It's been a while since I posted a blog. We have been very busy at the Lounge creating new tools for you. Consider this the first in a series of short tutorials on how to get the most out of Pilot Lounge.

Pilot Lounge Events Calendar

At right is a screen shot of the new Pilot Lounge Events calendar. Along with the new user interface comes added functionality. It is now possible to add a web site link and photo to your event. If you have already posted an event it is an easy matter to add a link and photo. The following is a short guide on how to use the Pilot Lounge Events system.

My Events Page

Below is a sample events page. This can be viewed by selecting My Events from your User Menu.

This page already has some events listed. If you have not yet posted an event you will just see the Add New Event button. If you click on this button, the following form appears:

The first thing you need to do is upload your photo. If you don't have a photo or wish to add it later that is no problem. After you upload a photo the form will appear like this (notice the thumbnail image):

Next fill out all of the fields and click on the Add Event button. Note that you do not have to include the http:// part of your web site address as this will be automatically added for you. After you click on the Add Event button your event is added to the calendar.

Forget something or wish to add a photo after the fact? No problem. Simply click on the Edit Event field of an event. You will see the following form:

You can change any or all of the infrormation about your event from this form. Once everything is the way you want it go to the events calendar and check out your event.

Some final notes. Event images are limited to 2MB in size. All images are automatically resized to fit the calendar layout. All events are automatically added to the Pilot Lounge Events RSS feed. This feed can be syndicated on other web sites by pasting the url of the feed into a feed parser (or aggregator). All events have a corresponding HTML page in addition to being viewable on the calendar. This makes for optimal searchability by the search engines.

New features are being added almost daily to Pilot Lounge.

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For Sale

Cleaning out your hangar? Looking to sell something? Try our Free Classified Ads. Our classified ad section has been updated to make it even easier to post a free ad. Once you are logged in you will notice the prominent Place New Classified button in the classified section of the site. You can include up to 4 photos. Can't find the right category to post your ad? Let us know and we will add a new category.

Find a typo or want to add a photo, after the fact? No problem. If you are logged in and viewing your own ad you will find an Edit button at the bottom.

We will be instituting a time-to-run period after which your ad will be removed but have not spelled out that policy as of yet.

YouTube

Pilot Lounge has now made it possible for you to embed external media into your profile. Sites such as YouTube have an embed link for videos that you can copy and paste into your own site. Go to your My Media page and you will find the link for External Media. Just copy and paste the link into the form and you can add it to your Public Profile Page. In the near future we will incorporate a way to highlight these the way we do user photos.

Forums

We have upgraded the breadcrumb navigation to make it easier to find your way through a thread. We will soon be integrating a way to subscribe to a thread so that you will be notified by email when someone posts to that thread. You will also soon notice a Submit Forum Request form so that you can request a new forum category to be created. In the meantime, If you feel that there is a subject matter that needs its own forum please email me and I will add it.

We have a resource of many pilots with many thousands of hours of combined experience here at Pilot Lounge. Surely there is someone who can answer your questions.

New Photo Gallery

The new photo gallery has been put in place. This is a much more friendly and functional gallery. Several little tweaks have also been made to the Media Administration area in terms of styling, functionality and the fixing of a few bugs. If anyone is having problems with media uploads  please let me know.

Help

The help section is already getting a bit long in the tooth as we have done many things with the site since it was first put together. Embellishing this section and incorporating more help features are high on the priority list. One of the features that you may not be aware of is the tool I am using to write this blog. Do you know that you can embed photos and links into your blogs? Check out this full-featured word processor on your My Blog page. Some instructions will soon be added to the help section.

We Listen

Many of the fixes and improvements in functionality are in response to your emails and forum posts. Everything that has not been addressed yet will be in due time as we build out the site. Thank you very, very much for your input. Keep it coming; constructive criticism and suggestions are always welcome.

Once you build something and put it out to the public you never know how your creation will be utilized.

Images

I realize that some of you are still having problems uploading images. In an effort to resolve the issues I have been building routines to anticipate some of the variable ways that people handle image files. While I can build ways of parsing many different types of data, it is difficult to accomodate everything with guaranteed, predictable results. With these thoughts in mind, let me share a bit of programming wisdom with you to make your file uploads go smoother.

Special Characters - in programming, special characters are used to break up chunks of logic. The most important characters are the quotes (",  '). When a script sees a quote it sees a signal to begin or end a logical path or signify a value. You should NEVER use a quote in an image filename. It is also a good idea not to use brackets or parentheses or any other special characters such as $,%.@ and the like.What characters can I use? it is always safe to use a dash ( - ), period or underscore(_).

Filename Length - please try to shorten extremely long filenames. The database has limits set on each field for the length of data. I have bumped up this limit a couple of times already but can not go further as it opens doors for possible security issues. Also, some older operating systems do not recognize filenames longer than 32 characters. How many characters are too many? If your filenames are over 50 characters you should rename them. Ideally, you should not let them exceed 32 characters.

File Size - The web site has filesize limits and upload time limits. This means that, if a file takes longer than the time limit to upload, it will timeout and the file will not be uploaded. If you are operating on a dial-up connection, a large file will, most likely, timeout before it uploads. I have not instituted any formal rules yet but, as the site increases in size and membership, we will have to issue quotas for all members so that the system has ample room to hold all of the data.

File Size Guidelines - Screen resolution on a computer is 72 dpi (dots per inch). The size of your viewing area is generally going to be less than 1440 pixels wide and 900 pixels tall unless you are viewing on a very large monitor. What this means is that photos larger than 1440 pixels wide by 900 pixels tall at 72 dpi will be reduced to fit in the viewing area. Thus anything larger than the above dimensions should be reduced otherwise all of the extra photo data is going to waste.

Digital cameras today take huge photos, generally in the range of 3000 to 4000 pixels wide and 2000 to 3000 pixels tall at 300 dpi. By reducing these photos to the above guidelines you can save 75% or more in file size. While the system doesn't care how large your photos are, having optimized photos will make them load on the web page much quicker and you will notice no difference in quality. It also takes much less time to upload the file and, if you have a slow connection, could make a huge difference in the success of your upload.

These issues are the most common that I see. Surely there are other things that I have not stumbled upon. If anyone still is having problems please Email Me and we will work it out.

New photo gallery is on the way. It will be up within the next few days. This will have added functionality and be more user-friendly. I am also in the process updating the Media Administration area to accomodate multiple file uploads.

Video - The eventual goal of Pilot Lounge is to have a backend similar to YouTube where you can upload any sort of media and it will be automatically converted for you. This requires another leap in server technology beyond where we are at this moment but it will happen in the not too distant future. At this time we are only able to play videos in the flash format (.flv).

I told myself I was going to take the weekend off but... Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to email me or post to the forum regarding bugs with the site. I just uploaded a whole bunch of updates that, hopefully, will address these issues and make the site a bit more user friendly.

Login System - It should be invisible to users but I have rebuilt the backend of the login system. This should solve any problems with multiple logins and multiple users on the same machine. If anyone still has any problems, let me know.

Privacy Settings - I have added a friends category to the Privacy Settings so you now have three options as to the visibility of blocks in your Public Profile.

In addition to these, numerous formatting and styling issues have been addressed along with some typo corrections.

SOME of the To-Do items include:

Adding more web site fields for those with more than one web site.

Upgrade the user interface and user-friendliness of the Media Administration including multiple image uploads

Integrate networking and search applications to facilitate finding people, schools, services, etc.

Create the tools you need and provide the format for educational and information resources that we all can share.

My apologies for the bugs. If we hadn't let this thing out of the bag I would never have found them!

New profiles are here! I have just completed building the profiles for businesses and schools. All new signups will be appropriately referenced. For those of you who have signed up for a business profile, you User Bio is now Business Information.

Styling progresses and more functionality is being turned on daily. Thanks a bunch to all for bearing with me. Along with the new profile pages we have added several more Forums and Classified Ad categories. We are closing in on having Safari browser issues resolved.

Blog photos are now operational again (typo). Sorry.

Pilot Lounge is not a FaceBook or a MySpace and doesn't pretend to be. We could have started with a canned Content Management System and made life easier but would have ended up with the same canned look and functionality of the thousands of other Social Networking sites out there.

This is a site for the Aviation Community and the goal is to serve your needs and provide the sorts of tools that you will find useful. This is a shakedown period. I could have kept working on this beast for a number of months and would be no further along than I am today if I don't get this out to the community and get your feedback. So please bear with me and please let me know where we need to go.

I am in the process of fixing the things that don't work. With your patience I should have these taken care of soon.

TO DO LIST (not, by any means, complete)

• Add more categories to the Classifieds
• Add More Forums
• Add editing capability to the Blogs
• Format Forms for all of the browsers
• fix the idiosynchrasies with image uploads (some are having problems due to naming conventions)
• create seperate profiles for businesses and schools
• lots more

I believe that problems with creating galleries and uploading photos has been fixed so start populating your galleries.

Thanks again for helping us shake this site down.

It is now possible to include photos with your blog. Be sure to resize your photos with the Image Properties dialogue box (right-click on the photo in your blog while using the FCKeditor) before you save.

This is from a recent excursion with Brad out of Centennial Airport. I am hooked; I want a plane.

I appreciate your patience in this endeavor. I know that there are still a lot of rough edges on this site. The only way I find some of the errors and logical flaws is through your input. Thanks to all who are participating in this shakedown period.