In this video tutorial I look at the difference between private galleries and public galleries. Which ones you should use, how to add them as a photographer, and how your clients can view the photos in them.

Cheers,

Luke

It’s important for your branding to be consistent. Your design should look the same in all your materials – your brochures, business cards, website, and of course, shopping cart.

Now with the latest version (1.4) of Photography Orders, you can easily change the way it looks.

Here’s a video demonstration of me using the new features for going from the default (new) Royal Dark theme, to a red design.

We’re happy to announce we’ve just released version 1.4 of Photography Orders.

In 1.4 we wanted to give more options to how you display your Photography Business.

Themes

The biggest addition to Photography Orders are themes. We’ve redesigned Photography Orders and come up with three themes, black/dark, grey, and light. We’ve also made it so you can easily go in and modify the look and feel of Photography Orders.

We’re sure you’ll love this addition, and that you’ll have no problems matching Photography Orders to your existing branding.

Choose from 3 default themes, then customize them

By default, the selected theme ‘Royal Dark’.

Content Blocks

Another inclusion in this update is a feature that allows you to add notes. When your client first logs in, you can display content to them. Also, on each gallery, you can write notes that the client will see. In these blocks, you can promote specials, tell a story behind the gallery, put dates, etc.

Display notes to your customers

Minor features and fixes

We’ve also added support for tax, fixed quite a few bugs and made little enhancements here and there.

Available now

1.4 is now live and available for purchase. Existing customers can download v1.4 for free from their original download link, and can purchase a ticket from here for an upgrade service.

We hope you like v1.4, as always, leave your feedback in the forums.

We’re happy to announce we’ve just released version 1.3!

We have received a lot of customer feedback, and the goal in version 1.3 was to make Photography Orders more robust and expand its usefulness.

Here’s a list of what we’ve done.

Public Galleries

Public galleries was a hotly requested feature. Public galleries allow event photographers to create galleries without the need to create a client first.

Payment options, checkout and order processing

The major part of v1.3 was to move order processing from offsite (Paypal/Google Checkout), into Photography Orders. Now customers checkout in Photography Orders before being paying.

You can now offer more than one payment option at a time. We’ve added support for Moneybookers, which is an alternative to Paypal, especially for countries and currencies where Paypal doesn’t service. We’ve also added support for offline payment methods. You can choose to allow customers to pay offline/later.

Orders are now saved in Photography Orders. You can view orders you’ve received and update their status/comments, rather than just receiving an email with the order details.

Navigation and design improvements

• Prev/next buttons on the show photo page mean customers can now move forward and backward in a gallery without having to go back to the gallery
• Caching of photos means customers load photos once, and after that, they load instantly. This creates a much faster and nicer experience
• Watermarking can now be selectively used. Previously, you could only toggle the watermark for all photos. In 1.3, the watermark setting determines if a watermark will be placed on newly uploaded photos.
• Pagination of photos. Galleries are now split over several pages, with 32 photos per page. Previously, photos would all load on the one page
• Minor improvements to the interface.
• Go back buttons have been reworded and

We hope you like version 1.3. If you have any feedback, questions, praise or found bugs, please let us know in our forums.

Cheers,

Luke

We’re currently working on version 1.3 of Photography Orders. The goal for 1.3 was to flesh out a lot of the features, and expand the scope of what Photography Orders can do.

Better checkout and order processing

In v1.2, the checkout is handled either at Paypal or Google Checkout. In 1.3, the checkout is handled by Photography Orders, and the customer is then sent off to pay after completing the order on your site. Coupled with that, orders are now saved so you can process them from within Photography Orders.

We’re adding more payment options, including offline payment and Moneybookers.

Better gallery navigation for your customers

In 1.3 we’ve made some improvements to the customer interface including pagination, and the ability to go from one photo to the next without having to go back to the gallery overview. We’ve also added some aesthetic changes, for example, galleries now have a thumbnail of the first photo inside the gallery.

Public galleries

Event photographers will be able to upload galleries without the need to password protect them.

We’re looking forward to releasing v1.3 within the next couple of weeks. If any existing customers are interested in beta testing, shoot an email to info@photographyorders.com.

For a photographer looking to create a website cheaply, wordpress presents itself as one of the best options.

• It’s free
• It allows you to look professional
• You can set it up yourself

Unfortunately, looking through all of the free themes available out there is a time consuming process. Lucky for you, I’ve looked through the complete wordpress theme directory and found these 7 to be the best.

I’m only looking at free themes in this post. Premium themes offer much more in terms of design and funtionality, and it would definitely be worth considering some premium themes when you’re creating your blog.

The themes I’ve chosen aren’t necessarily photo blogs – blogs that feature a photo each day. Those blogs are great, but what we’re looking for here are themes that are suited for a website to promote a small photography business. The themes here all include a place to list and show off your different services – wedding photography, portrait photography, etc.

Without any further ado, let’s dig in.

Studiopress Black

Simplistic and sharp. Great room for a large image that showcases your work. I like how the pages are featured along the top, so you can easily create a page for each of your services.

Studiopress black

More info and download from http://www.geckoandfly.com/2008/05/10/studiopress-black-photography-wordpress-theme/

Station

Another dark theme. Again, pages are prominently featured so galleries and information can be added to the site in the traditional way.

Station professional photographer wordpress theme

More info and download: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/station

Tune

Another simple theme. This one isn’t so universal. Most photographers like black or dark themes because pretty much any picture works on a dark background. If you’ve got branding that matches this teal colour, Tune is definitely worth a look.

Tune photographer wordpress theme

More info and download: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/wptune

Dark Relief

A striking theme that will suit those that want a bit of extra flair.

Dark relief professional photography theme

More info and download: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/dark-relief

Autumn

If you can change the photo at the top left to a striking photo of your own, this is a fantastic looking theme for a photographer’s website and blog.

autumn professional photographer wordpress theme

More info and download: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/seasons-theme-autumn

Dark Smoke

Simple and clean.

Dark smoke professional photographer wordpress theme

More info and download: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/dark-smoke

Charcoal

A change from all the dark themes. This theme has a white background and looks quite stylish.

Charcoal wordpress theme

More info and download: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/charcoal

Once you have your website setup, take a look at our report on online photo sales. Find out a bit more about what’s involved in selling your photos online.

We’re trying to make it easier for people to install Photography Orders. To be able to install Photography Orders, you need a general idea of how to use your web hosts control panel and how to upload files.

You can view the installation instructions here.

Some people are visual learners, so we’ve recorded a video of the installation process. (UPDATE 23/5/2010: We’ve since updated our installation process, some of the steps that are below are no longer needed).

Don’t worry if you don’t think you can install Photography Orders – our installation service is only $30. Simply select option 2 on the order page.

We often get questions from photographers about the best way to integrate Photography Orders with their websites.

As a result of the feedback, we’ve just released a new tool that allows you to easily build a form for your website. The form allows your clients to login directly from your website, instead of having to go to a new page to login.

The form creator tool can be used for free from http://customer.photographyorders.com/form-creator/

Here’s a demonstration video that shows how to use it. Many thanks to our fantastic customer John de Garis Photography for letting us use his site for the demonstration.

Wedding photographers can increase sales of wedding photographs by enabling wedding guests to view and purchase selected photographs.

The Problem

The problem is that increasingly wedding guests travel from far and wide to attend a wedding.  Meaning that they can not attend your studio or even the lucky couples house to view the photographs.

This inability to view the photographs means lost sales

Solution

The solution is consists of two parts:

1.     Let the guests view, select and purchase photographs online in a secure area; and

2.    Secondly be able to do it with the minimum of costs and effort to you, the wedding photographer.

Photography Orders enables you to do this, providing a secure area to view, select and sell photos, whilst enabling you to provide this service with the minimum of effort.

Additional Benefits

Photography Orders software can be easily linked to your website. Providing clients with a secure log in link directly from your website.

Then let your married couple and their immediate family promote the site and link to their friends and family!

This means you can promote your website to wedding guests as the landing point to log in to view photographs. This delivers two benefits:

1.     Increased web traffic to your site – always good to help search engine rankings, and
2.     Opportunity to promote yourself to the wedding guests, a starting point for word of mouth marketing.

There’s an old saying that “Less is more”.

The phrase is often associated with the architect and furniture designer Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969), one of the founders of modern architecture and a proponent of simplicity of style.

In software, the mantra is the same. Simplicity and clarity lead to good design.

“Less is more” is a part of every aspect of the way we do things. Here’s some examples of how less is more when it comes to Photography Orders.

Less clicks to get things done

In Photography Orders, it takes 6 mouse clicks for a photographer to create a client, create a gallery, and resize and upload all of the photos in a gallery; within 6 clicks, you’re ready for the client to login and place an order.

For your clients to login, find a photo, add it to their cart and be sent off to process payment, it takes 5 clicks.

Simplicity and clarity lead to good design.

There is absolutely no mucking around with post producing photos in Photoshop first. No ftp uploads. No special photo uploader programs like some competitors use. Photography Orders is completely browser based, super fast, and super straight forward. We’ve optimised the flow – javascript/ajax is used wherever possible to speed things up and remove unnecessary page loads.

Less clutter

Everything on every screen is there because it absolutely has to be. Not only can you get everywhere extremely quickly, it’s extremely easy to know what to do.

Less clutter means you don’t need a manual to figure out what you need to do. Throughout the application, you’ll find instructions are in plain English, not techno babble.

Simplicity and clarity lead to good design.

Less cost

Photography Orders has no monthly costs and no commissions. The price is small, and it’s a one off cost. Our theory – Why pay more for clutter?

When it comes to time, clutter and cost, we hope you’ll agree with us that less is, most definitely, more.