Home » Blog » Site update, January 2020 - 5 min read

Site update, January 2020

VIP subscription price adjustments

It's been such a long time since we have changed the VIP subscription price (July 2014), but with increasing costs, the time has come around again.

Existing recurring subscriptions will continue at the old price until the subscription is cancelled or changed in some way so if you wish to continue your VIP subscription at the current price please don't cancel it as we won't be able to reinstate it.

We love PurplePort, and we know you do too. This small price increase will allow us to continue to maintain, develop, and provide the same or better service to you.

From March 1st 2020: 12-month subscriptions will be 42 GBP (55 USD and 49.5 EUR) and monthly subscriptions will be 4.50 GBP (5.90 USD and 4.30 EUR).

New Features and changes

We now have guest blog posts

Anyone can write and submit blog posts to The Purple Blog.

Sometimes Penelope Purple will bounce your blog post back to the author, giving feedback about the post and what to do to finish it. When a blog post is approved, we'll add some free VIP membership as a small token of our appreciation.

If you already write posts for your own blog then, by all means, contribute your posts to ours too. We're happy to link back to you and your blog elsewhere, and you'll get full attribution for your efforts.

Blog design tweaks and updates

We have revamped and tuned the blog pages to make them much nicer to look at and to use. As with everything we do, this is a constant task. We want the blog to be easy to use and accessible from all devices and web browsers. Do let us know if you think of anything we can do to improve your experience of our blog.

Blog post homepage gadget

To go some way to rounding off support throughout PurplePort for the blog, we have added a homepage gadget for the blog and enabled it for new members and for those that had not customised their homepage.

Notification if Admin deletes a reference you have left

From now on, if the PurplePort Admin Team deletes a reference you have left, you'll get an onsite notification letting you know. If you think this has been done incorrectly, please contact the PurplePort Admin Team via support ticket.

Customer reviews on PurplePort

We've been collecting customer reviews to use across PurplePort, and we recently found we had enough to start using them. Currently, this is only on the logged-out homepage, but going forward we'll use them in many places.

We didn't mention it, but for each good review we use (five-star and fairly short) we add a month of VIP membership for free.

By all means, please leave us a review if you haven't already.

New option for reporting incorrect content filter settings on images

This new option, available on the grey cog when viewing an image, making it much easier to report images incorrectly marked.

Image info in group and blog posts even on mobile

The image-hover information for images in blog and group posts is now always displayed on mobiles. This makes it easier to love these images and show all of the people involved with an image.

More iCalendar integration

We added the ability to add Castings and Events to iCalendar (downloadable as an ical file from the grey cog menu).

Simplified calendar view

You can now see a simple breakdown of a person's schedule when you click on a day in the calendar.

More info added to the 'We miss you' emails

After a period of being away, we'll send you an email about what you have been missing. We have added some more fun/cool stats to these emails to try to entice you back.

Free studios can now reply to messages sent to them

We have lifted the restriction that prevented people from messaging free studio accounts and enabled free studio accounts to reply to messages.

Mini-portfolio now not so annoying on desktop browsers

We have changed the position of the mini-portfolio popup, so it's less annoying. In the past, it would pop up when you hover the mouse cursor over a profile link, but it would slightly obscure the link, so you had to be fast to click it. Now, it's slightly offset, so it no longer obscures the link you wanted to click. A tiny thing, but it really was quite annoying. It can still be annoying, depending on where the link is on the page, but at least now it's less so.

Bug fixes

Fixed bug with displaying dates in timezones behind GMT.
Fixed error message not showing when the duplicate group post-error occurred.
Fixed blog comments showing 'escaped' characters.
Updated some of the metadata that is passed when linking PurplePort pages on Facebook, Twitter etc.
Fixed bug with blog comments giving the wrong error when checking the comment's length.
Hiding deleted calendar entries on the day view of the calendar.
Fixing the date checking on Share-a-shoot as it was causing errors in certain situations.
Added missing numbered list option in new editor
Fixed competition styling where being logged out caused incorrectly sized images
Fixed bugs with some URL un-safe characters appearing in blog titles
Fixed bug where sometimes it wasn't possible to love an album

What is PurplePort

PurplePort is a modelling website that brings models, photographers and other creatives together with one fantastic service. We provide the tools and help you need to get together and create amazing photos.

Established in 2010, PurplePort has grown from strength to strength and now has 40,000+ active members worldwide. With features such as integrated messaging, calendar, shoot plans, image albums, references, credited photos, busy member forums, hundreds of articles, and dedicated full-time staff to help you, it's easy finding the perfect creatives you need for your next photography project. It's a fresh, fast, and feature-rich alternative to ModelMayhem.

Join the fastest growing, most feature-rich service of its kind and start making magical photos a reality!

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Tags - #blog, #purpleport, #site updates, #features, #bugs

MarkDHoulton

I've been on here quite a while now, and it remains by far the best site available in my opinion. The increase is completely reasonable, and well worth it, especially with the improvements that seem to go on continuously behind the scenes. Keep up the good work, and you can count on my continued subs.

Alastair 1

Price increase is very fair... Keep up the good work you do. Behind the scenes, work is never appreciated. You all do a good job and I would like to say. Thank you, to you all.

Josifash

P.S. And in a context where only highly rated reviews are rewarded, the question arises as to whether this allows real problems to be brought to your attention, whether the rush for subscription bonuses does not just stifle sincere feedback on the actual problems we face, and thus cast doubts on the usefulness of the alledged fixes, as has been highlighted by some members.

Josifash

I would hardly trust reviews made in exchange for favors, there is only a fine line between that and bribery. If you need honest reviews, give any reviewer and rating a chance to win the subscription. Bias is an issue on this platform, which the alledged fixes seem to have exacerbated.

Pete A

Nice work guys! :)

@vishpateluk

Well I for one love this website continues to grow and improve over time. Other websites like Net-model, Purestorm and to an extent Modelmayhem all never really adapted. They were all forum based and not overly responsive. Purpleport is leaps and bounds better. I always recommend Purpleport to everyone, albeit the forums are a bit hit and miss, overall the community is good. Obviously there are always going to be hobbyists photographers who whine about the fees, £3.50 a month!!! I mean if you are paying models or hiring studios but you can't justify £3.50 a month your a bit silly. Well done Purpleport!

JJsPix

Okay. I'm not sure how the changes will affect me (apart from the price increase. But I can tell my wife that we can have food every other day in future). I would just say though, that with most of the changes, they seem rather "geeky", rather than overtly useful. I would make the observation that in my eyes, you seem to have found solutions, and are now looking for the problems they solve. Which in my view isn't the best way to enable development.

simply done but nice

It’s over price , when the local search bar doesn’t work well when using safari to search for local models. Surely you should improve the site a lot more before increasing the yearly price.

Iris Ferret

Can I ask in what situation PP is likely to delete a reference? I wasn't actually aware this was a thing.

M e l a n y

Well done, those all sound like excellent improvements/tweaks, and the ongoing work to keep the site running successfully is well worth the increase in the subscription charge, which is still excellent value for money. Thanks admin team.

Iris Ferret

I can live with an extra 50p :)

Russ Freeman

Sorry, my bad. Old habits die hard. I have changed it to 2020 now.

Morph01

It says that you are notified if Admin deletes a reference you have left, but how about notifying the person the reference has been left for?

Aperture photography

can you renew your membership before the 1st march

Wavepower

Clearly the PP team have been busy, appreciate what has been done for us.

Ste

Check your dates....................... its 2020 NOW

Oliver Godby

You might want to change the title to: "Site update, January 2020" and update the deadline for subs increases to March 2020... Other than that, awesome stuff and thanks for the great site / community - I really get a lot of value out of my subscription and I intend to stay even with the very reasonable increase.

Jian

"Site update, January 2019" Are the dates correct on this article Also this From March 1st 2019: 12-month subscriptions will be 42 GBP (55 USD and 49.5 EUR) and monthly subscriptions will be 4.50 GBP (5.90 USD and 4.30 EUR).

DannySeabsPhotos

Did you mean from 1st March 2020 the prices will increase? rather than 2019 which it states here

ArtHouse

Great work. Thank you for your service.

YorVikIng

"We have lifted the restriction that prevented people from messaging free studio accounts and enabled free studio accounts to reply to messages." Excellent decision. Thank you :)