Revised Galleries Webpage

[Webster]

In order to get more members' work "displayed" on the website, the "Featured Photographers" have been removed.  These galleries were intended to be stand-alone galleries created by the individual photographers that would reside on the HUPS web host server.

Instead, Photographer Galleries have now been created.  These are "buttons" that link directly to member websites that contain their underwater or other photographic images.  These are, in general, the same websites linked on the "News and Links" webpage, but by putting them on the Gallery page, they are more likely to be accessed by visitors to the website looking for member photos.

Any comments would be welcomed, either on the Forum or by e-mail to hupsweb@earthlink.net.

[kandace]

I really like this new look for the gallery. It is similar to KUPS (Kona Underwater Photography Society) web gallery. Hopefully more HUPS photogs will take advantage of the photo management sites, like SmugMug, Flickr, PhotoNet, Zenfolio, and many more to put their gallery together so that it can be linked on the HUPS website. Or to let you know if they have a website so that it can be linked.

And, I really like the "mobile friendly" version you have added as well. I put that to use today at a West U cafe where I showed off our January winners. Everyone was quite impressed. The photos looked great on my iTouch. Looking forward to the HUPS Store.

Thanks for working so hard to get the change implemented.

[TomC]

I like it 

Are you going to tie this MG into this format?  It would fit.

[Webster]

Yes, there will be a new section, "Moody Gardens Collection Photographers," (or just Moody Gardens Collection) that will have buttons like the Photographer Galleries.  Each of those buttons would link to either a new page with that photographers photos on it, or more likely, to that Photographers section on a single page that have all the MG photos on it grouped by Photographer.  Either way, the photos would link into the shopping cart that Gregg is working on.

Which brings up the question of how the prospective buyer would search for the picture he wants.  Would it be by photographer (which is assumed above) or by title.  If they don't know or remember the photographer, we would also need a simple link to the page with all the photos on it (which means that a single page, rather than a page for each Photographer), so that they could look through the photos for the one they wanted - or have the page searchable by title.  I don't know how to set that up, but I'm sure it can be done.

[scubafish]

Hi Webster & Tom,
Is there a shopping cart in the control panel of this site? If so which one(s)? We can begin by using what is already there. Also, some shopping carts have links on the right margin to sell advertising. Is this an option if Reef Photo or Ike for example wants to have their ads on the store pages? We decide who that would be and it creates a little revenue on every click of the surfers...

Did either of you guys look at zencart? http://www.zen-cart.com/
Here is a link to some stores using zencart: http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=showcase&zenid=970f511124a54694d45c78aa0a15fc44
Searching with keywords is a breeze in most of these carts...

[TomC]

WEBSTER
I think that the Moody Gardens gallery page should be a gallery of just the photos on exhibit at MG.  Each photograph on display at MG will be labeled with a number and the photographers name.  The prospective buyer will have to either take note of those details or browse the the HUPS Moody gallery page until they spot the photograph they want.  A link on the photograph should take them to the point of purchase option.  How that point of purchase is accomplished will be up to Greg.

SCUBAFISH
I do believe that there is a shopping cart available as an option with our host server - www.ipower.com.  You should log in to ipower and check it out.  It looks to be a very easily navigable site.  You can log in with the same username and password as the ftp site.

[KiwiKen]

Are we selling additional copies of the images on display or are we just selling the singular images that are on display?  If its just the single images, how are we going to managed them?  For example, if an image sells and there is only that one copy, how will the image be marked as sold?  Will some HUPS member have to journey out to Galveston to mark up the images that are sold?  Just wondering is all.

If we're selling multiple copies then the images don't have to be marked "sold", but we'll need to find someway to process the orders and make sure that additional prints are created.  So that's the other side of the selling issue.

Cheers,
Ken

[TomC]

KIWIKEN
We are going to sell copies of the images that are on display.  We are planning on offering a choice of two sizes, 8 x 10 or 16 x 20.  We have not yet established a selling price.  I image that we will leave that decision up to the photographer.  HUPS will handle the transaction online and have the new print sent directly to the buyer.  HUPS will keep a percentage of the transaction.

We are investigating options as to the manner of how to handle all the details.  Of course, we don't know what the heck we are doing but we will get it done.  There are online services that will handle the transaction but we don't want to pay anything and so far we have not found any that are free.

[KiwiKen]

As far as pricing goes, I think we should price all images the same, depending on size.  If we leave it up to individuals to do the pricing, we may get some interesting prices.  For example, would people buy Tom's $25 print or Ken's $2500 print.  I know the example is a bit extreme, but we've all invested lots of money in equipment, travel, and time in capturing these images.  I think we should get guidance from some of our members that already sell their images/prints to make sure we set appropriate price points, maybe even as a minimum price.  Then if the minimum is $xxx then I can decide to add a premium, but again, maybe we should set limits. 

Again, just my thoughts.  I'm sure these conversations are taking place, but I'm not around to participate.  But if we ever want a HUPS trip/meeting to be held in Auckland, I can host!

[Webster]

We have many options for the shopping cart, but using PayPals's may be easiest, since that is the method of payment we will use and it is pretty flexible.

Kandace has set one up on her website, www.kandfoto.com.  You can set it up to make multiple purchases of different sizes of the same photo or different photos, and it will add shipping and taxes to each order.

I have not used the ipower shopping cart, but I am assuming that is has all of the same features, it is just a slightly larger unknown in how to set it up.

On the issue of stocking Moody Gardens, I think we should have at least two copies of each size of each photo on display.  I thought that Moody was going to track sales for us, so that we could restock, if necessary.  As these are unframed photos in plastic sleeves, keeping that inventory should not be too expensive, and HUPS cut should cover the costs.  In fact, I would be in favor of having additional photos on sale as well, but I know that the committee has decided against this.  As an alternative, perhaps we coudl have a second section in the Moody Gardens Gallery page with additional photos that had been approved by the committee.   In any event there will be a photographer's link from the MG webpage, so that they can go to the photog's webpage and make additional purchases.  Of course, not all photogs have shopping carts, which would be a problem.

[scubafish]

You are right Webster, Paypal is by far the easiest method. Tom is looking at some free skins to get this started as I understand it. Once decided we can start page designs with his selected skin. He's leaning towards JAlbums) What skins is Kandace using?

[Webster]

I am not familiar with skins for photoalbums, but the ones at http://jalbum.net/ seem to be attractive and free.  It is not clear that any of them have a connection to PayPal, but presumably a PayPal button could be added to the code on the skin template.  Kandace did this on her original website, and it was a bit fiddly.

Kandace uses a gallery "skin" that was part of her website template from alwebco.  It came with the PayPal button / purchase option already incorporated.