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How this site works CarMemories.com is a very unique web site. It is an on-line database. Car people can sign in as a member or user, then upload pictures and stories or experiences to the site. The uploaded information is retrieved by going through the menus and clicking on the images or page links. As you make your choices, the software pulls the picture or story from within the database and creates the web page that you see. So except the outside support pages I recently added, there is only one web page in CarMemories.com and that is the first page. The rest of the pages displaying the thumbnails are templates that are created on the fly. Why would you want to do this? Well first our idea was to build an on-line car community. Car people could come here and hang out on the 'Net, exchange information, show pictures of their cars, and just talk about cars. This is how you can do that. Few web pages are truly interactive. That is the whole purpose of this site. The software allows us to offer an ever changing web site. The front page automatically displays thumbnails of the last three images uploaded with links and the last 5 stories. Each time you come back the site you could see new information on the front page. Members can upload images. As with any database, the information must be retrievable. We decided the most common criteria is make, model and year. So the information is set up to be sub categories of first the make, then the model, and the year. When a member uploads a picture to the 1967 Shelby Mustang gallery or section, that picture will display in that gallery with the other '67 Shelby Mustangs. Click on that car thumbnail and the picture will zoom. (The exception to this rule is all images and stories uploaded have to be viewed and ok'd by the site Administrator. Normally this is done once or twice a day, so it may take 24 hours before you can view the images uploaded.) Under the picture is a link to a web page that displays all files uploaded by that members. Essentially, each member has a web page inside CarMemories.com. And this web page is accessible from outside the site. Copy the URL from the location bar and past it on another web page and you have a link to a member's web page and display of pictures & stories. We realized early on this gave us the ability to do some interesting things with the data. We could attach users to a "club". Cars pictures uploaded by members of the "club" will display in that club's gallery. The pictures are categorized in the same model and year order or sections from the main site. This allows the site to be used as a club car picture gallery and offers a better way to display club pictures on the net. Members upload pictures. The club webmaster does not have to do add or build a page, the site does that automatically.
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