Being able to be found is important. Finding other people is just as important. These days, there isn't a networking web site out there that doesn't have some kind of robust search system, to some degree. The one thing that all of these systems have in common is that members need to tell the site where they are. You can't tell someone how far away they are from someone else if you don't know where both of them are. But how do you let users specify their location?

One solution, buying a huge database with every city in it, is somewhat nonsensical. First, those databases are expensive, if you get one that’s actually decent. If you go for a cheap database, you end up with gaps in your cities, at best, and incorrect information, at worst. Can you imagine deploying a database of cities around the world and including a city that was sacked and burned to the ground over a thousand years ago?

There are good databases, too - but at over $3,000 for a subscription to a worldwide database, that’s an option that just won’t fly. That, plus those databases still don't have every city, some are named wrong, and some that are large actually pad your radius searches by up to 30 miles! Combine that with constant maintenance, and it's a nightmare.

Like most sites, we chose to do a latitude/longitude solution, but without the database. Until now, we mapped zip and postal codes, but for the rest of the world, had to presume that our users knew (or could figure out) their latitude and longitude. Yes, it's not rocket science, but we didn't want to have to make that presumption. We wanted to make it as easy as possible.

So we chose a mapping solution and leveraged the power of Google, once again (as we did with our TFP.me search engine). With this solution, you simply put in as much of your address as you want, anywhere in the world, and click “Map It” to bring up the Google map. Place the marker on your location, close the map, and hit save.

Done.

Anywhere in the world, named or not. With incredible accuracy, up to 12 decimal places.

Once again, we leverage the power of an existing solution, inexpensively, and better. That's the whole idea behind Model Insider - we're learning from years of experience, figuring out what works (and what doesn't), and implementing it. One feature at a time, we are consistently becoming the most feature-rich and most reliable modeling and photography networking site on the web. And with what we have planned over the next few months, we think we'll really knock your socks (or other items of clothing) off!

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One of the last things we had to upgrade in going from beta to full launch was our databases. Yes, there is more than one. We upgraded the chat database earlier this week and, when there were no problems, we upgraded the main databases yesterday (Saturday, 14 November). The main upgrade completed successfully, though it did take a few hours longer than anticipated. I've been asked to outline what we did and how it went, and I'm only happy to do that. Much of this is geekery, so if it doesn't interest you, that's cool. But for those who are interested in such things, let me remind you that transparency is one of our key goals.

During our initial development and beta, we made the decision to use separate databases for most systems at Model Insider. This decision was based on the theory that a modular approach was wiser. If a system needed work or broke, it was better to take just that system down rather than the whole site. As such, we created our backend databases and began the coding of the site. These databases were housed on shared hosting just like the site itself.

Shared hosting has both its good and bad points. It's good in that it's inexpensive. It's bad in that you're sharing infrastructure with many (sometimes hundreds if not thousands) of other people, any one of which can exhibit what is known as the "bad neighbor" effect. This is where our shared databases suffered the most. If someone in that shared pool decided they wanted to completely re-index their database, our performance suffered. If someone decided that they wanted to crash the database, we crashed, too. While our host's recycle process is quick in such cases, having it happen two or three times every day is never any fun.

The solution, then, is to get our own databases. This was our plan from day one, but we wanted to do it when we were closer to launch. One major reason, I'll be honest, is cost. It's not cheap. And since Model Insider only offers free accounts right now, I didn't want to open the wallet until we were prepared to move forward. That day is here, we made the decision, and as of yesterday, it's done.

So what happened yesterday? In short, we provisioned the new database on our own platform (it's called a "container"), backed-up the existing database and moved it to the new container. This is why the site had to be taken offline during the change: migrating a database while it's running is just asking for trouble. The challenge? The databases, put together, are BIG. Really big. And the move not only took time, but if there was a question as to the database's integrity, we had to err on the side of caution and simply start over. So it took longer than we had anticipated.

On the other hand, that's why we did it during the day, albeit on a Saturday. During the day there are senior support people on duty. Any problems can be immediately addressed. If we'd done it at 3am, at best we'd have to wake someone's poor rear out of bed. At worst, we'd simply have to wait until Sunday morning. Neither would be conducive to anything other than playing Torchlight while waiting (PS: speaking of geeking out, have you seen Torchlight yet? But I digress).

So... the bottom line is that we're now in our own database containers, we have complete control over them, we can do analysis for improvements without having to take other users at our host under consideration, and we have room to scale up as necessary. For the serious Internet geeks, our front-end is now on a scalable grid (cloud) and our backend is in a scalable container. I'm liking where we are at this point.

Questions?

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The issue of age came up today, twice. The first time, an account was created by a 15 year-old and we were reluctantly forced to cancel the account. We knew that the user was 15 because he gave a birthdate that said so. If a user is honest about their age and they're under 18 we have no choice but to remove their account, as our terms of service clearly state that you must be 18 to have an account at Model Insider. Why did we choose 18? Simply because our terms of service are a contract, and we choose to err on the side of caution in that we wish our users to be adults who can contract in their own name. It's really that simple. We appreciate that the user was honest, and invite him back when he is 18. Indeed, in one previous case, we extended an offer of a free upgraded account to a 17 year-old when they return next year after turning 18.

In the second case, we were contacted by an individual who informed us that a particular user who stated that their age was over 18 was, in fact, not over 18. In this case, there was no action we could take. The user states that they are over 18 and an unrelated individual claims otherwise. This is a case of one person's word against another. Even had the accuser volunteered to send "proof," we would have no way to verify this documentation. And if we acted on what turned-out to be falsified documentation, we would be removing an innocent person's account.

Our policy is simple: we require that you give your birthdate and state that you agree to the terms of the site which require you to be over 18. If you do so, we must accept your word. Some other sites set the age bar at 16. Some set it at 13, which, in the United States, is an age triggered by some laws. We choose 18.

Just to be clear, it has nothing to do with content - Model Insider does not allow pornography, so the rules that govern pornography do not apply. It is strictly an arbitrary age we have chosen partially, as I said, because of our terms, and partially because the majority of our members who have expressed a preference have said that they prefer to be on a site populated by adults who can sign a model release without a parent or guardian. That's what our users want, and that's what we give them.

Now the unfortunate part here is that the individual who attempted to convince us to remove the account of the person whom they accuse of being underage did not take our politely declining their request well. He chose to deride the site, said he would tell "his 275,000 member mailing list" that they will have to pay extra to use his studio if they have an account here (as if having an account somehow creates additional liability - a concept with which I'm unfamiliar) and generally threatened our business livelihood. His email has been saved and forwarded to our legal counsel who, I'm certain, will tell us that we should simply ignore it until or unless any harm is done. And, honestly, I doubt any harm will be done. This gentleman is upset, and he's free to be upset if he wants. I'm truly sorry that I couldn't give him what he wants, but our policy on this and almost everything like it is clear:

Model Insider is a place for adults. We act like adults and we treat each other like adults. We don't have a brig. We don't have a huge set of moderators who rule subjectively over a huge set of rules that change on a weekly basis. And we don't abide by drama. If you have an issue with someone, we encourage you to take it up with that someone. It's none of our business. We're here to provide a web site where you can network and enjoy yourself. We're not here to settle disputes between members and we're certainly not here to enforce anyone else's policies. As much as I wish we could please everyone, sometimes that's just not possible.

I do wish, however, that everyone could be adults about it. I suspect I'll keep wishing that.

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It's one of those arguments that we've seen time and again in the forum. Someone asks, "why can't I make my profile private?" and someone will respond, "Are you serious? This is a portfolio site - why would you sign up here and then want to be private?!"

Both sides have valid points.

After a lot of thought, here are the privacy options we've chosen to implement and which just went live as part of the launch rollout:

Every account defaults to public. That means that your profile and portfolio are public. Everyone can see them. That's what the site is about, really - getting your profile and portfolio exposure so you can network. We would expect that, for the vast majority of accounts, public is the way it will stay. Of course, you have finer control over your images if you want it. You can always set individual galleries or images to turn off "guest view," which will keep those images from being displayed to non-members.

But you can also set your privacy status to members only. If you do this, only Model Insider members can look at your profile and portfolio. They must be logged in to do so. This setting will override any "guest view" settings you may have on individual galleries or images! It's a global setting that affects everything related to your profile and portfolio.

Finally, a feature that's been requested for years that we're happy to provide: you can set your profile to inactive, which will prevent everything from being seen by anyone except you. Please note, however, that as we propagate this setting to all site features, it will also turn off many features like private messaging, forum posting, uploading of new images and the like. If you set your account to inactive, that's exactly what will happen. But you can log in at any time and put it back to public or members only at any time - no need to contact an administrator to make a request (with the required bribe of cookies).

Did we miss anything? Remember, the difference here at Model Insider is that we listen to our membership and unless there's a reason not to do something, we do it.

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Okay, it's done. It's pushed live. And it was huge to write (including some impressive front-end work by Daniel, so be sure to give him kudos for that!)  - the search system is active and we look forward to feedback!

There are two different search functions, and they're laid-out in such a way as to make them as seamless as possible:

Quick Search - this is available as a menu item under the Search menu, and it is exactly what it sounds like - a quick search. It simply looks for name matches. Nothing more. If you know the name, or even part of the name for the person you're looking for, it helps you locate them.

Advanced Search - this is the power option! But we've done our best to make it as easy as possible, too. So while it lets you build a very powerful search, it also takes you through it an element at a time and doesn't present you with any options that don't make sense for the search you're building. So it'll ask you what kind of person you're looking for by asking you to select which roles you want to include. Then it will allow you to limit by genre. Don't worry, if you leave them blank, you'll get all of them. And then it gives you other options to further limit your search. Or you can just let it fly.

Right now, it gives you ten results per page and it orders the results based on last activity. We will enhance this going forward with more options based on user feedback and usage patterns. We're also working on determining what additional data we should put in the results to make them more useful, so if you have suggestions, by all means, join us in the forum.

And in November, expect a new search feature that will knock your socks off - something that no other portfolio site has! Now that we have the best search online, we're going to make it even better (and not "new FaceBook design" better).

Let me know what you think!

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