Today sees the launch of the sixth version of the SHOWstudio website. Unlike its five predecessors, this design is very much a development of what we started last April when we introduced the BLOG and the FORUM. We have been working since the beginning of the year on this set of ‘upgrades’, and our launch is just in time for the new fashion season and the many projects we have planned for the Autumn.

You will have to click around and find out how exactly the new features work for yourself, but here is a quick summary and a rationale for the major points.

The different sections of the site that feature in our navigation have now been turned into dedicated ‘section pages’, and the Home Page will now only show the most recent content from each section. We have three whole new sections: ‘Viewers’, ‘Links’, and ‘Studio’. The latter contains our live webcams, contact forms and a SHOWstudio history. There will a further four all-new sections coming your way, between now and the end of the year, but you will need to keep us bookmarked to see what they are.

In response to your requests to make more intervention in the FORUM, we have expanded it into nine separate topic areas, and we are allowing you to post images. This will allow people to discuss their particular issues in the relevant Forum, such as Photography or Fashion, and for those who just want to chat, there is the Open Forum. We will moderate the Forums, and move or remove posts that are off-topic or otherwise undesirable. All your previous and current topics in the Forum have been put in the Open Forum, but over the next few weeks we will try and move your topics to the relevant Forum area, for example in the Fashion Forum if the topic is about Fashion. Please continue your old threads where you can find them, and start new ones in the relevant topic areas.

Because we receive a great deal of enquires from viewers wanting to participate in SHOWstudio, and see their work on our site, we have introduced the VIEWERS Profile Page. This is a space you can post images and information to, and also curate a list of your favourite SHOWstudio projects. We’re very excited to see more of our viewers and their work, and plan to highlight them increasingly on the Home Page.

The ARCHIVE has a new design, which features two different ways to browse through our 200+ projects. The ‘Selected’ view that is presented when you enter offers up some ready-made, easy-clicking selections from the ARCHIVE. If you’re looking for something in particular, switch to ‘Full Archive’ to browse through the entire list, shown chronologically or alphabetically. We have removed the search function, but added a Keywords list to every project. Clicking a keyword will bring up a list of similar projects relating to that keyword.

Our BLOG has been improved, and we can now post more than one image to a Blog article. For this reason, most articles will not be shown in full on the BLOG Section Page and the Home Page, and you will need to open up a page dedicated to a single Blog feature to see it in full. This is also where you will get an opportunity to make comments on our Blog articles, which is a crossover function with the FORUM, as the Blog comments can also be found in the FORUM. This also applies to ‘Comment on Project’, which is exactly as it sounds and allows you to tell us what you think about any project you see.

The site just needs testing now, and some participation in the new features, which can only be done by you.