Our last update in February 2021 seems like a lifetime ago.

Since then the UK has begun to throw off the shackles of Covid, enjoying a steady march back to normality. It’s anyone’s guess whether these new (old) freedoms will remain, but we’ll find out with patience this winter.

Competition changes

We have reviewed and revamped the fun daily competitions, which we hope will make them even more fun for everyone.

Added Suitable for Work (SFW) only competitions

We now have competitions where only images suitable for viewing at work can be entered. This has created some consternation and creativity (and that’s a good thing, as far as I am concerned).

Guess the top 3 in a competition to win VIP membership 

We changed the “guess the top 5” to be “guess the top 3” to make it a bit easier. So far, over 61 people have guessed correctly and earned 14 days of VIP for free (with one lucky person getting it right four times so far).

Added a Competition Themes page

We added a new page that lists all of the competition themes. It includes when the themes are scheduled to run and when they were last seen. To access this page, go to the Competitions page and click Competitions Themes (top right).

A ‘week of rest’ for competition winners

If someone wins a competition, they cannot enter any competitions for a week. This will give other members a chance to enjoy the limelight. 

Group changes

We’ve made some small but important changes to groups.

Group post replies can be marked as Not Suitable for Work (NSFW)

Previously, a SFW post could be happily humming along when someone decides to post NSFW content, rendering the entire post NSFW (which was not always ideal). To help with this, we’ve added the ability to mark replies as NSFW.

This means that a NSFW reply to a SFW group post will not affect the SFW post (as long as the reply is marked as NSFW). Posting a NSFW image (from PurplePort) will automatically mark the reply as NSFW.

Replies containing NSFW content will be hidden when you have chosen to hide NSFW content.

You can change the safety setting on your group post

We have also allowed a group post owner to alter the NSFW/SFW setting on their group posts.

View your own replies to a group post

When viewing a group you can now see all of your replies by selecting “View your replies” from the grey cog.

Prevent your images from being invited to groups 

We added the option to prevent image invites to groups. You can now prevent all image invites to groups (from your General Site Settings page) or prevent invites from specific groups (from the grey cog on that group).

Free VIP for Models, MUAs and studios has ended

In 2020, we quickly recognised that models, MUAs, and studios would suffer badly due to the lockdowns and the restrictions imposed on everyone due to Sars-Cov-2. To do our small bit for these groups within our communities, we gave away PurplePort VIP membership for free. 

Now that restrictions have now been lifted, it’s time for us to bring this program to an end. Since March 2020, during the time this program was active, 5,498 members of the PurplePort community have redeemed 17,615 months of PurplePort VIP membership.

We are glad to have been able to have such a positive impact on so many people’s lives during this difficult time. And we won’t hesitate to do similar in the future to help protect the community.

Other changes

Thumbnail images in the Shoutbox

We’ve added the option to include one of your images to your Shout from the Shoutbox. This will add a thumbnail of your image into the Shout (which will be displayed on the Shouts page once posted). We have also added the ability to Shout about your image from the grey cog on that image. 

Image safety changes by Admin/PPCT are locked

Sometimes, when Admin or a member of the PurplePort Community Team (PPCT) changed the content safety setting on an image, people would change it back. Now, when Admin or someone from the PPCT changes the safety setting on an image, the safety is locked to prevent people from changing it back.

Performance changes, additional improvements and more

We have massively improved the performance of profile pages. We noticed a few profiles that were very slow due to displaying thousands of images. We came across a couple of profiles that were taking up to 15 seconds to begin to display. To resolve this, we rewrote large portions of the profile page such that the super slow profiles taking many seconds now take less than half a second. This had the benefit of also speeding up every profile page.

In line with this, we have also implemented a whole bunch of other changes that have allowed us to improve Purpleport’s global performance. We’ll continue performance improvements as we redevelop parts of PurplePort.

We painstakingly went round all of PurplePort ’s code, ensuring that when PurplePort refers to you it’s “you” or “your” not “me” or “mine”. I feel certain there are still some inconsistencies somewhere but it’s much more consistent now.

We are moving away from so much reliance on Javascript popups and having so much content generated on the client. This will improve accessibility, reduce round trips, improve performance, and make it easier for us to make changes or develop new features. This is an ongoing process.

We’re also continuing to move away from infinitely scrolling lists. These are troublesome because the browser “back” functionality doesn’t work well, and they encourage time to slip away from the viewer. 

We’ve expanded our automated tests and now have 2,753 tests that we run against PurplePort as a double check to help to ensure we haven’t broken anything. We have lots to do in this respect as we are only testing roughly 50% of PurplePort’s functionality. This is a never-ending slog and something we add to every week.

We’ve also expanded our internal developer tools to expose metrics to give us better insight into how PurplePort is performing and give us developers better visibility of internal workings (which improves stability).

Bug fixes

We’ve fixed hundreds of bugs and resolved many issues, mainly minor annoyances plus some really quite important ones.

Let us know...

If you spot an error or think of something that will improve PurplePort, you can let us know by either creating a support ticket or creating a post in the Bugs, Errors, and Suggestions group. Doing so helps us and every member of the PurplePort community.

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!

Follow us on social media 

We regularly post beautiful, dynamic and inspiring images from our talented community on social media.

Check out our blog on PurplePort and our social channels below so you can stay inspired anytime:

Join now and start networking

Join the community and start your modelling or photography career now.