steamlocomotive.info

This website is written in a truly superb web development language called Coldfusion from Adobe. We've installed a developmental version of the newest release of this language on one of our servers (Coldfusion MX 9.0) and are preparing a set of new features and capabilities for the website which we'll implement when and if management lets us have enough money to pay for the upgrade on our production servers.

Here's what we're working on:

1. A completely new administration system that'll hopefully allow our editors a much easier time in editing and maintaining the database that underlies this site.
2. A video contribution system using Coldfusion 9's ability to spawn a fully featured video player with playback controls, and a Linux open-source tool called ffmpeg which allows us to convert a contributed video from its native format to FLV on the fly. This code, of course, necessitates changes to the administrative tools so that editors can approve submitted videos.
3. Right now, when you contribute a photo to the system we assume the most restrictive of all licensing; that is: Copyright © Your Name. We also assume your permission to use the image as you contributed it through a clearly marked screen. There are other possible licensing modes: Public Domain, CCAS and the Gnu Free Documentation License. The image submission software will be modified to permit you to select any one of these licenses for your image. The parts of the website that currently display Copyright &copy Whoever will be modified to properly display the licensing mode you've selected.
4. There currently exists no convenient way for a user to submit additional photos for a locomotive, for its photo album, if the locomotive already has a primary image. Plans are afoot to add the capability to submit additional photos for a locomotive beyond its primary photo, and to submit additional photos for inclusion in an existing photo album.

More changes are planned, but that's what's actively being worked on. I'll let y'all know when and if we decide on other features.

Link: http://www.steamlocomotive.info/browse.cfm

We've made some small changes to the Browse function that lets you search for steam locomotives by geographic location. By default, when you click Browse from any page of the site, you get a map of the world and can then "drill down" to the geographic area you're interested in.

We've had numerous emails (well 9, anyway) over the last two years complaining about this. People say they aren't interested in steam locomotives of the world, just European steam, or Asian steam or African steam.

So... we modified the Custom View page (reachable from the site's home page). Down at the bottom there's a choice labelled 'Choose Geographic Context'. If you select a context (Europe, Africa, North America, etc.) and if your browser allows cookies, then every time you visit the site in the future, and click on the Browse button, the browser will come up initially in the geographic area you chose.

If you encounter any issues with this functionality, please advise me at info@steamlocomotive.info and I'll try to correct them.

Regards,
Doug

Link: http://www.steamlocomotive.info/albumphotog.cfm

Since September 2002, when this site first came on line there's been a page called Album Photographs - By Photographer in the Library section. It has never worked, and in 4.5 years NO ONE has ever complained about it.

Anyhow, I fixed it, and you can go see it by clicking the title of this post. Have a nice day.

Doug

In the Library section there are two functions: Locomotive Builders - Alphabetically and Locomotive Builders - By Number Built. These two functions had several bugs, among which were complete failure if the builder name had an ampersand (&) in the builder name, and miscounting and misdisplaying locomotives if there were similar names in the database.

These have all been fixed and thoroughly tested, and code to make the pages more secure added. Copyright notices were corrected on the three pages involved in these two functions.

Regards,
Doug

Link: http://www.steamlocomotive.info/onlyvideos.cfm

Since we changed video formats a few months ago there have been numerous problems with the way the site handles videos. In the Library section there is a selection called "Locomotives With Videos". Regrettably it displayed a mix of locomotives with and without videos.

This has now been corrected, the tools we use to add videos to the website enhanced, several minor bugs in video handling corrected and the Copyright notices corrected for all pages that handle/display videos.

Regards,
Doug