What qualifies as next few weeks for beta testing?

Hey Justin... how do you become a beta tester.....

Cheers

Mike

Justin I would consider this mid July.... any update on release?  Eagerly awaiting being able to change the 1980 outdated look of Pictage so it can be presentable to clients.

Or just a place to add my own CSS file would be nice.

Does the mid-september have a hard release date or does it at least still stand? I *really* don't want to renew my external website hosting tomorrow if I will be able to convert to nimbus with only a few weeks of downed time.  Beyond that, is there some opt-in notification for the release?

Thanks!

-Noelle

Hi, I've been following Nimbus for a while, it seems great and like some people here I've been delaying upgrading my website in the hope that Nimbus will be out soon. Is there anyway we can get an updated ETA as we've obviously missed the September release date.

Regards,

Steven

Has anyone been playing with Nimbus? After months and months of silent delays, my first impression is terrible.  Has anyone had a good experience and created a webpage that they are proud of with it? The template "Stratus" is barely like the LaCour example they give, and the navigation within is practically nonexistent.   There are so many bugs it seems like a complete waste of time.  I'd love to be able to see a working website made with Nimbus that I could click through, not just screen shots. And one that uses what they offer, not something that has been overly customized with HTML code, as I may as well make a much more streamlined, customizable, and expandable Wordpress site that I would own outright.  I love ShootQ, but Pictage and especially now Nimbus have been overwhelmed with disappointments. Any good feedback would be great.

The themes are just the tip of the iceberg.  Lots of bugs, horrible navigation, poor integration with your own Pictage site, and frustrating interface with limited customization that doesn't entail coding it all myself.  There's plenty of other options out there, so I'm struggling to understand how such a poor product could be released.  And it is honestly hard to take anything you say seriously at this point after months and months of delays and missed launch dates.  I'd love to hear what you've done to improve your project management before hearing more of the same "we're working on it" or "expect more in the future" bs.

I don't even see any options for hand coding things. As far as I can tell, there are very few customization options beyond changing colors and fonts. Four themes to choose from, supposedly more with the developer network, but given that the release date for Nimbus itself was rolled back at least 3 times just in this thread, I'm not expecting to see that anytime soon. I really like the idea of Nimbus, and would even consider giving Pictage another try if it would work as advertised, but in its current state it is pretty much useless to me.

I realize you don't want to copy any other company, but I would love to see customization options along the lines of SmugMug, which offers an easy customizer for the drag and drop folks, as well as the option to custom code HTML headers and footers, and control just about every element of the site with CSS stylesheets.

I have played with Nimbus and I am disappointed.  It looks to me like they just customized Wordpress to REMOVE lots of the functionality that makes it so wildly successful like plugins, template editing, and ability to do custom stylesheets.  My recommendation would be to open up the ability for custom CSS \ coding for the actual users to start editing.  Even if they themselves cannot do it they can hire other HTML \ CSS professionals to do the coding.  This would lead to a flood of user examples on how to push what Nimbus can do and give you great fodder for things to add back into Nimbus from the community.  Given the history of Nimbus and the obvious need for help on the project I cannot understand why something along those lines isn't done. 

Just before Nimbus was released I went through my Wordpress blog and incorporated the new Facebook Social commenting plugin and like \ share for Facebook.  This is something that has changed just this year and that I was able to implement.  If there isn't a method for users to custom code \ style their sites then this really isn't a viable option.  No offense, but come on you guys took Wordpress and Galleria and put them together.  Nothing magical there except you removed the awesome functionality in Wordpress.

@Cubby  I totally agree on the ShootQ front.  ShootQ is awesome and wonderful and I cannot see how I ever lived without it.  But Pictage looks like 1980 HTML and Nimbus offers very little customizations.  In this modern era for any site that is offering you the ability to build your own website should at a minimum offer you the ability to edit CSS.  I would also say they need to include the ability to edit jQuery to add customizations there as well.  This is akin to them launching Starbucks with the only options being black coffee with either 100% cream or sugar.  No toffee nut, no frap, no foam, no half and half, no options.  Think how fast Starbucks would be gone without options.  Or anything business for that matter.  People today want customizations to their own needs.  If you don't meet those needs people cannot use it.  I have been searching the net trying to find someone who has even PUBLISHED a Nimbus site.  Look at those statistics.  Number of ShootQ users who have a Nimbus account, have logged in, but have not published.  That should be your metric for counting how unsuccessful this Nimbus has been.  It is a wonderful idea and concept, but so far poorly brought to market.

Troy-I was thinking it looked like it was based on Wordpress. If this is true, than if they opened it up to take advantage of the gigantic user base, support, plugins and all the wonderful features of Wordpress, that would be amazing. I am not sure why they would want to reinvent the wheel if starting from a base of such a robust, widely supported, widely used product. 

I agree that at this point there is absolutely nothing groundbreaking about Nimbus, and I will probably be sticking with my Wordpress site, which is based on a GraphPaper Press theme with Galleria slideshows, has a full screen slideshow to open, and a great deal of customized features. Most likely I will just work on integrating my blog into that theme, rather than taking the time to setup Nimbus.

I can understand the desire to build something from scratch, but I'm kind of wishing you guys had gone with Wordpress as a platform. There are thousands of developers out there who have customized Wordpress to run a huge variety of sites. My brother is web editor for one of the largest newspapers in Maine, which is entirely run on Wordpress, and I have built a large variety of sites on the Wordpress platform as well. If not Wordpress, I'm curious why Drupal wasn't chosen as a starting point? While I admire the idea behind building a platform from the ground up, there is definitely something to be said for getting a running start with a platform that is already mature and highly customizable. 

I will continue to keep an eye on Nimbus and hopefully it will mature as quickly if not more so than ShootQ, but it's certainly not ready for the primetime, in my opinion.

Okay.  Reasons why I use Wordpress right now versus Nimbus. 

1. Customization of the styling.  Both via ability to add unlimited custom CSS files and unlimited custom JS files
2. Ability to add plugins whenever necessary or develop new should I need that functionality.
3. Plugin integration for my Slideshow Pro so I can display a gallery (grouping of albums) since I am primarily a wedding photography for client proofing.
4. SEO and ability to customize this deeply.  I have edited the slugs for the categories and tags to have more relevant links and pretty looking names.
5. Security of a large user base using the product and regular timely updates being released.  I can choose WHEN to implement these updates to make sure everything plays nice when I do.
6. Installed on my own servers.  If my site goes down it is between my server host and me.  No one else responsible or outside of my control.
7. I haven't installed any Facebook plugin to Wordpress I simply edited my template files to include it and published those changes.
8. Ability to apply customizations to handle better display and view ability that I choose for my mobile users.
9. New features can be added as fast I can add them or hire someone to.  I don't have to wait for them to be "released."
10. Wordpress has a roadmap, and public bug tracker which they keep up to date for me to follow both issues and new features that are going to be released.
11. I can choose to install the beta version(s) of Wordpress and to rollback as I wish.  Likewise I can install a total new site on the next version and put my files in there to test the functionality and make sure it works before going "live".
12. I use Wordpress because I see it more than a blogging platform and more as a website framework. 
13. Ability to integrate whatever the next great social network is whenever I need to (thinking Google Plus).
14. Using plugin that updates my sitemap for Google to crawl better.
15. Installed and customized Google Analytics for my site needs.

A big thing is social networking and integration into sites just became big.  In building a framework from the ground up I don't see any social networking features included at all.  You are building a supposed framework to integrate a photographers digital life, but left out the social networking. That really doesn't connect my online life in the cloud. 

And really I think in multiple posts on ShootQ invoicing \ it's customer portal, Nimbus, Pictage all product lines there has been a call out from the users for the ability to do custom CSS.  Just give us a place to put CSS code to manipulate all the classed and ID'ed elements.  I think that would be a HUGE step in Pictage, ShootQ, and Nimbus. 

Not to completely hijack the thread, but I have to take an exception to the stated security issues of Wordpress, and by extension open source software. It is true that there have been problems with security holes in Wordpress and other open source softwares, but there is no evidence those problems are any more pervasive than in a closed source environment. Additionally, the open source nature of Wordpress means that these security problems are typically very quickly found and addressed. The concept of 'security through obscurity' has been widely debunked. If closed source code was more secure, then the majority of web servers in the world would be running Windows, not Linux.

It is definitely unfair to expect Nimbus to approach the flexibility and feature base of WordPress, and the two are definitely very different beasts. The concept of a platform customized for photographers with less of the headaches of setting up and maintaining a custom site on my own does appeal to me, but I would like to be able to change things that are a little bit less superficial than my logo and colors. 

I will be looking forward to seeing the custom themes, it is definitely a bit of a balancing act to provide access to develop themes and widgets for the Nimbus platform while at the same time ensuring the system continues to work as expected. By and large, Wordpress plugins are good, but there are definitely some out there that don't play well with others and can cause a whole host of problems.

I like the concept of widgets, I like having a full screen slideshow to open my site, but a page with a blog widget, slideshow, maybe a twitter feed could be very engaging as well. My wedding photography site doesn't have a whole lot of custom coding, I created a client proofing page that redirects to my SmugMug account, and I did a little custom coding to get a flip book plugin working.

I really do think SmugMug has one of the best customization tools around, they have an easy customizer that is graphical, or the option to upload custom CSS, header & footer code, as well as a network of designers who can customize your site for you.

Although I have been vocally disappointment in Nimbus, I don't feel like I can take it out on anyone but myself. Like many others, I took the messages going out earlier this year to mean I would be able to have a very usable and in someways revolutionary website by mid summer at worst. Its now November and Nimbus for me is not usable and I am put off by those on Pictage selling their customization services without a pot to piss in as far as examples. However, I was the one who made the judgement error.

New products get pushed back all the time. The Nimbus team was selling a grand idea with little more than mustard seed in their hands. You cannot forsee how many sunny days it takes to grow a seed based on a time table. I am currently looking at a SmugMug site to at least bridge the gap between my outdated Bludomain site and they day Nimbus is fully baked and usable.

I support the team behind this. They have given frank and honest updates along the way and have taken the criticism on the chin. While I am disappointed that me brand is many months behind because I went "all in" waiting for this, its still my bad judgement.

My hope, my true hope, is that they have a theme coming soon that will blow me away. A design that they themselves would want to switch to. Pretty sure they know this is the expectation.

It's been pretty quiet here.  Any updates?  I can't seem to add any assets/photos from Pictage today.