RichN

Thinking it would be more useful if I posted the draft copy of the guidelines we were working on for this contest. Clearly this does not have the changes for Entry fees but we have more time to plan this now. I could see adapting this to any contest we may host and I am also using this as a development document for setting up rules in a backup system. The system will be pretty much automated on taking entries, Judge private invites in to the system, Contest deadline management, all aspects of the judging process including RAW file reviews to awards and members choice and the public publishing of everything. SO for a conversational piece, your direct input on this document as a skeleton rule set for future Waterpixel use, I am interested in hearing. Thanks... WaterPixels_Contest_Rules_DRAFT.pdf

I think taking a step back is the move for now. give me time to finish developing the system rather then being rushed to get it done for this coming calendar year. Host a contest in 2027 to trial run it with the suggestions gathered here. Category noted.. thanks. The donation highlight is not a bad idea but then anyone could be featured for a fee.. so maybe not the thing to do. Originally I wanted to make that member choice gallery, so the images that appear are the most rated images by members. So the front page gallery would be community driven. Yeah I put donation on store a while back. thanks Klaus... 🤙

yes we have been working on that behind the scenes. some site adjustments and we will reach out and pursue that more. The initial release of LinkCards will be later today or tomorrow. On the initial release you have the ability to setup a gallery, contact information on multiple custom buttons. WhatsApp link, email, phone etc.. also you can control background, themes, and change colors of text. pretty customizable for a little tool. will post release article soon...

Thanks for the honest feedback—this is exactly why we asked before building the whole thing, more feedback is welcome. I will leave the poll up until it expires and also welcome more discussion. A few things may not be clear. The companies that have banners on our forum are supporters of WaterPixels and not truly advertisers. We do not receive payment, and we see the banners as a way of helping members reach companies we believe are of value. We are looking into the possibility of charging for these banners in the future. The forum, gallery, and articles will remain free. What we’re exploring are optional extras that provide value to members while helping the community support itself. As you know, forum membership is free. WaterPixels staff cover the operating costs. This is not really sustainable in the long term, and we need to identify a way to raise the necessary revenue. Based on today’s pricing, it costs approximately $720 per year—or $60 per month—to operate WaterPixels. That covers VPS hosting for the forum, gallery, and uploads; the domain name; daily off-site backups; SSL; and the Invision Community self-hosted license. As the photo library grows, storage and backup costs may grow with it. No single source is likely to cover that amount. Merchandise, useful optional features, community events, donations, and appropriate sponsor support can each contribute. Together, they may allow WaterPixels to become self-sustaining. We already sell merchandise, with the profit going to the site account. We’ve made some sales, but they’ve been sporadic and haven’t generated as much support as we had hoped. Members have also made donations, which we genuinely appreciate. The contest was intended to do two things: create a fun community photography event and provide a little support for the platform. The calendar would have been printed on demand, with each winner receiving a copy. Entry fees were intended to cover those copies and contribute something toward the site—not turn WaterPixels into a commercial contest. That said, we’ve heard your concerns about charging $5 per image. The cost can add up quickly for members who want to submit several photos, so we agree that a per-image fee isn’t the right approach. Rather than rushing the event—or the development of the management system needed to run contests properly—we’re pulling back from holding one this year. Instead, we may organize a community photography event in early 2027, potentially with sponsor support. That would give us time to develop the necessary tools, work through the details with members, and create an event that is well planned and worthwhile. After that event, we can revisit the idea of a fundraising calendar as a separate community discussion. Nothing has been decided, and any future calendar proposal would take the feedback we’ve received into account. We’ve also developed Link Cards as a bonus service for members and another small way to help generate revenue for the site. The feature will be available soon. A Link Card gives you a personal page on WaterPixels that works like a home page or Linktree. You can add links to your website, Instagram, Facebook, and other places, share the page from your phone, and display a gallery that feels like your own space. Example: waterpixels.net/u/yourname Link Cards will cost $5 per year and are entirely optional. Use one if it’s useful to you; if it isn’t, that’s completely fine. It’s your choice, and nothing else about your access to WaterPixels will change. Thank you again for speaking honestly. Your feedback helped us recognize that the original contest proposal needed more thought. We’ll take the time to develop the event properly, explore sponsor involvement, and continue the conversation with the community as we move forward.

well we can't put a video in a calendar.. 😂 working on making the site more videographer friendly thou. Possibly later add some sort of contest for video if the user base wants it.

We're considering launching the First Annual WaterPixels Underwater Photography Contest, and before we go too far with planning and development, we'd like to hear from the community. The idea is to create an annual WaterPixels competition judged by a panel of underwater photographers, with categories covering different styles of underwater photography. Winning images would be featured in the official WaterPixels 2027 Calendar, which would be available for purchase through the WaterPixels Shop. Each photographer selected for the calendar would receive a complimentary copy. A dedicated contest page will be added to the site to list winners each year with optional Bio, Contact info listed on the site for some exposure if wanted, or simply just simple photo credit.. its up to the winner what the would like. We're considering an entry fee of $5 per image, with photographers able to enter up to 10 images total, with a maximum of 3 images in any one category. The contest isn't intended to be a major commercial competition. Entry fees and proceeds from calendar sales would go toward supporting the costs of hosting, maintaining, and continuing to develop the WaterPixels community. We're also considering a Members' Choice Award, giving WaterPixels members the opportunity to vote for their favorite images from the finalists. Before we put the work into making this happen, we'd really like to know if this is something our members would actually participate in. Ive started a Contest management system for just this but before I get in to some serious time on it.. just want to see what we are looking at for interest. If low response.. we will just table it until next year and ask again and ill work on other things for the site. Please vote in the poll and leave a comment with your thoughts, suggestions, or concerns. We'd especially like to hear what would make you more—or less—likely to enter.

Welcome!

Ok great.... The attach bar is fetched when you click a blank reply, then inserted. That insert has a bug. For almost everyone it still works. Your browser session was the only one we saw that got an extra script in that fetch, so the bug skipped the “Drag files here…” block. Something on your side is making the software send that extra script. The best fit is your browser language set to French while the account is English, or an extension / VPN changing headers or cookies. The work around I put on the site seems to be workin.... I have reported the bug to Invision. If a blank reply ever loses the attach area again, tell me.

I can see the request succeeding and the HTML arriving. The next bit is in how the browser adds that HTML to the page, and I’ve put a small fix in for that. Could you refresh the topic (Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-R) and click the empty reply box once more? If “Drag files here…” shows up, we’re done. The French Windows test can wait.

Thanks — that 20-second wait matches what we captured. The request for the attachment bar succeeded and the HTML was in the response; it just never got added to the page on your machine. Your Swiss-French Windows idea is a good test. The forum account is already set to English; what’s different is the browser reporting language Fr. If you get a chance to switch the PC (or just Edge) to English and click the empty reply box once, that would tell us whether locale is involved. No rush, and you don’t need DevTool

I have now captured the failure on your account twice, automatically, without you needing DevTools. Once on this topic at 17:04, and once in a private message at 19:39. Same result both times. Invision does have a client-side debug path, but it is switched off in the version they ship. When the attachment area fails to appear, the software calls Debug.error() — and in production that call goes nowhere. Debug starts disabled, nothing ever turns it on, and no adapter is registered to write those messages anywhere. The failure never reaches the server logs, which is why there was nothing useful to look at on our side. So I added a small diagnostic of our own. It watches the reply box expand, records whether the attachment request happened, what came back, and whether the "Drag files here..." bar actually appeared in the page. That is how we caught your two failures today. It does not collect the text of unsent messages — only whether the attachment UI loaded. The request that fetches the attachment area does reach the server, and the server answers 200 OK with a full response. The upload library also loads. After that, the bar never appears in the page. It isn't hidden, and it isn't being removed by an extension — it simply never gets inserted. New topics, post edits, and any reply box that already has text in it ship the attachment area with the page. A blank reply box (forum or messenger) fetches it afterwards. Only that second path is failing for you. Your account is not the problem. Two other members on Windows 11 with Chromium 151 also work. Zoom, High Contrast, and storage are all fine on the sessions we captured. Object.assign ERROR You were right to flag that, and the analysis you posted got the structure genuinely right — new topics load the editor in full, replies fetch part of it separately. That matches the source code exactly. The error itself turned out to be a dead end. I get that identical "Cannot convert undefined or null to object" message on my own machine, in a session where uploading works perfectly. It is a harmless ordering bug in the notification code, unrelated to attachments. Real, and worth chasing, and I did chase it. It just didn't lead anywhere. Could you try once more, on this topic, the same way it usually fails — click into the empty reply box and wait a few seconds. If the attachment area still doesn't appear, you don't need to paste anything from DevTools. A short "still missing" here is enough; we will already have the diagnostic. If you have a moment, a second try in a private message (empty reply box again) would be useful too. That is the other place we saw it fail. thanks...

I wanted to reply directly to this also, I am sorry it came across like I, or we, were dismissing the problem or putting it on you. That was not the intent. The reason I kept asking for the raw console errors is that I need them to debug this properly, and also to give Invision something specific if we need to submit it to them. A Copilot summary can be useful, but it is not enough on its own. Invision will need the actual error text, file name, line/function, browser, and the exact steps that trigger it. The error you sent is helpful because it gives us something real to trace. That said, the error appears to be coming from Invision's notification/checking script, not directly from the image uploader itself. So it may be related, or it may just be another JavaScript error happening on the same page. I do not want to claim either way until we know more. So I am not ignoring the issue, and I am not ruling out that something on the site is involved. I am also not ruling out that something local to your browser/profile could still be blocking part of the reply editor, since the same page is working for others. That could be cached site data, browser storage, an extension, a privacy/security setting, or something specific to that Edge profile. It is also possible that something is cached somewhere between the server and you. I am trying to separate what we know from what we do not know, so we can either fix it here or give Invision a proper report. I appreciate you sending the extra details. I know this has been aggravating, but the console output does help. Also, please remember that we all volunteer to run this site for free for you all. Time zones make things harder, and as the more technical admin I am fitting this around my normal work schedule, which is often 60 hours a week. Your patience is appreciated. It is being worked on, even if it cannot always move as quickly as either of us would like.

thanks.. good night ill research more..

Thanks. The Copilot summary is useful as a clue, but we need the raw browser console output, not Copilot’s interpretation of it. The reason is that Copilot may be summarizing, guessing, or connecting errors that are not actually the cause. To investigate this properly — and especially if we need to send it to Invision — we need the exact original error text, file name, and line number shown by Edge. When you have time tomorrow, please do this: 1. Open the page where reply upload/paste fails. 2. Press F12. 3. Go to the Console tab. 4. Clear the console. 5. Click into the reply editor. 6. Try to paste/upload an image. 7. Copy/paste the actual red console errors here, or send a screenshot. What we know so far is useful: - New topics/new messages work. - Editing an existing post/message works. - The initial reply composer fails on your affected machines. That points us toward the reply editor initialization, but we need the raw console error to confirm where it is failing.