Board index PBase Questions and Answers TIME HAS COME TO SAY GOODBYE!

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TIME HAS COME TO SAY GOODBYE!

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smith_xt
 
Posts: 144

TIME HAS COME TO SAY GOODBYE!

Post Fri May 05, 2017 2:13 am


Been a member here since 2005 and seems like there's only been one update to the site over the time. Its affordable but the exposure has dropped off drastically and the layout antiquated to say the least. Wake up PBase and put a little of your profit back the business!!!

akmc_in_au
 
Posts: 954

Re: TIME HAS COME TO SAY GOODBYE!

Post Fri May 05, 2017 5:20 am


smith_xt wrote:Its affordable but the exposure has dropped off drastically


True. I'm still convinced that there's something in Google's indexing that has "de-prioritised" PBase over the years too. Sometimes I'll search for things that I know are word for word and letter for letter in either the descriptions or keywords of my galleries/images and they still don't show up. Not even if you apply the -site:pinterest.com filter to get rid of the first 5,000 hits of recycled, unoriginal trash that a Google images search returns. Of course Google image searches have always been rubbish for some reason. (Put two words in quotes to say that you want an EXACT match and as far as Google is concerned, anything that kinda-sorta approximately matches one of the words is near enough. Doubly so if it's on Pinterest.) But the fact that you'll only rarely see a Pbase hit in the first few pages does visibility no favours.

Some will doubtless claim that it's the number of nudes (notably non-artistic kinds, and even more notably the ones that have been put up at 3000 pixels by 2000 and which show every pore and blemish) that has caused PBase's decline, but I'm not sure that's borne out by experiment; I just went through 11 pages of the Recent Galleries (528 galleries, which is a little over a day's worth - yes, only a bit over 500 in a day, which is part of the problem too) and there was only one in that class.

I for one have mixed feelings about this. My galleries are mostly for myself and friends so visibility to others can be nice, but I'm not sure I care all that much.

But if you're selling yours (or would like to), you doubtless would.

smith_xt wrote:and the layout antiquated to say the least.


Aaaah... yes and no. This is still the only site that does galleries properly. Flickr, for example, does galleries but gives you no control over how those galleries are presented to the viewer and doesn't provide them with an easy way to navigate through a "story". And giving you control over CSS does give you a lot more flexibility than some other places. 500px, for example, gives you a "Customizable website"... if you're prepared to shell out almost as much in a month as you pay for PBase for an entire year. The one you're using may not be flashy but it's certainly attractive enough and more importantly it doesn't distract from the images themselves. Of course mobile (and probably touch screens in general) is where the interface is lagging behind badly. I'm not a fan of viewing images on mobile (I don't think it does them justice; certainly it wouldn't for some of your landscapes, for example, IMHO) but I do it occasionally.... and trying to hit the "Next" link on a Samsung Galaxy is painful. I don't have a tablet but I know I'd find the lack of a swipe interface annoying on that if I did. Also the slideshow funmction; it was a good(ish) feature when people were uploading only 800 pixel images but that time has passed. Pretty much every site out there has a much smoother and better slideshow feature than PBase's these days, some even with captions.

smith_xt wrote: Wake up PBase and put a little of your profit back the business!!!


If there is any. If the number of photos being posted is currently declining by over 20% a year (edit; make that over 25%; see the updated graphic here), year on year, there is no particular reason to assume that the membership isn't as well; your good self being just another example. Hosting costs have been reducing over the years but not at that rate, I think, so it's likely that whatever fat there is / was / might once have been in PBase's margins is being sweated off at a rapid rate. That is my main concern about the longevity of this place; it's not like the owners are a deep pocketed corporation who can keep funding it if revenue falls below expenses.

Good luck with wherever you end up; it may be an idea to make sure that you put a link to wherever your new galleries are in your profile. It would be interesting to see the comparison in presentation, assuming that you replicate some of the galleries over there (wherever there might be).

hgharib
 
Posts: 61

Re: TIME HAS COME TO SAY GOODBYE!

Post Mon Jun 05, 2017 3:36 pm


Unfortunately this site is as stale as bad bread. Come on, you take our money - give us some improvements.

The world has moved on and pbase is still stuck in the dark ages.


Board index PBase Questions and Answers TIME HAS COME TO SAY GOODBYE!

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