The Past

Back in early 1999 I decided that I wanted to create a 3D Gallery for artists of all levels, BlackGas.com was the outcome. My only goal was to create a website purely for the display of 3D Artwork, I wasn't interested in creating yet another general 3D site, displaying news, forums, tutorials and then some artwork. Over the next three years I lost sight of that goal and BlackGas.com became a bit of a jumble.

In 2002 I started getting serious with PHP and decided to start with a clean slate, Gallery of 3D.com was conceived and what you see today is the outcome.

The site is far from finished, as of today (26 June 2005) there are still several sections of the site that use an old template, I'm working on fixing these as quickly as I can. That leads me onto my next point, I'm a one man team, I only work on Gallery of 3D.com in my spare time so it is very slow going.

The Future - The Artist Administration System

I've had a couple of emails recently asking about the artist administration system, therefore here's the current status.

Before I move the artists admin system from alpha to beta status I need to finish rebuilding the admin administration system. Here is a shot of my original system and the new system. As you can clearly see there is still quite a lot to do. I'm not going to worry about creating the whole lot at the moment, just enough to allow me to manage the site, that being;

1. Add / Edit / Delete Artist
2. Edit / Delete Image
3. Add / Edit / Delete Image of the Moment
3. Add / Edit / Delete Animation
4. Add / Edit / News
5. Add / Edit / Delete Banner
6. Add / Edit / Delete Affiliate
7. Add / Edit / Delete Link

I'm hoping to have the above complete within the next two weeks, I can get away with not rebuilding 5, 6 and 7 at the moment.

I've been looking over my old code and I've decided to rebuild my secure login system, there isn't really anything wrong with the original its just that over the last year my coding style has change a little and I'd like to keep things consistent.

I've decided to scrap my original plans with regards to how I was going to implement the system. The first version will allow artists to;

Edit their profile
Edit Individual images
Switch images 'on' and 'off'
Add Images directly to their Gallery*

If I don't have an alpha version of the above running (being tested by a few users) by the 7th September 2005 (my 28th birthday) you have my position to come to the Gallery of 3D.com office and slap me across the face. :)

*As I've stated several times in the past, images will not automatically appear on the site, they will always have to reviewed and agreed by an admin.

Dean Blackborough - 26 July 2005