2gb of bandwidth per month. That is like 20,000 100kb picture loads per month. Shouldn't someone with that much traffic be paying? IMO YES! Then I would look at the prices. Why have such odd numbers as 3 and 9? If it were me I would have 3 plans of 5,10, and 15 dollars a month. If someone values the service the difference in price will not matter much to them. It definitely will matter to you.

If your going to make this project successful moneywise your going to need to stray away from giving things away like at np or tabulas. These types of things are good for building a loyal base of people and traffic off of which you can build more profitable projects.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 10:26 PM
1.) The free accounts ARE painful. They are incredibly limited in features; I think it's time you get downgraded to see just how painful it is :)

2.) Bandwidth is not a limitation. The numbers are there simply so that if someone does have massive traffic I can shut them down. I have no intentions of actually tracking bandwidth usage. I pay nothing extra for bandwidth; there's no need to ask people to pay extra for it.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 11:29 PM
Well ive given my advice. Take it however you want.

I was under the impression that the primary purpose of the site was to make money. Perhaps I was wrong.

Bandwidth may not be a limitation, but things associated with bandwidth are(ie grabbing db info and processing the pages the images are on)

I think you're way too nice.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 11:34 PM
Haha perhaps. But I'm pretty convined the site is really limited in its features for free users; in theory the 100 image quota that's for free users only amounts to roughly 10 megs of space.

In any case, I am perhaps too nice =)
Comment posted on February 20th, 2004 at 02:16 PM
Its unanimous. Your too nice.

Anyways, good luck with making money.
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 12:17 PM
It looks so much better than Tokki, I like it lots. Oh I do love the prevent image hotlinking very much. And I find the documentations really helpful. Thanks.

So, uhm. Moving right along.

I don't really favor the idea on the templating page where you separate the sections for the HTML. It reminds me a lot of Greymatter which is uh... should I say, annoying? I understand it is rather convenient for beginners but I find it otherwise, since I like one textarea to figure out what I can do so that I can edit the template in one go. Anyway, that's just me.

Other than that, I'm liking it so far. I'll fiddle around with the site more. :)
Comment posted on February 19th, 2004 at 10:16 AM
i'm listed as a free user, but it says i have a 1000 pic capacity. if that's a bug, you might wanna fix that.