Changes to the Site

Hi everyone. This is just a quick update to let you know the plan for the first set of website and phone app changes over the next couple of weeks. If you have questions about any of it, please take note of our email address mail@blipfoto.com and let us know.

Main Site - Saturday 27th February

On Saturday at roughly 2pm GMT, we will be updating the main Blipfoto site. This will return it to a basic black and white look, with minimal other design changes, for speed and minimal cost. We will also be updating some of the wording on the site to update it to the new owning company, such as the legal information in the footers and other central text pages. Note that we will be changing the Terms of Use of the site, but those changes only relate to the legal entity (site owner), not to the content or intention of those Terms. Please review them if you are in any doubt.

The site should remain available throughout this time, although there may be a very brief outage as the update occurs. We'll be monitoring it for problems.

A few people have asked whether this means a return to the "grey" branding. It won't for now, as that would cost considerably more in re-design, take longer, and if it were to be done, it should be a community decision. We're only making minimal changes now.

blipfoto.com - Tuesday 1st March

The site will remain accessible by the address "blipfoto.com" after this update. On Tuesday at roughly 2pm GMT we will switch to using "blipfoto.com" as the site's address. The site should still be accessible (with a redirect) by the name “blipfoto.com” after this change as well, but you should start to use blipfoto.com as the main address from that point.

You will need to log back into the site once this change has occurred - so make sure you know your login details! There's a "Forgotten Your Details" link on the sign in page if you need your password resetting. The site may appear unavailable to some users intermittently for a few hours as the addresses switch over - again, we'll be watching it for any problems.

Note: Developers using the API for their applications should be aware that we will also be switching the API to use blipfoto.com, although both should be available for a while. We don't have control over the blipfoto.com domain name, so cannot guarantee its continued availability. Applications should switch to using the blipfoto.com address as soon as possible after this change.

Phone Applications

We will be updating the two phone applications (iPhone and Android) over the week following these changes. We will release them separately, most likely towards the end of the next 2 weeks. We will let you know more nearer the time, once the other changes are out of the way.

Thank You

Finally, we'd like to add our thanks for all of the offers of help from volunteers on the past few Blip Central posts. We are taking note of them, but please bear with us. What we need right now is to keep careful control while we transition the site, and work through the changes required as a small, effective team. Following these first pieces of work, we will be coming out to the community asking for volunteers with specific skills to help us in some of the areas.