Couple of questions prior to buying Pro

[Spinball]

I have Photoplog Lite installed and want to run our monthly photo competition with it.
Don't mind purchasing pro if that's what it takes.
We need 2 important features:
1) Exif information displayed
2) A voting system like regular forum polls. The 5 star voting system is no good cos we need to pick the person with the most votes/highest poll score at the end of the month.
A poll to pick the best photo in a particular category would be perfect. We would then use a category for all the competition entries for a particular month.

Are either of these functions available in the pro version? (Or likely to be?)
Thanks

[Morgan]

Sorry, no, PhotoPlog does not currently do either of those options. The next set of features is listed here but there is no release date set.

[Spinball]

Thanks for the reply. Ok in the short term how about Exif data not stripped from the photo when it is uploaded?
The admin options in the lite version imply that jpeg conpression is only applied to the thumbnails. Is this correct or is the original image manipulated as well?

[Morgan]

In pro if you have 'Use Dynamic Link' set to yes, or use a watermark or backdrop, then JPG commpression is applied to the displayed image. The original image is uploaded and remains as-is but it might be manipulated on the fly depending on the chosen settings. There is nothing specifically done to remove exif information, though as I haven't yet implemented the exif functionality for the next version, I cannot be sure what exif info remains and what exif info gets stripped. The best I can say at this point is that PhotoPlog does not currently have exif capability.

[Spinball]

Hello again,
I see in your latest update that you have included Exif information.
We're nearly there with a hack which meets our needs exactly.
How difficult would it be to add a system to allow voting for pictures - say out of 5 (like the rating system) or ideally out of 10 - plus the ability to sort pictures in a category by the total number of votes received? This would be useful funtionality not just for me but generally. Then you have 'most popular' photo functionality.

[Morgan]

PhotoPlog allows members to vote, i.e., rate one to five stars. When logged in visit here and click the Rate It drop down menu. Sorting is possible by Highest Ratings though it is across all categories. There is now a hook available in pro v.2.1.4 whereby you can add your own sorting option, but you'd need some PHP knowledge and it'd likely be across all categories unless you made file edits.

[Spinball]

Thanks for the suggestion. The problem with doing it this way is that the ratings are shown as an average. What I need is a total. And definitely limited to the best within categories so we can see just the best photos in each month's competition.

This hack is *so* close to what we need. I'm not bad at PHP but digging into the system in this way would be tricky for me.

Could you maybe have a think about what is needed? I bet when you think about it, it won't end up that tricky.
And with the competition functionality, you'd be adding a whole new dimention to your hack.