Jack's Pattern Website Thread

[Jonny]

Hello all,

This is my first post, though I've been an avid lurker here for over a year. I got my carvewright about 10 months ago and have about 100 hours logged making various projects, with quite a bit of success.

I'm a web developer by trade. I've watched the 'pattern depot' thread grow and grow, and also the recent idea/project of the pattern dvd. I downloaded it and checked it out. Please understand this: I do not mean to offend anyone with what I say here - I can appreciate all of the hours that went into it and all of the forum responses where you guide each other to patterns. There is a much, MUCH better way folks.

I'm doing my homework and will most likely be launching a website that will simply be a repository for all of the free patterns out there. Patterns will be searchable by keyword and tags, browsable by cagegory, you'll be able to rate and comment on patterns, etc. These are all common, standard, features for collections of anything. I can't believe people here have suffered with that gigantic thread for so long without revolting

Once the project is off the ground and running, I may ask for donations to help cover some of the up front costs (I'm not going to slouch here - I'll cough up cash to hire another developer with customizing the coding so that this thing works perfectly for us) or to help with the hosting and maintenance, and I'll probably beg for some volunteers to help sort the patterns and input the data for things, but this isn't a money venture for me. The site will be free - I'm just trying to make it so if you want, say, a pattern of an eagle, you can see all available screenshots and download what you want in a minute or two, not wade through tons of stuff and pull your hair out.

Maybe we can do something where people that carve professionally or sell other patterns can advertise on the site to cover the running costs - who knows... I'm just tossing ideas out there, but I'm gonna build a site for patterns even if it's all on me

I'd like this post to be the spot where everyone can weigh in and go over options, features, and suggestions for the site. I've got close to 15 years of full-time experience in the web development field and can hopefully create a single place for everyone to share and use all of the great free patterns out there!

Love to hear some feedback from you senior members! You guys have a great little community and I hope I can contribute to the success of everyone here.

-- Jack

[fwharris]

Jack,

Welcome and surpised you have not posted before!

Sounds like a great idea and looking forward to seeing what you come up with...

[TerryT]

Actually, I think that has already been done hasn't it? If I remember, Little red woodshop's site has them all listed, or did, as do a couple of others. One had to do with cows or farms or something. I don't recall exactly what that site is. This may have all changed I'm not sure since I don't use it. Since the list changes daily I wouldn't be surprised if it just became too much work to keep up.

Jonny, just to be clear, there are a couple of threads going that could be confusing. You are talking about the thread for the "Pattern Sharing Depot" which is the one with the talk of the cd, etc. Not the "Pattern Depot" on the Carvewright site, which are two completely different things, right?

[Jonny]

Actually, I think that has already been done hasn't it? If I remember, Little red woodshop's site has them all listed, or did, as do a couple of others. One had to do with cows or farms or something. I don't recall exactly what that site is. This may have all changed I'm not sure since I don't use it. Since the list changes daily I wouldn't be surprised if it just became too much work to keep up.

Jonny, just to be clear, there are a couple of threads going that could be confusing. You are talking about the thread for the "Pattern Sharing Depot" which is the one with the talk of the cd, etc. Not the "Pattern Depot" on the Carvewright site, which are two completely different things, right?

Yup. There's the 6 page thread about the DVD, and the zillion page one with the free patterns. I was mostly talking about the giant one, but mentioned the DVD also because people were tossing ideas around.

I've seen a couple of places with static lists, but not a truly dynamic and interactive database. What I'm talking about is more of, well, think of it as a high quality photo gallery... You can browse and search by keyword, and also interact by rating patterns, leaving comments like "even carves good in poplar", etc., but the best part is the sortability. When I'm done, you will be able to say show me all birds EXCEPT eagles, show me the patterns that are the most popular, show me what's highest rated in the boats category, show me what's new this week, the possibilities are endless and instant, and you'll have high quality screenshot up front.

I remember a thread where someone wanted a background they had seen somewhere, and it was followed by a flurry of links with "is this it" type responses. Excellent help to be sure, but I bet the guy would rather have instant access to recall anything from a single source.

If anyone has any links to lists that they like or that have a particular feature, etc., please post it here. I've dug high and low but I may have missed something.

[TerryT]

Cool, sounds good!

[Old Salt]

Sounds Good
Best of luck to you

Gary

[CarverJerry]

This all sounds great to me. The bottom line is if we can get a site to go to where it makes looking for a certain design easy, free and possible to leave feedback I believe we'd all use it. Lets all put our heads together, work together and come up with one good place to go to for our files. This also need to be able to upload files to also.
Thanks guys for your ideas, comments and good luck.

CarverJerry

[Capt Bruce]

If the site can ultimately have those user friendly features outlined then I'd happily chip in toward maintenance costs. Thanks for offering to develop the concept.

[bjbethke]

Yup. There's the 6 page thread about the DVD, and the zillion page one with the free patterns. I was mostly talking about the giant one, but mentioned the DVD also because people were tossing ideas around.

I've seen a couple of places with static lists, but not a truly dynamic and interactive database. What I'm talking about is more of, well, think of it as a high quality photo gallery... You can browse and search by keyword, and also interact by rating patterns, leaving comments like "even carves good in poplar", etc., but the best part is the sortability. When I'm done, you will be able to say show me all birds EXCEPT eagles, show me the patterns that are the most popular, show me what's highest rated in the boats category, show me what's new this week, the possibilities are endless and instant, and you'll have high quality screenshot up front.

I remember a thread where someone wanted a background they had seen somewhere, and it was followed by a flurry of links with "is this it" type responses. Excellent help to be sure, but I bet the guy would rather have instant access to recall anything from a single source.

If anyone has any links to lists that they like or that have a particular feature, etc., please post it here. I've dug high and low but I may have missed something.

I do not think these are free patterns, I have over 100 of theses posted on this Forum and now the DVD, and others have, they are gifts or Donations, and no one has the right to use these at will unless the owner gives them the right to use these things. I have a 700 image full pattern file. + DVD I send people for a gift or a donation for the DOD, I was in the AF and FAA most of my life, these are the images you can make carvings of for others. “I think Just because people help each other with a PTN, MPW. MPC or an image does not make it free. Some people give me donations for what I do.” You can look at all this if you use the paper clip and also if you want to download it as a PDF. The new DVD gave us a second look. Just great, But the old way was great for this old almost 73 year old man (May 25)


I have all my patterns on a CD, with Photo, PTN, PNC, PNW, and all other images to make my patterns, would like a $.50 donation for each. --- I own these images and patterns and images. I would take more or less. - PM me.

[Jonny]

Here's what I've come up with so far folks:

I'm looking at a lot of open-source scripts for the job. I toyed with a few shopping carts because they have a lot of the search ability and display that we'd want, but in the end, it would be impossible to take away the 'shopping' feel of things and people might think they're being tricked into actually purchasing something. I looked at a lot of file management scripts, but none have the entire featureset that we'd want. I think I'm settling on a very popular photo gallery script. I can just tweak the source code to include the download feature for the pattern file, and we get great display options for the screenshots of the patterns. I think all of the other search/display/interactivity features I outlined above are already in place and work extremely well.

If all goes well, I will have something online in several days for people to look at.

As for BJB's concerns posted above, I know that there will be times when a pattern makes it onto the site that is somehow copyrighted or protected. Obviously there will be a way to contact me or a moderator about this to report files, and files that are found to be protected will be removed. This problem could be amplified by allowing any registered user to upload patterns. Maybe we'll have a submission feature where it has to be passed through a moderator or something. I do have some experience in Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) compliance, and we'll make sure we keep it legal. All I want to do here is help pass out the "shared" files that people post for anyone to use. Not the ones that someone makes and says they will pass to someone else for compensation - those are obviously protected.

After playing with this gallery script on a test site, I'm actually getting a bit excited. This may turn out to be easier than I originally thought.