We need a volunteer to fill the Print Competition Assistant position and two website assistant volunteers. Please contact the "Management Committee". We can't have a club without volunteers! Thank you!

Recent Visual Pursuits Changes

July 2024

Balanced Columns

A new CSS class has been added with instructions for formatting part of a page with equal sized columns. See the Help article for details.

April 2024

Snippets for Page Formatting

You can insert highlighted boxes for text and other content easily using the "snippets" feature of the page editor. See the Help article for details.

January 2024

Menu Page

You can now create a custom parent menu that displays the sub-menu items. When you edit the custom menu, specify "Menu Page". When a user clicks on that menu item, a page will display with a "tree" of sub-menu items.

June 2023

Storage Allocations

The storage allowed in each subscription was doubled. This allows using larger images in competitions without being concerned about exceeding the storage allowed by your subscription.

Edit Button on Custom Pages

When a Content Manager views a custom page, an "Edit Custom Page" button appears at the bottom of the page. This can be used instead of navigating through the Administration menus to edit a page.

February 2023

Documents and Files Links

The website will now allow you to use a link to a “Documents and Files to Download” page that will only display a subset of the entire tree.

On the “Manage Documents and Files” page, each category will now display a relative link to a page that will only display that category and its subcategories. You can place that link on a custom page or your Home page.

October 2022

Members Can Reset Spam Flag

If a member accidentally blocked email from your website by marking a message as spam, all future email will be blocked by the email service. A member can now clear that flag themselves by using the website menu "My Account", "My Account Settings".

July 2022

ICM Sort by Organization

The ICM Show Style has a new option to sort images by their submitting organization id before using the selected sort option. This inly applies to styles used with the "Show" tab. This option was requested by clubs that host competitions with submissions from other organizations.

Custom Group Managers and Group Options

Administrators can create Custom Groups (formerly "Custom Groups and Roles") and assign a group manager. The group manager can update the list of people in the group and set options for the group.

Group Managers will automatically hold the role of "Group Manager" that allows the menu item "Manage Custom Groups" to display on the "Administration" menu. Group Managers can only edit groups where they have been assigned as a manager.

An option on a Custom Group allows members to add or remove their account from the Custom Group. A new menu item now appears as "My Account", "My Groups".

April 2022

Member Critiques of Competition Images

You can now set an option on a competition to allow members to critique competition entries. These critiques will only be visible to the image author. Member critiques can be added when voting or when displaying competition results. Authors view critiques from their Image Library.

Member critiques are independent of critiques created by judges during the judging process. Those critiques can optionally be displayed for all members to view.

March 2022

Google Analytics Tracking Id

If you have configured Google Analytics, you can now add the Google Analytics Tracking Id on your Manage Organization Profile page. Just enter the Tracking Id, not the script.

January 2022

Merge Duplicate Images

It is not unusual for members to accidentally upload duplicate images and certify that they are different. If you make this mistake, it can now be corrected by the author or a Competition Manager.

Use the new menu "My Account", "Merge Duplicate Images" to search your Image Library for duplicate images. Competition Managers can also search and merge duplicates for other members. Full instructions are located on that page.

Change to Rank Voting

Organizations using rank voting asked for a change to make it easier to rank images when there are a larger number of images present. Instead of relying on drag and drop to order images, you can now set a value for your rankings on multiple thumbnails.

December 2021

New Image Export Columns

When you use the Images button on a Manage Competitions page, two additional columns are now exported when you export to Excel. The "Critique Requested" indicates if an author requested a critique of the image. "Critique Judge" name any judge already assigned to perform the critique.

These same fields also display when you use the "Report" button from a Manage Competitions page and you select the option to print critiques.

A4 Print Labels

You can now generate print labels on A4 size paper. Options are available for 6 or 8 labels per page. 6 labels per page is recommend to allow larger fonts for displaying the title of the print.

Display Submissions to Other Organizations

If your organization submitted images to another organization hosting a competition with the Visual Pursuits service, you can now view and export historical submissions using the menu "Competitions", "Submissions to Other Organizations and Results".

During the submission process you would always see your submissions. Once the competition was closed, however, there was no way to display the submissions you made to other organizations. This new menu item corrects that omission.

September 2021

Multi-Level Awards in Website Judging

You can now assign multi-level awards when performing website judging by selecting "[Combine All Levels]" on the judging page.

Block Judges from Disqualifying Images

A new option on a competition will allow you to block judges from disqualifying images. A Competition Manager is always allowed to disqualify an image. By default, judges can disqualify images.

July 2021

Judges in Training

When you assign judges to a competition, you can now specify that the judge is a "Judge in Training". The person is allowed to score and critique images in the competition, but the critiques and scores will be hidden from view and will not be used in computing scores or awards.

This feature is intended to have a person with the new role of "Mentor Judge" review the critiques and scores of the "Judge in Training". This is to help train and educate a new judge.

Judging Analysis

A new button on the Judging Queue page will display an analysis of the judging. This can only be viewed by a Competition Manager or Mentor Judge. Only a Mentor Judge can see critiques and scores from a Judge in Training.

Critique Requests

Competitions and Competition Types can be configured to allow members to request a website critique of an image. The number of requests can be limited by Competition, Competition Type, and Competition Group.

When enabled for a competition, a check box displays after submitting an image into a competition. Checking the box will alert the judge that a critique is required.

If you have multiple judges, you can request that the critique requests are allocated evenly between the judges.

June 2021

New Servers

Websites were split into two servers to improve performance and reliability. The servers are hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud service and located in Australia and Iowa. The higher speed connections and shorter distances to the servers (especially in Australia and New Zealand) significantly improve performance.

May 2021

ICM Program Updated

An ICM program update was required this month in preparation for moving the hosting of the websites to new servers hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud.

Invite Other Organizations into Competitions

ICM support completed for handling guest competitions, which are described in the April 2021 note below.

April 2021

Invite Other Organizations into Competitions

Previously, the only way to hold competitions with entries from multiple organizations was to configure member organizations. This process was established for councils and regional organization that had member organizations. All competitions would be open to the member organizations.

As an alternative, you can now invite organizations to participate in your individual competitions by selecting an option on a competition and then using the "Invite" button to select the participating organizations.

Participating organizations will see the competition in their competition lists. You can choose if invited organizations can have their members submit images directly into the competition or if images must come from competitions held by the invited organization. Competition results will also appear on the Invited Organization website.

This update does not yet support the ICM program, so you cannot use Invited Organizations if you will use the ICM program. We hope to remove this restriction soon.

November 2020

New Membership Comments

Two new comment fields are now available on the Manage Members page that can be added to each membership. When you edit a member's account and click "Edit Membership" you can add text to these fields. The new values display in the membership grid.

Separate Event Registration Fee for Members

When you define an event with a registration fee, you can specify a separate fee that applies to members. This means a registered member can have guest registrations that are priced differently. The member fee can be zero. Payment amounts are computed from your event and not used from your button definition.

Payment buttons for event registrations will now display differently when the buyer arrives on the PayPal payment page. The full price of the registration will be displayed and no quantity will be displayed. The buyer cannot change the price or quantity.

PayPal Payments Allowed for Competition Entries

If you hold a competition and charge for competition entries, you can set the charge on individual competitions and/or on a Competition Group. Payment amounts are computed from your competition or group definition and not used from your button definition. You can display instructions for the process by using the menu "Administration", "Manage PayPal Buttons", and click "Display PayPal Button Instructions". You can also use "Help", "Help Topics" for a link to the same document.

Member Direct Submissions from Member Organizations

New options have been added to a Competition to allow direct image uploads and submissions from member organizations. Previously, submissions could only be made from competitions.

Additional Help Topics

New help topics have been added that cover many of the common questions and issues. These are accessed via the menu "Help", "Help Topics".

October 2020

A4 Paper Size Support

You can now select the A4 paper size when printing Award Certificates and an Images report. These reports are generated from a Manage Competitions page.

Other Memberships

If you edit a member on the Manage Members page it will now display if the member is a competing member in other organizations.

Voting Ranges

If you specify voting using a slider, to can now specify the maximum value to use for the sliders in the range of 5 to 100.

September 2020

Account Creation Enhancements

A simplified process has been created for people to create Guest accounts. These are used by non-members so they can judge, register for public events, or participate in other public actions that require identification.

If you are not logged in and attempt to register for a public event, a button will display to allow you to create a Guest account and automatically return to the event registration page.

New member registrations will now be presented with a simplified form, rather than with several pages of forms. Account creation forms are now more mobile friendly.

If a new membership request is created and PayPal buttons are defined for a new member dues payment, the payment button is displayed at the end of the account creation process. If the person exits without payment, and goes to the Membership Information page while logged in, a payment button will appear for them.

August 2020

Website Judging Awards for Multiple Competitions

Premium subscribers can now use website judging to assign multi-competition awards to a group of competitions. The ICM program has allowed this for many years, but this is new for website judging.

After you complete judging and assigning awards to a group of competitions, use the regular judging page and select the new check box to allow assigning multi-competition awards to images in the competitions. This is typically done to assign an award like "Best in Show".

New Member PayPal Button

When a new member creates an account, you can specify PayPal button to display when their account creation completes. This prompts them to make a dues payment, which can then automatically grant membership.

To use this feature you need to edit your membership button definition and check the box "Display button for new member registrations".

July 2020

Competition Results for Another Hosting Organization

Competition results from a parent organization are now displayed along with the results from your own organization. This will also happen if you were invited to participate in competitions hosted by another Visual Pursuits website. In addition, Competition Managers will see a button to allow exporting competition data from the Competition Results page. You will be able to export the results from the parent organization's competitions.

Embedded HTML Files

Advanced users can have a HTML page inserted into an iframe tag on custom pages. This might be a requirement if you need a form placed on a page that is hosted by another service. See the new Help topic on Embedded HTML Files via "Help", "Help Topics", and look in the "Advanced" section.

Group Limits now affect SubGroups

If you specify a submission limit on a Competition Group, that limit will now also apply to any subgroup and competitions within a subgroup. All limits specified for a Competition, its parent Competition Group, and any parent groups above will be considered before images can be entered into a competition. Previously, Competition Group limits only applied to the immediate competitions within the group.

Group Limits on Submissions From Other Competitions

You can now specify submission limits on a Competition Group that affect submissions from other organizations or competitions. Previously, these restrictions could only be made at the Competition level.

June 2020

Image Keyword Tags

Uploaded images are scanned with a Google image recognition service to generate keyword tags to identify the content of your images. These keyword tags are added to any tags embedded in your image and can be used in searching your Image Library.

The image recognition service is not perfect, but does a pretty amazing job. It reports its confidence in the keywords as a percentage. You can view the keyword tags in your Image Library by clicking the "Tags" button for an image. You are able to add, edit, and delete tags.

Gallery Tiles

The display of competition results with the thumbnails button has been replaced with an upgraded display called "gallery tiles".

Gallery Tiles can now be embedded on a custom page using a special "tag" to identify the gallery or competition content to be displayed. This works very much like the process of inserting a slide show gallery on a page, except the display is completely different.

Gallery Tiles display medium size images in the sequence specified in a gallery or in descending Award Numeric and Scores for judged competition results. Headings can be inserted automatically. The display is responsive and adapts well to mobile devices.

Information about each image is displayed when you hover your mouse pointer over the image. Mobile devices do not have that feature. An enlarged image and image information is displayed when you click the image.

Instructions appear on the "Manage Web and Email Content" and the custom page builder pages.

Custom Page Options

You can now specify that a custom page should use the full width of the browser content area, instead of being restricted to the maximum page width defined for your organization. This is useful if you place a tiled gallery on your page.

Normally, your custom content is placed inside a panel with a background that separates it from the web page background. While this is useful for text displays, more complex layouts may want to suppress using this panel. A new option allows you to remove that background panel.

May 2020

Password Resets

The password reset process for members has been simplified. We no longer use a question and answer query and instead request your email address or login name plus your last name. These items will now be sufficient to reset your password if you forget it.

Calendar Auto-Export

You can automatically export calendar events to external calendars using an iCalendar feed. Other calendar services, such as Google Calendar and Outlook, can use the "feed" to update their calendar as events change on your organization calendar.

The export feature is only available to members. This will not import events from another calendar; it only exports. The export includes events, competition dates, and competition close dates.

Your website provides a special page to be configured with your external calendar. The page address for your iCalendar feed is displayed on your calendar page.

April 2020

Column Formatting

New CSS classes and documentation have been added to assist in creating multi-column layouts on web pages without using tables. These layouts would be "responsive" and change their layout when displayed on a mobile device.

Details on how to use this method can be found using the menu "Help", "Help" and locating the topic "Creating Columns on Web Pages" under "Advanced". HTML coding will be required.

March 2020

Member Scores

A new option was added for competitions to allow members to see their scores from competitions in the Image Library and Image History even when competition results suppress the display of scores to other members. The default is to suppress the display of scores to members if competition results do not display scores.

January 2020

New Ranked Voting Feature

Premium subscribers may now use a "ranked voting" method on their competitions where they allow members or the public to vote on images. For more information on Rank Voting, please see the Help document.

Privacy Policy Revised

We have revised our privacy policy statement to comply with recent changes in laws. You can view our policy statement using your website menu "Help", "Privacy Policy".

December 2019

PayPal Buttons for Events

When you create an Event with registrations and a registration fee, you can associate a PayPal button with the event. When a person registers for the event, the PayPal button will display so they can make a payment. When a payment is made, the registration will be marked as having paid the registration fee.

The event contact person is notified of payments made for the event. This can be done by associating the contact person with a member reference or supplying a contact email address. Treasurers are always notified of payments for event registrations.

You associate a PayPal button with an event by creating or editing a PayPal button definition and selecting the event to be associated with the button. Only events with registrations can be selected.

November 2019

Customs CSS Style Sheets

You can now upload your own custom CSS style sheet to simplify customizing your website using HTML. This feature is only for advanced users. Please read the Help topic for more information.

October 2019

Maximum Image Size

The system maximum image size has been increased to the 8K standard, 7680x4320.

Upscaling Images in Website Judging

An option is now available when judging images to allow images to scale up to fit into the browser. This could result is pixelation, so it is discouraged.

September 2019

EMail Opt-Out

Users can opt-out of group messages sent to the Members or Guests groups. Administrators, Event Managers, Competition Managers, Membership Managers, and Management Committee members have the ability to override the opt-out with an option that will display on the email page. Use this only when necessary and respect the users wishes to not receive bulk email messages.

Labels for Prints

The layout for labels for prints was improved, based on a suggestion from Richard Grubola of The Photographic Guild. Check "Use Larger Fonts" is you want larger fonts on the label, which may truncate titles.

Group Critiques

A Competition Manager can now enter critiques on competition entries after judging is complete. These critiques might be from notes recorded at a meeting during the judging process. This is done from the website judging page.

Critiques can now be entered from the judging thumbnail images.

Competitions without Awards or Scoring

If you have critiques or shows of images that do not using judging, displaying the images in the Competition Results was problematic because the "competition" was not marked as judged. Only judged competitions display in the results.

A new option can be set on a Competition Type to indicate that the "competitions" using the Type will be marked as judged after the competition date and time have elapsed. This allows these competitions to be displayed in the Competition Results without any additional effort.

Images Report Sorting

The Images Report, generated from the Report button on a Manage Competitions page, has been enhanced to allow sorting by authors names or by image titles. These sort options might be handy when dealing with prints.

New Privacy Options

A member can now grant permissions to display their email address and/or phone number in member lists, while still hiding their address.

Acceptance Awards

If you want to grant an award indicating "acceptance" into a competition instead of disqualifying images, an award can be created with an Award Numeric of 120 or greater for this purpose.

July 2019

Competition Results Comment

A comment can be specified for a competition that will display above the competition results on the Competition Results page.

May 2019

Critiques in Competition Report

You may now select an option to include critique comments when printing a competition report. This report is generated from a Manage Competitions page, locating a competition, and clicking "Report".

ICM Critiques

The ICM thumbnails now display a "K" in the top right corner to indicate that critiques are available for that image. You can click the "K" to display the critiques. This is most useful if displaying a show in dual screen mode and you have set a Show Style to display critiques over thumbnails.

Event Registrations

When defining an event that uses registrations, you can specify that guests are allowed and you can ask a question of the registrants. When a person registers they can indicate if they are bringing a guest and text can enter a text response to a question defined for the event.

March 2019

New Organization Options

On the Manage Organization Profile page you can now require that new members must provide their email address and/or a phone number.

February 2019

New Judging Options

You can now set an option on a Competition Type or a specific competition to allow judges to preview images without allowing them to set scores or awards. This is useful if judging will be performed later with the ICM program.

For print competitions, to can set an option so that judges can only view thumbnail images on the judging screen. This is meant to prevent them from judging the digital image, forcing the judges to view and judge the actual print.

January 2019

New Videos

A new video was added to provide a general overview of setting up competitions and all of the related items. This is especially important for new organizations and new Competition Managers.

Other new videos are now available for "Competition Groups" and "Competition Levels". The "Competition Types" video has been revised.

Menu Changes

The "Competitions" menu items have changed. A new menu item, "Setup Competitions" provides an overview of the competition setup process, step by step. The "Manage Award Sets" and "Manage Critique Definitions" menu items have been moved from the "Administration" menu to the "Competitions" menu.

Competition Results

An option was added to a Competition Type definition to set a default for displaying all entries in a competition or only images with awards. If not set, the initial display of competition results will only include images with awards. The user can elect to display all images with an option on the results page.

December 2018

Subscription Storage

The storage size included in each subscription has been increased by 25% with no additional charge. You should easily be able to store 5 years of competition images using the system maximum image sizes.

November 2018

Maximum Image Size

The maximum image size was increased from 10MB to 20MB.

Judge Search

When searching for judges for website judging, you can now search using first and last names instead of needing the email address or user id.

October 2018

First Name Search

When searching member names, you can now search by a First Name. Previously, you could only search by Last Name, email address, or User Id.

Hide Judge Names

You can now set an option on a Competition Type to hide the display of the names of your judges until after a competition has been judged.

Calendar Improvements

Competition Close and Voting Close dates are now on the calendar events. The tooltip for competition calendar events now includes the full status and all dates related to the competition.

August 2018

Improved Editor

Enhancements were made to the editor used for creating content for web pages and email. A "ribbon bar" now replaces the "toolbar" used previously. This allows better descriptions of the buttons and adds a "help" button.

You can how insert links to videos hosted by YouTube or Vimeo.

Mobile Phone Improvements

Your club website will now display better on a mobile phone. You may also notice some changes in formatting on larger devices as well. Many pages used for configuration will never be usable on a phone and some pages still need alternate versions for a phone. This update is a first step in the process and helps with some of the more common uses on a phone.

If you place images on a web page, consider using the editor and setting the CSS style on the image to "Limit Mobile Width". If the image is displayed on a mobile device, it will be scaled down to fit the width of the device. Assign the style using the "Insert" tab and the "Image Properties" button. Clear any height or width settings present.

Galleries are handled automatically do not require any special handling.

June 2018

Default Competition Levels

You can now mark a Competition Level to be the default level used within a Competition Type. If a member does not have a Competition Level assigned to the Competition Type within your organization, the default level will be assigned and used automatically.

Use the Manage Competition Level Definitions page to edit a level and check the box to indicate it is the default Competition Level.

May 2018

Gallery Option

You can now set a gallery option to request the display of any metadata (EXIF) data available for the images being displayed. The summary metadata is added to the image caption.

April 2018

Duplicate Images

When you upload a new image, you may now see a warning if your image appears to be a duplicate of an image already in your Image Library. You are encouraged to use the existing image unless there is a significant difference between the images. The process cannot detect all image differences, so it can only be a suggestion.

Download Manager Role

The "Download Manager" role is now required for a person to use the "Manage Downloads" page via the "Administration" menu to save files that can be downloaded by members. This role is implied by the "Content Manager" and "Administrator" roles. You may find you need to add this role for a member that needs to save files in your downloads area.

View PayPal Role

The "View PayPal" role is now required for a person to use the "View PayPal Transactions" page via the "Administration" menu. This role is implied by the "Treasurer", "Membership Manager", and "Administrator" roles. You may find you need to add this role for a member that needs to view PayPal transactions, such as an event manager.

March 2018

Automatic Processing of PayPal Membership Payments

You can now configure your website to automatically apply membership payments made with PayPal buttons. Membership expirations can be extended without any administrative handling of each payment. Careful setup is required of your PayPal buttons and you must enable the feature on the Manage Organization Profile page.

Please watch the new video on using PayPal buttons for details.

PayPal Payment Notifications

An email is now sent to the payee when they make a PayPal payment using one of your PayPal buttons. The email confirms that payment has been received by your organization.

A separate email is sent to the Treasurers of your organization, or to the Administrators if no users have the Treasurer role. Payments made with buttons configured as membership payments will also optionally send a message to the Membership Managers, or the Administrators if there are no Membership Managers.

Please watch the new video on using PayPal buttons for details.

New Gallery Embedding Options

You can now place Competition Results galleries on your Home page or any custom page. Additional options are available when you place you gallery, such as setting the gallery size. A new process builds the needed tag to place on your page. Instructions are on the custom page and web content pages.

You can now place galleries with competition results on your Home page or any custom page. You can select a specific Competition, the latest Competition with results, a specific Competition Group, or the latest Competition Group with results. This new feature could be used to automatically display your latest competition results on your Home page.

February 2018

Display Non-Winning Author Names

A new option was added to Competition Types that allows you to force the display of author names for non-winning images in a competition. The default for new Competition Types will hide the author names for images without awards. A competition option can specify the display of non-winning authors if the Competition Type does not make that selection.

This option does not affect the ICM program, where the display of author names is controlled by show styles.

January 2018

ICM Wildlife Option

You can now set a show or judging style option to identify wildlife images in the caption for images. All images that have the "wildlife" attribute will be have the word "Wildlife" included in their caption display.

December 2017

PayPal Transactions

If you use PayPal buttons, each payment transaction is now recorded on your website. The transactions can be viewed by members via the menu "My Account", "My Transactions". The organization can view PayPal transactions via the menu "Administration", "PayPal Buttons", "PayPal Transactions".

Further enhancements are in development. We will try to automate membership renewals and we will create a video explaining how all of this works.

New Privacy Option

Members can now specify, via their personal profile, if a club's Event Managers can see their contact information.

Cell Phone Numbers

The "Alternate Phone Number" field has been renamed to "Cell Phone" and the "Alternate Phone Number Type" field has been discontinued. If a cell number and the primary number are the same, only the primary number is saved.

September 2017

Opt-Out Forums

Forum managers can now specify that all members or all competing members should get notifications from a forum or a forum topic. Members can "opt out" of these topics by un-subscribing via the forum pages.

Hide Author Names

A new option was added to the competition options that allows you to hide the author names for non-winning images in a competition results display. The default for new competitions will hide the author names for images without awards. This option does not affect the ICM program, where the display of author names is controlled by show styles.

August 2017

Move Competition Images

If a user submits an image to the wrong competition, a Competition Manager can now move the image to a different competition instead of having the user remove and re-submit the image. The process is performed using the "Images" button on a Manage Competitions page. A "Move" button appears under the thumbnail for each image in the images grid.

Image History

Competition Managers can now select a member to view their competition history using the My Image History page. This was previously restricted to Administrators.

July 2017

Award Set Percentage Option

When defining an Award in a custom Award Set, you can now specify that the percentage considers other awards after computing a percentage of all entries. See Manage Award Sets for details.

New Visual Pursuits Users Forum

A new public forum was created, shared by all organizations, to allow organizations and members to exchange information on how to manage their organizations and competitions. Access the new forum using your website menu "Organization", "Discussion Forums".

May 2017

New ICM Sort Option

When combining levels in the ICM program, the random sort order is applied over all of the combined images. This may not be desirable for a print competition where you have printed out a report of images in the competition and are trying to synchronize projecting images with a stack of prints that are order from the report. Use the new sort option "Competition Levels and Random" in a Show Style to keep the images in the same order as the report.

New Disqualify Option

If you disqualified an image while judging with the ICM program (via the Awards panel), the image remained in the competition until you synchronized. At the time it is was deleted from the competition.

If you used website judging, you needed to delete a disqualified image from the competition via Images button on one of the Manage Competitions pages.

To improve the handling of disqualified images, the old ICM “Disqualify” option has been renamed to “Disqualify and Exclude”. This will continue to delete the image from the competition when you synchronize. A new “Disqualify” button on the Awards panel will keep the disqualified image reference in the competition, but the image is hidden and displays as Disqualified.

When using website judging, a judge can disqualify an image via the awards panel. There is no “Disqualify and Exclude” option for website judging.

Disqualified images will only appear in judging panels when hidden images are viewed. This allows removing the disqualified state. Authors will be able to view a disqualified state in their library. Disqualified images will appear in the images list on the Manage Competitions pages and the images are in exported lists from the ICM program.

April 2017

Converting Critique Ratings into Scores

An option can now be set on a Competition Type to allow a judge's rating values to be converted into a score automatically. A average of all non-zero ratings is scaled to the maximum score allowed for a competition image. This option requires specifying "Average Scores from Judges".

This option is "on" by default for all new Competition Types, but existing Competition Types do not have the option set. You must update your Competition Types if you want to use this option. A judge can disable the option on each critique and cannot critique or set a score for their own images.

Critiques is a feature included in a Premium Subscription. You can use "Administration", "Manage Critique Definitions" to customize the information that appears on the critique form. This allows you to name the rating sliders to match judging criteria you might use.

Without the automatic computation of a score from critiques, a scoring box still appears on the critique page so that a score can be entered there instead of waiting to return to the image panel.

January 2017

Splitting Very Large Competitions

If you need to hold a competition with hundreds or thousands of images, a new process allows you to split a competition into child competitions for distributed judging. See the main Help page for a reference on an article on Managing Large Competitions.

Billing Changes

The amount of storage allowed in each Visual Pursuits subscription type has been increased by about 30%. The number of prepaid website judged images has been doubled for each Premium Subscription.

Overuse beyond your annual allocations may roll-over to the next year if we decline to invoice for the extra usage. We expect to only invoice for excess usage once per year. These changes have been made without any increase in your subscription costs.

Use your website menu "Help", "Subscription Information" for more information on subscriptions and options. Use the menu "Administration", "Subscription Status" for details on your subscription and website usage.

Secure Website Mode

We have changed your Visual Pursuits website to run only in HTTPS mode instead of the normal HTTP mode. This new mode encrypts all transmissions, instead of just the login pages. The new mode has been encouraged for use by all websites since it makes it extremely difficult for anybody to hack into a website or intercept any information you might enter on a website.

No action is required by you or your users. The change is likely to be invisible to your users. In some cases, you may notice that the website address in your address bar has changed. This occurs because we are redirecting all of your website traffic to a single website address that uses the new HTTPS encrypted transmissions.

The ICM program has always used encrypted transmissions, so no change was needed there.


Suggestions Welcome

Have a need that is not being filled? Have a suggestion for improving the website or the Image Competition Manager program? We welcome your comments and suggestions. Consider adding a feature request to the Wish List Forum or send your comments to VPSupport@SoftwarePursuits.com.

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