Image library migrates to PixyBlog

Monday Nov 03, 2008

Today sees the launch of a new type of website powered by PixyBlog. Pictorial Press Ltd is an image library specializing in music, film and television stills. Over the past six months we've been working with the Pictorial Press team to migrate their existing website over to use the PixyBlog system.

An image library is a considerably different type of website to a photoblog. There are a number of features which we either needed to enhance or develop before we would be ready to run such a site using PixyBlog.

Search

Our photoblogs already have a basic search function, which makes us different from a lot of similar photoblogging services, but for an image library search is the priority. If picture researchers can't find the images they are looking for, then there will be no sales. We worked on improving the quality of our keyword searches and the work we've done here has already filtered down to all our photoblogs.

Bulk Upload

When dealing with hundreds of thousands of images, then a bulk upload feature becomes essential. We already had this feature but, like the search, it has been improved somewhat to cater for the needs of an image library. For example, you can now upload images up to 50MB in size.

Checkout

Pictorial Press is the first site to use our new checkout process. Shoppers can now add images to a basket, continue through the checkout providing their billing information & shipping details and complete the whole order process in just a few steps online.

The checkout process can be branded with the sites title or even a custom logo, and we're now working on making the design even more customizable to match the originating site.

The ability to sell prints, limited editions, high resolution downloads and even image licensing has been a feature which has been requested by a number of PixyBlogger's and we will start to roll-out a beta of this on a select few photoblogs soon.

Lightbox

Image library websites usually have a lightbox facility to allow researchers to put together a selection of images which are of interest to them (often for a specific project or client). PixyBlog now has such a feature. We support management for more than one lightbox, each lightbox can be emailed and client comments can be left on individual images. Similar to our checkout process, we can brand the lightbox management with the sites title or logo.

Order & User Management

To enable smooth transactions between supplier and customer we've developed a thorough order management system. Included are email alerts for new orders or a change in order status, a new management console for viewing, tracking and changing orders and a user management console for suppliers to manage and contact their customers.

These new features will start to come available on PixyBlog shortly, and we hope that you are as excited about these developments as we are.

Posted at 06:41PM Nov 03, 2008 by Richard Jones  |  Comments[3]

RSS feed for Discussion Forum

Monday Oct 27, 2008

For those of you whom Feeds have changed the way you access information on the internet, you will be pleased to hear we now have an RSS Feed for our discussion forum. You can now keep abreast of the latest chitchat on our forums from your favorite reader.

Posted at 05:45AM Oct 27, 2008 by Richard Jones  |  Comments[2]

Search, bulk uploading and alternate image

Friday Oct 24, 2008

There have been many small tweaks to the PixyBlog system over the past month, nothing too significant, but lots of smaller changes. I'll just run-through a few of them in summary here.

Search Improved

As the number of photos on PixyBlog grows, search plays an increasingly important role. We now have some photoblogs with close to 1000 images. In these cases clicking through page after page of thumbnails to find an image can be rather tedious, and this is where search comes into it's own.

Currently on PixyBlog we have two types of search; Keywords and Tags. I won't go into the specifics of each now as they've been covered before on our news blog, and more recently Jacques Bron has written an excellent article about optimizing your photos for search on PixyBlog - well worth a read. However, I would like to inform you of a couple of changes; the keyword search now searches over the Tags and Gallery Names, but no longer the Users Comments. You can also use quotes "" to provide more specific results when searching with more-than-one word.

Bulk Uploader

From an ongoing discussion in our Report a Bug forum it became evident that there were some problems with our Bulk Uploader. We've been working on this all week and have now got a new & improved version of the uploader online which should address those reported problems.

PixyBlog front page tweaks

Some of you may have noticed a few minor tweaks to the design of pixyblog.com front page. These are designed to give easier access to more areas of the site.

Alternate Image

Finally, there have been some requests on a way to display an alternate version of an image on a photoblog. We've come-up with a solution which both Sven and Jacques have been experimenting with, and we've written a short wiki article about it as well. It looks like a great feature, and we're now working on a way to make this standard across all photoblogs; watch this space.

Posted at 07:51AM Oct 24, 2008 by Richard Jones  |  Comments[0]

OneReaction photoblog software export to PixyBlog

Tuesday Sep 16, 2008

Photographers using the now unsupported OneReaction photoblog software have an option to export their images, descriptions and comments to PixyBlog. Jacques Bron has written and in-depth article on how users of OneReaction can export their data in a format which PixyBlog can easily import. His own photoblog was exported using this same method, which we reported on earlier.

The article is well written and due to the attention to technical details, it could also be useful for others wanting to export their photos to PixyBlog; even if you're using different software. The article is over on Jacques blog, and has the rather techy title:

• LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML in action: from database to XML

As always, if you're interested in moving your photos to PixyBlog and have any questions, just let us know.

Posted at 06:56AM Sep 16, 2008 by Richard Jones  |  Comments[0]

John Washington import from PixelPost

Tuesday Sep 09, 2008

Some of you may have noticed the presence of longtime photoblogger, John Washington on PixyBlog over the last few weeks. He appeared in the top-spot our Hall-of-Fame Photos and also made an impact on our Hot Photoblogs rankings. So it wouldn't have taken a genius to guess that he might well be in the process of migrating to PixyBlog. He is. He has.

So another big PixyBlog welcome to John Washington. Along with all the other migrations we've been working on lately, John is not only the latest but the largest. With over 600 photos going back to 2005, he has a huge portfolio of work, an established website and an army of readers/subscribers.

John has essentially been involved with PixyBlog since the beginning, and although he continued to blog on his PixelPost site for the past two years, it was always our intention that John be the first PixelPost import. That didn't quite happen, but it's great to finally have John as part of the community.

We migrated John's highly customized PixelPost site, which was a Frankenstein creation of two PixelPost instances running side-by-side. One instance powered his photoblog, while another was used to separate his projects from his photoblog. Over the years he had continually developed his own customized theme which also needed to be migrated.

It took us a few weeks, but finally at the weekend we managed to swap John's site over to use PixyBlog. We changed his domain name yesterday and now his site is live and currently number one in the days Hot Photoblogs.

Posted at 10:39AM Sep 09, 2008 by Richard Jones  |  Comments[1]

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