22Slides

It took us a little while, but we wanted to make sure we got it right!

Page grouping is the ability to put pages inside other pages to add another level of organization to your website. For example, you could have a page named “Weddings” and have a gallery for each couple within that page, and it’s as easy as dragging and dropping pages into each other.

Page groups come in two different flavors: Thumbnail grids and drop-down menus:

Thumbnail Grids

Thumbnail grids will display a thumbnail and title for each gallery it contains. JordanVoth.com is a nice example of this.

We have quick how-to article outlining how to do this on your site here: http://help.22slides.com/article/collection-groups

Drop-Down Menus

Drop-down menus are great for including different types of pages into a single button in your site’s navigation, and they’re created almost exactly the same way: http://help.22slides.com/article/dropdown-menu

Other Stuff

And as usual, we snuck a few more updates in too:

• Made the horizontal scrollbar slightly larger and bolder to improve its obviousness
• Added an optional “phone” field to contact forms
• Extended the grace period for accounts with failed payments, to allow people more time to get new cards from their bank, etc.
• Updated entire database structure to latest industry standards for improved speed and reliability
• Increased frequency of automated system backups to make sure data is even safer
• Made improvements to non-Latin character support, like those in Hebrew, Japanese, etc.
• Fixed issue with apostrophes getting “scrambled” in messages sent from contact forms
• Created new development workflow to allow for faster improvements in the future

Another round of new features just made its way to your website!

• More Photos. As we grow, we’re able to scale our resources up. And thanks to our awesome customers, we were able to increase the photo limit from 500 photos to 750.
• Way More Photos. If you haven’t heard, Flickr now offers 1TB of storage for free, which means you can potentially put hundreds of thousands of photos on your website, for free, if you use our Flickr add-on.
• Panorama Support. We’ve changed the way images are resized, allowing panoramic images to be as wide as they need to be, while still matching the height of your other landscape-oriented photos so everything stays nicely aligned.

We just released a few new features/updates, here’s the list:

• Better Full-Screen Home Page Photos. How-so? We’ve started from scratch on the full-screen option, taking full advantage of the latest browser capabilities. This means both image quality and slideshow smoothness are better, especially with Safari.
• Tumblr Blog Image Captions. Now your Tumblr blog will display the captions for photos added to photo gallery posts.
• Downloadable Annual Receipts. It’s a little late for this tax season, but you can now download a receipt for all your invoices for a given year, which should come in handy around tax time. This feature is on your “Account > Billing History” page.
• Minimal Copyright Notice. Now the copyright notice at the bottom of your site is more minimal, taking up less space, while still carrying the same legal weight as the longer version.

We don’t know how else to introduce Jordan other than saying he’s really good. Really really good. Very few can make natural light work so well and look so easy. Something about the light, vibe, and just plain genuineness of his work make him one of our most popular clients we’ve been lucky enough to work with.

He’s 23, lives in Seattle, has been shooting for 5 years, and we definitely think he’s someone you should know about (if you don’t already).

http://jordanvoth.com
http://twitter.com/jordanvoth
http://facebook.com/jordanvothphotography
http://flickr.com/photos/jojo2fast

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Who are you and why the heck would anyone want to read this interview?

As you’ve probably read, my name is Jordan and I’m a portrait and wedding photographer based out of Seattle. I’m lucky enough to work with some pretty awesome people who make my job a heck of a lot easier. I hope you’ll like what you see.

How were you introduced to photography?

During my senior year of high school my friend and I used to go out to cool locations and take photos of our cars (pretty lame, I know). Towards the end of that year I got my first dSLR and began shooting bands and soon after geared more towards portraits. I found that meeting new people and hearing so many different stories from different people is what really drew me to that aspect of photography.

What kind of work is your favorite?

I love shooting portraits but have recently begun moving more towards weddings. There’s just something about photographing two people in love that is completely awesome (plus you can end up traveling to some AWESOME locations). Engagement sessions are always such a fun time as well; the more unique the better. I really look forward to photographing those.

Whose work do you look up to the most?

I have a couple favorites that are more portrait photographers and a couple wedding photographers. Cheyenne Ellis, Collin Hughes & Spencer Combs are a few of my favorite portrait photographers. The candid/real life aspect of their photos is what really drew me, along with many others, to their work. I’ve had a chance to hang out with both Collin & Spencer and they’re two of the nicest and most humble guys ever. It’s really cool. Benj Haisch, Shannen Norman & Carl Zoch are some of the most inspiring wedding photographers to me. I can spend hours on their blogs/websites. Their work is simply incredible.

What kind of equipment do you use most often?

I use a Canon 5d Mark II for all of my shoots. I have three lenses: Canon 35mm f/1.4L, Canon 50mm f/1.2L & a Sigma 85mm f/1.4. Every now and then I’ll shoot film and for that I use either a Canon AE-1 or Canon Elan 7. Since I primarily shoot with natural light, I don’t have much lighting equipment, but I’m hoping to invest in a little bit of that in the near future.

What’s your photo editing software of choice? Any special tricks of the trade?

I’m a Photoshop man. I also will use Capture One every now and then as well. Lately, I’ve been really digging the VSCO sets. Every photographer should know how to use layer masks, it helps a ton.

If you could have done one thing different with your photography career so far, what would it be?

I wish I would have started shooting weddings sooner and wouldn’t have been so afraid to just say yes and book one. Basically this just means get outside of your comfort zone, it may be the best thing ever! I turned down quite a few because I felt they were too nerve wrecking and I didn’t think I was capable of doing a good job but now that I’ve shot a few I think they’re just awesome to do! I rarely find myself too stressed out at all. Don’t be afraid to try new things.

What are some of your favorite things?

I love being outside and exploring new places. Driving my car and listening to music go hand in hand together and if gas wasn’t so expensive, I would probably drive around the country again. I’m also a huge fan of movies, hot chocolate & spreadsheets.

What are some of your least-favorite things?

I hate ranch. I’m probably one of the few people who do, but I cannot stand it haha.

Why do you use 22Slides for your website?

I was in the process of looking for a new website company to use and came across 22slides through a friend of mine. Their sites were exactly what I had in mind for a new site. I signed up for a trial and couldn’t get over how easy it was to update and maintain my website. Their customer service is top notch as well and is a large factor as to why they’re such a great company. I highly recommend signing up for a trial and giving 22slides a try if you’re in the search for a new website. You won’t regret it.

It’s been a busy month for us, here’s an abbreviated list of changes, updates, and bug fixes that we’ve made in the last 30 days:

• Dedicated blog post pages. Now each Tumblr post gets its own dedicated page on your site (just click on a post’s date to get to it). This should be perfect for sharing individual blog posts with others.
• Improved email reliability. Now both our emails to you, and emails from your contact forms are less likely to be marked as spam. And, your control panel will now notify you if there are any problems detected with your email address, to ensure you’re never missing any emails from potential customers.
• Improved image quality. Now your home page images and thumbnails will appear even more clear than before (only affects images uploaded after Apr 16th).
• Bigger file uploads. We’ve raised the upload limit from 10MB to 18MB, though we don’t recommend uploading files that large, it’s much faster to upload smaller files :)
• Automatically fix website address typos. If you accidentally add “www” to the beginning of your default you.22slides.com address, we’ll automatically fix it and forward the visitor to your site.
• HTTPS everywhere. Individual sites have always used encrypted connections, but now we’ve extended that security to our own home page.
• See which card is on file. Now you can see which credit card is on file by going to your “Account > See my Billing History” page
• Improved mobiel site formatting. We improved formatting of bodies of text on mobile sites.
• **New icon packs for social network links **(available on the add-ons page)

And a few bug fixes:

• Now the mobile sites will obey the home page designator, just like the desktop sites do.
• Mobile sites now support multiple images per Tumblr blog post.
• Fixed issue that would cause only the first page of a Tumblr blog to load.
• Fixed issue with adding raw HTML textarea fields to text pages.
• Fixed issue that kept home page images from showing up in some cases.
• Fixed issue that caused Dropbox file manager from not getting the latest copies of your files after changing Dropbox accounts.