Reviews - Member Photos

[Kel]

I joined TUG in 1997. I was a paying member for about 15 years. I let my paying membership lapse for a while. I just signed up for a 3 year membership because I wanted access to the Reviews section again. Am I missing something? Where are all the member’s uploaded photos of the resorts? All I see a few photos for some resorts under the Overview tab. And, most of the photos look like they are from the resort’s website and not member photos. There used to be a lot of photos that went with the reviews. Thanks.

 

[TUGBrian]

TUG has never removed any photo provided by a member unless it was reported as outdated and a new more current photo was provided of the same image (bathroom/kitchen remodel etc).

the new system does display the most recent photos first, so any newly uploaded or replaced photos would show up before the older original ones.

any person (member or not) can upload a photo at any time using the link directly on each resort review page along the left hand side. we also mention in every new membership and renewal for folks to visit their home resorts (or resorts they recently stayed at) to provide any new information or photos to the review page if possible!

 

[Kel]

Brian, What do I click on to see members photos for specific resorts? Thanks.

 

[TUGBrian]

the default photo is the large one displayed on the resort review page, clicking on the smalle rthumbnails below that will allow you to view all the other photos for the resort and as you click on them will rotate thru all the available photos uploaded for the resort.

 

[Kel]

Brian, I still don't get it. Here is an example. There are 128 reviews for California Marriott Desert Springs I Resort. There are only 8 photos. I know there should be more. There are many other resorts with more than 100 reviews that should have more than 6 or 8 member photos. I am selecting a resort and clicking on Overview and then scrolling through the photos. Am I not in the right area for member photos? Thanks again.

 

[DeniseM]

Brian, I still don't get it. Here is an example. There are 128 reviews for California Marriott Desert Springs I Resort. There are only 8 photos. I know there should be more. There are many other resorts with more than 100 reviews that should have more than 6 or 8 member photos. I am selecting a resort and clicking on Overview and then scrolling through the photos. Am I not in the right area for member photos? Thanks again.

Reviews and photos are submitted completely separately, so there really isn't a relationship between the number of reviews, and the number of photos.

Many people post their pictures on the discussion forums, or they may post a link to their photos which are hosted somewhere else - they don't necessarily post them to Resorts and Reviews. To be quite honest with you, I can't remember if I have ever posted one there.

 

[TUGBrian]

you are in the right spot, but I agree there should be far more photos of those two resorts (dsv1 and 2)...and i show nothing prior to 2013.

ill look into this further.

 

[Kel]

Brian, Thanks for looking into this. I remember that a few years ago there were a lot of photos for a lot of different resorts. Lately, I've been using Tripadvisor.com for resort reviews and photos, but we had timeshare resort exchange in Cabo that Tripadvisor didn't have a lot of info on and I thought I would check out TUG's reviews again.

 

[NHTraveler]

I will add photos I have taken of the resorts I have visited within the next week or so. I do reviews and have been meaning to add photos.

 

[TUGBrian]

good catch here, we discovered thousands of photos for whatever reason were no longer linked to their resorts. we believe we have restored these photos (well the links anyway...the photos were never really gone) to the review pages, hopefully they show up for you now!

please let us know if any appear incorrect or out of place!

thank you!

 

[dioxide45]

There is also a sticky in the Marriott forum that links to other online sources where forum members have posted photos of Marriott resorts.

 

[Kel]

Thanks Brian. But, I still think there are a lot of photos not linked to the resorts. Example - there used to be a lot of member photos for the Royal Resorts in Cancun and the small handful of photos I see are mostly the resort's promotional photos.

Thanks again.

 

[TUGBrian]

royal islander?

i show a bunch of older photos were re-added.

with so many missing, im sure there were some that didnt get re-linked programatically (wouldnt be feasible to do it all by hand).

we can look into additional resorts though to see if we missed some.

 

[Kel]

Brian, I don't like being a pest, but I still don't see member's photos on resorts that I know had a lot of photos a few years ago. Royal Islander shows 15 photos now and all or most of them are the resorts promo photos. The Marriott Kauai Beach Club had a lot of photos and now there are just a few resort promo photos. I just paid $30 for 3 years to TUG for access to Reviews which used to have lots of fun member photos for lots of resorts and now there are none. Not happy.

 

[TUGBrian]

not a pain at all, if there are photos missing we certainly want to find them!

looking further into that particular resort, we even went to a very old backup of the tug2.com site from many years ago and it did not contain any additional photos than the ones that are listed there.

are we sure it was kauai beach club you feel had more pictures? could it have been maui beach club or another similar name?

for that particular resort, the one that was restored was likely deliberately deleted as it was replaced by a more updated picture of the same exact shot (side view of the bedroom)

two tug members have provided their own personal photo gallery from this resort, perhaps one was linked in the resort description and that got deleted? ive added this one back as its pretty inclusive!

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-mZt2L/


I can certainly ask if this TUG member would mind uploading these photos to the resort review page if you like?

 

[taffy19]

Brian, that album is mine on Smugmug. I have never done a review here or anywhere (Trip Advisor or Redweek) because everyone has different opinions of what makes a timeshare great or a disappointment and I am biased about our own timeshares so not a good judge to write a report.

Tell me how to do it without a review. In the past, it was Kristin who did it for us and for me. She uploaded pictures for me for the Buganvileas and the Grand Velas in Mexico. The Buganvileas was updated once for our timeshare and even more for the expensive timeshares they are selling now. I posted about them in two TUG threads and included pictures but they were not updated on your website because I didn't post reviews.

Can TUG upload them for us if we do not write reviews?

 

[TUGBrian]

you most certainly can...they are completely separate features...here is a link to upload photos right on that resort review page:

http://tug2.com/ResortImageAdd.aspx?Marriotts+Kauai+Beach+Club&ID=14034

here is a photo showing where the "UPLOAD A PHOTO" link is on each and every review page...when you browse to the resort review page itself and click on the link, it will automatically link the photo you upload to that resort:

note that you can include a caption/description of each photo you upload.

 

[taffy19]

OK, I will try with my computer rather than with the phone.

The pictures should still be current for that resort. What is your favorite size for uploading now?

 

[TUGBrian]

I think the limit is 2 or 3mb on size for uploading per photo.

 

[taffy19]

I tried to upload the pictures but made a mess of it. Some may be double so tried to delete them but I cannot find them on TUG. I wasn't finished yet but I noticed that you have a link already to the Smugmug album which may be easier.

Do I really need to upload each picture separately? Can you put the captions in later or erase a picture or change the caption? Please, help.

 

[TUGBrian]

I show you successfully uploaded a number of photos to this resort, and only saw one duplicate (dont worry about that, we can delete the dupes on this end easily enough).

thank you!

 

[dioxide45]

I think the limit is 2 or 3mb on size for uploading per photo.

This is the one reason I don't upload photos. To the TUG resort pages. I have'nt tried lately, but I recall a size limit previously. Our new SLR cameras these days create file sizes that exceed the size limit on TUG, so I don't bother. It is a lot of work to go through each photo to manipulate it enough to make it within the size limit for upload. Is there any chance the size limit could be changed? Or could some type of program be installed on the server side to automatically reduce the file size at upload, kind of like they do with other photo sharing sites and Facebook?

 

[SmithOp]

This is the one reason I don't upload photos. To the TUG resort pages. I have'nt tried lately, but I recall a size limit previously. Our new SLR cameras these days create file sizes that exceed the size limit on TUG, so I don't bother. It is a lot of work to go through each photo to manipulate it enough to make it within the size limit for upload. Is there any chance the size limit could be changed? Or could some type of program be installed on the server side to automatically reduce the file size at upload, kind of like they do with other photo sharing sites and Facebook?

or you could do a batch resize before uploading.

http://download.cnet.com/FastStone-Photo-Resizer/3000-2192_4-10319476.html


Sent from my iPad Mini 4 using Tapatalk

 

[TUGBrian]

im not sure whats involved with creating an "auto-resize" section of code...if its something easy ive got no problem with it...but if it were super easy id think it would be implemented on far more applications/sites...its relatively rare (on the sites I visit at least).

the reason for the size limit isnt so much for space limitations....but the resolution of a 5-10mb picture is absolutely staggering and well beyond most monitors capability to view in full screen. thus when a person clicks on it they are going to wish it were about 30% of its original size anyway or they will be scrolling back and forth to view the entire picture.

 

[dioxide45]

im not sure whats involved with creating an "auto-resize" section of code...if its something easy ive got no problem with it...but if it were super easy id think it would be implemented on far more applications/sites...its relatively rare (on the sites I visit at least).

the reason for the size limit isnt so much for space limitations....but the resolution of a 5-10mb picture is absolutely staggering and well beyond most monitors capability to view in full screen. thus when a person clicks on it they are going to wish it were about 30% of its original size anyway or they will be scrolling back and forth to view the entire picture.

I have determined that when I export out of Lightroom that I can set the max size of the image. What is the ideal size to have the photos in for display?