Collections vs Submissions: Tips for Clubs


Well guys, many clubs have been using this method of submitting their members works for some time now. They've been quite successful at it from what I have heard.

*Ex-po-zure has finally taken the plunge and it has been an amazing to transformation with much positive feedback from the members.


Some of the ideas used during the transformation were borrowed from `WaitingForTheWorms who runs 4 clubs
*macro-club *Four-Seasons *wildlifephotography and *natures-beauty-club


$Moonbeam13 is keeping a list of Clubs that Convert to the Collections System The Collection Collective in support of this idea.


What is all of this hype about Collections and Clubs some of you might ask?

Simply put, if you join a club, you send them your submission which they would in turn add to their gallery.
This creates multiple submissions of the "same" photo depending on how many clubs you've joined.

Well the Collections System, encourages clubs to submit their members works to the Favorites Collections instead.
There are many many benefits for all involved.

1. You are guaranteed to get the fav.
2. Collections make is so much easier for your members who are non-subscribers to view "all" deviations in one place as
opposed to getting a title in their inbox.
3. So much faster to add photos for Club Admins, which leaves them more time for other club activity.
4. When photos are added to the Gallery, the member gets a notice right away, in the way of a fav, therefore you "know" when your photo has been submitted.
5. No more duplication of your photo in numerous clubs in addition to your own gallery, and this will make the Gallery Directors jobs alot easier.

I'm sure there will be many more benefits as we see this new system unfold.

That brings me to the reason I'm writing this news article.

`WaitingForTheWorms and myself `babyducks thought it would be awesome to share some of our ideas so that other clubs could have a place to go for suggestions.



Here goes...............

1. The Submission Process:

Submitting to favorites some members may say, does not send member submissions to everyone's inboxes.
The creation of a Screenshot submitted as a deviation will however go to all of your members.
You will see in the following example 12 submissions.
In your description you can give your members just the link to the Collection, where they will find all of the original photos. OR in addition you can provide them with individual links to each thumb shown in the screenshot, as I have done
in the example here.




Here is another example with 20 thumbnails...



Obviously when members submit, you would automatically add the photo to one of the Collection Folders that you have pre- arranged. When you do this, the photo does "not" automatically appear as "featured" in your favorites folder.
This is a good thing, as you can use the "featured" section of your favorites to do just that, feature Contest Winners,
The Best of's, or in my case I will be using it to feature different Galleries, right now I'm featuring all
People/Portraits



The way to feature in the section of your favorites would be of course to start with nothing in there.
You would then choose everything, which will show all of the submissions you just added to your collection folders.
You must then select edit.
You can then use the CTRL Select, or SHIFT Select feature to choose individual photos here or there or the entire page.
Once all highlighted you would click "add to featured" Voila. You would do the same when you were ready to remove them
from the featured section.


2. Collection Folders:
I have folders for the month's Submissions, as when all photos are entered into this collection, they also go to the main
favorites folder, this folder will eventually be removed when the month ends. This will prevent you from building up too
many folders.
Wormsy uses folders to "showcase" Weekly favorites, where she will move the photos that she used to feature on a weekly basis into this folder to keep a Collection of them.
I have my Best of the Month and Year folders. I use the Best of the Month folder for members to vote their favorites for
the shoutboard for the following month. This also gets removed at months end, leaving me with just my Best of the Year Folder.



The point is, you can do so many different things with you club using these folders to highlight Contest winners, or works
from members who are sharing information.
In addition, this will free up your Journals for other Features, rather than using your Journals for screenshots of your
daily submissions as I've heard others consider.

Here are some examples:








3. Your Club Featured Deviation:
This was a real dilemma for me, as I love to randomly choose members photos from the submission gallery and make it the
featured Deviation. I would change this every so many days.
I know many other clubs use this for their Contest Winners, etc.
How do you select from the "favorites" gallery for this?
Easy solution.
You keep "one" submitted deviation in your gallery.
Each time you need to showcase a photo as your Featured deviation, you just pull up the same photo and edit it, do not
untick the section where it says "this is a minor edit" and it won't go out as a submission. Or in my case, I have
unticked it and sent it out to all, as I think this will increase the excitment of your club members.
AS you will be editing this "one" deviation, you won't have a pile up of submissions in your gallery.


In closing....I think that is about all I can think of for now.
I'm hoping some of you have found this information useful.
More importantly, I'm hoping that more of the Clubs out there will consider adopting this Collections Method of submissions.

Over and out

`babyducks