Remember LWCollectibles?

[Roger Gaemperle]

Hello,

Some of you may remember my blog lwcollectibles.blogspot.com which I used to update almost on a daily basis in 2007. Although it had many regular visitors I thought that while it was an interesting concept it had several shortcomings:

1. Content could be created by one person only (the blog-owner)
2. The only way how content was structured was via tags
3. Due to the lack of a discussion forum or more sophisticated method to comment posts there was no much interaction among visitors

In the meantime I have been working on a much improved concept with the following features:

1. Everybody can register and upload photos & content
2. Content is structured in galleries with search & sort features
3. Each member has his/her own gallery
4. You can rate each photo or content
5. You can comment each photo or content and you can receive - if you like - automatic notification mails if somebody replies to your comment

The idea is to offer people interested in Luftwaffe (or military history in general) a structured place where they can show photos, comment & rate posts and discuss & share knowledge with others. It is very much like the well-known Flickr but dedicated to military history only and with improved categorization of content.

The website is 99% complete and naturally there is not much content yet. But you will see how the concept is supposed to work based on the content that is online already. "99% complete" because I have to resolve one final issue about uploading photos within an article (i.e. inline photos) that does not work properly yet.

With this post I want first to inform you about this concept and second to ask you for feedback, be it positive or negative.

I have built the site in my spare time and spent lots of hours. It is not set-up as a commercial website whatsoever and I don't plan to add ads nor do I intend to ask a fee for using the website. But with your feedback I may be able to improve and adjust the concept in the future.

I know there are already a number of well-known military history discussion forums and you may ask yourself why another website about military history. The answer is that my website is not supposed to replace a forum like TOCH but rather to offer something else/new (the photo gallery) to historians. I don't know a similar existing website dedicated to military history that offers this and hence I built my own.

Oh, I forgot to mention the name of the website. It is

www.battlegroundrelics.com

You can find more information about the concept here: www.battlegroundrelics.com/faq

Last but not least, I may resume posting links to interesting ebay auctions like I did before at lwcollectibles now at

http://battlegroundrelics.com/forums.../ebay-auctions

Please also let me know if there is a need to do that at all. It takes quite a lot of time and since EdWest is doing such a great job already there may be no need for that anymore.

Contrary to lwcollectibles.blogspot.com I would only post links and not scans of the auctions. This in order to respect the ownership of the buyers who often spend a lot of money and who often use these photos for their publications. They wouldn't be glad to see their photos published in the www for free (even at low resolution and with a copyright text over it). That said, in the future I will only post photos at www.battlegroundrelics.com of which I either have the originals or for which I got permissions from the owner.

Kind regards
Roger

[obdl3945]

Hi, Roger...

Good to hear from you again. Only managed a brief look so far, but if the thumbnails are anything to go by, then this looks wonderful. Personally, I was a big fan of LW Collectibles, and although I appreciate what you're saying about Ed West and his first class contributions here at TOCH, you always brought additional and equally good photos to LWC. If anything, I always felt you both complimented each other. I for one would welcome the links to e-bay auctions. I've already seen a few photos that I like...

My own interest is photos of Luftwaffe aircraft from WW2, and I don't think you can ever have too few sources. However, I think that many will appreciate being able to contribute to, and access, all sorts of material relevant to their particular area(s) of interest.

I am very interested in seeing how this progresses, and hope that it will be something everyone can benefit from. Good luck.

Kindest regards...

Paul

[VtwinVince]

Great looking site, Roger, looking forward to its' completion.

[Roger Gaemperle]

Hi Paul,

Thank you for your feedback ! I will post some more photos today. Soon there will be some exciting photo of a US soldier (provided by his grandson) who also took photo of an interesting captured He 111.

OK, I have posted another auction update here. It takes quite some time and how often I will be able to post these updates will depend on my other workload . But I'll give it a go. If it turns out that it's not much added value or that it just takes too much time I can still stop it.

I hope that BattleGroundRelics will be more interactive than LWCollectibles and hence that also other people interested in the subject will upload from time to time some interesting photos or comment/rate other photos.

If you like the concept and would like to support it you could do that by telling your friends who are also interested in Luftwaffe topics about BattleGroundRelics. The more people actively participate the more interesting it will get for all. I have a "Tell a friend" page where you could just enter the e-mail addresses and press a button to tell your friends about it.

Hi VtwinVince,

Thanks for your feedback ! With the exception of one feature (which is only crucial if you like to upload more than 1 photo in the same post) the site is complete and ready to be used. There may be some teething troubles in the beginning, but I don't expect many and if there are they would be removed in the coming few weeks.

Best regards
Roger

[ghostwriter2]

Superb idea and great side, thank you.

Greetings,
ghostwriter

[Roger Gaemperle]

Hi ghostwriter2,

Thanks a lot for your kind words! I am very glad to hear that you like the website.

Cheers,
Roger