A new and improved Crank Engine FAQ
The latest PhotoCrank release has brought about some new options and changes that I feel all of our Crank Engine users need to be aware of. We have posted a new FAQ specifically for these new options and if you have the Crank Engine installed on your blog, you should definitely take a few minutes to look it over.
Click here to take a look at the new Crank Engine FAQ and if you have any questions, please let us know by commenting below.
Hey bloggers: you want some options, you got some options
As we continue to get awesome feedback from all of our Crank’rs, there’s nothing like implementing a highly demanded feature into production. Knowing that there is a huge need for something, figuring out how to get it developed and getting it out to our Crank’rs - this is something that we’ve done many times over the past several months and this is what keeps PhotoCrank more fun, reliable and easy to use.
One of the latest requests, specifically from the bloggers who have the PhotoCrank Engine running, is that we make a simple way for them to make certain photos on their blog ‘unCrankable’. Even though we all love us some Crank’n, there are definitely times when you may not want someone adding a Crank to a photo. For instance, we had some bloggers who wrote a very serious post about George Carlin passing away and they didn’t want the photo to be Crankable out of respect to the man who came up with the 7 words that you can’t say on TV.
Anyways, there are other reasons why a blogger may not want a photo Crankable and it’s our job to give you that option, so we did. There was a way to do it previously, but it wasn’t nearly as simple as the super-simple way that you can do it now. Here’s how it works:
We have added a new option to the Options Menu, which can be seen by clicking the gray button with the down-arrow on it. Then, go down to the Adminstration –> Allow Image To Be Cranked option and uncheck it if you would like the photo to be unCrankable. This can be done to any image after it is posted to your blog.
Each photo is Crankable by default. Simply uncheck to make it unCrankable.
Hopefully this option makes all of our blogger’s Crank’n experience even better than it has been up to this point. If you are a blogger or a Crank’r and you have something you’d like to see changed/removed/added to PhotoCrank, please feel free to comment here and let us know - we’d love to hear what all of you have to say!
Taking caption contests to a new level
Unless you have been hiding under a rock while surfing the Web, I would be willing to bet money that each and everyone of you reading this blog have viewed, participated in or enjoyed an online caption contest that was hosted by a website that you visit on a regular basis. Caption contests are basically designed to play off the fact that everyone has an opinion, thought, comment or other reaction when they first look at an image that has been put directly in front of their face - whether they ever say it publicly or not. Pair this with the fact that most of the posted images are completely ridiculous to begin with and that many of them offer up prizes for the most creatively crafted caption, what you end up with is a fun, entertaining and sometimes very edgy way to get a group of people online to display their cleverness capabilities.
The funny thing is that although the technology and interactivity that is now available for web users has changed dramatically over the past few years, it seems that caption contests and how groups of people can choose to participate in them haven’t. Considering that the types of people who are out Crank’n photos every day are also most likely to be the people who love to play along with caption contests, this really got my wheels turning about ways that PhotoCrank can take these old-school caption contests to the next level for those who create and manage them.
Here is how a caption contest would normally play out on someone’s blog or website:
1. A ‘caption-worthy’ image is posted online and everyone is asked to post their best caption into a text comment that can be entered in below the image. For instance, the image below was posted over on The Anti-New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest on radosh.net and everyone was instructed to ‘Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.‘ This is basically a play off of The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest that is posted each week.
An image that was posted in the latest New Yorker Cartoon Caption contest with captions posted below
2. Captions are submitted, normally through some type of text commenting system that lists them on top of one another down the web page. Depending on the number of captions, this list can grow to be very, very long, which can make scrolling from the posted image to the caption very difficult and annoying. Also, since the comments are text-based and depending on what all is going on in the posted image, it is sometimes difficult to describe who or what is doing the action in the image when creating the captions. This sometimes results in longer captions being needed just to make it make more sense to who is viewing it.
3. After the captions have been posted, the person who is managing the contest is then taxed with the job or searching through all the posted captions for the one that is most deserving of the top spot. This can be very time consuming and is quite a task depending on how many captions were submitted. Also, the people who captioned the image and who are regular visitors to the website have played no part in determining who the overall winner is, which results in less buy-in from those who are involved with the caption contest (readers, contributors, random visitors, etc.).
4. After going through all of the captions a winner is finally selected and is announced on the website. Since no one besides the person who manages the caption contest had a direct say in who was chosen as the winner, the only people who are truly interested and excited about the results of the contest are those who are chosen as the winners. If others could vote up their favorite captions, I would assume that the level of user buy-in and interaction with the contest would be much, much higher.
5. Steps 1-4 are repeated for the next caption contest that is run by the website.
Like I said, pretty old school, right? Thousands of these caption contests are created every day all over the Web and they all pretty much follow the steps above. Crazy, I know - but it’s how these things have always been done and I’m guessing that the people who manage them have never really been informed that there is a better way to do it, an easier and more interactive way to do it, a more fun way to do it. This, of course, is the PhotoCrank way to do it.
Here is the PhotoCrank way to run a caption contest and be sure to pay attention because this will be a pretty quick explanation:
1. A ‘caption-worthy’ image is posted online and everyone is asked to Crank their best caption on top of the image by using PhotoCrank. Everyone is also told to vote for their favorite Crank even if they didn’t Crank the image themselves, which creates a fun and interactive experience for everyone involved whether they are clever enough to come up with a caption or not. I’ll use an image from a New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest as an example again:
2. The image is Crank’d with entertaining captions that everyone can view, vote and Crank withouthaving to scroll down the page and since they can Crank directly on top of the image, the caption is spatially relevant, meaning that those who caption don’t have to describe who is saying what to whom within the caption - they just Crank the captions directly to the image in a relevant way. This makes viewing and creating the captions much, much easier for everyone involved.
3. After the Crank’d captions are completed, the winner is determined by which Crank was given the highest average vote, making it ridiculously easy to determine the winner. No more scrolling through 100 captions to choose a winner that people probably won’t agree with anyways. Let the people decide who has the best Crank and save a ton of time in the process.
4. Announce the winner and post another image whenever you’re ready to have users Crank another caption contest. Almost too easy, isn’t it?
So that’s it, if you are currently managing a caption contest on a regular basis then I think that it’s about time that you give PhotoCrank a shot at making them even better for you and those who are participating on your website. If you need help getting the PhotoCrank Engine up and running on your website so that you can start Crank’n your caption contests, you can check out this page for more info or you can just send me an email at ryan@photocrank.com and I’ll help you out, no problem.