We know that many of you have been waiting patiently for the ability to collect payments for custom orders you fulfill yourselves. With this release we have added the ability for you to use your own PayPal account in the Shopping Cart so clients can pay you directly through a seamless Checkout experience.

We have also lowered the service fee for self-fulfilled custom orders to 4% (down from 6%). Combined with the new option to use your own PayPal account for collecting payments, Zenfolio now offers the most complete solution for both photographers wishing to fulfill their own orders and those who wish to use Zenfolio print partners.

Adding External Web Site as a Custom Home Page

We have studied carefully how many professional photographers integrate Zenfolio into their workflow and came up with an innovative way of making Zenfolio an even better client proofing site.

Premium users now have a choice of adding an external portfolio web site in place of the Zenfolio Home page. Your Display Name and the Home link on all your pages will take viewers to an address determined by the preferences you set. You will find this feature in the Preferences of your Premium account.

Price List Improvements

• Price Lists can be printed neatly using the special Print function
• Ability to export Price Lists in CSV format compatible with Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet programs
• Full control over the sorting order of items presented in the Add to Cart window using an easy to use drag-and-drop interface. Give this one a try, the simplicity of rearranging items cannot be overstated.

Introducing New Vendor: fotoflōt

We have added fotoflōt as a new vendor to the Zenfolio E-Commerce platform. Photographers are now able to sell frameless fotoflōt prints by setting their own prices and making a profit. fotoflōts are innovative products printed on real photographic paper, bonded to hard acrylic surface, and laser-cut to size, resulting in extremely precise edges. They come with innovative magnetic mounting hardware for displaying on your desk or hanging on a wall. Try ordering one and you will be hooked!

See the complete list of available fotoflōt products and prices.

Announcing Integration with the Eye-Fi Cards

We are very happy to announce that you can use the Eye-Fi cards to upload wirelessly to your Zenfolio account from any Wi-Fi enabled location. The Eye-Fi card stores photos like a traditional memory card, and fits in most cameras. When you turn your camera on within range of a configured Wi-Fi network, it can wirelessly transfer photos to your Zenfolio account. Learn more about the Eye-Fi cards.

Other New Features and Improvements Include:

• Introduced two new Themes: Romantic and Vintage
• Availability of the Express Send to Zenfolio third-party tool for Windows. Installing this tool on your Windows computer allows batch uploading of photos and folders by using the 'Send to Zenfolio' menu on right-click.
• Added "Best Fit" option to the Add to Cart window to help customers make the best selection from available product sizes based on the aspect ratio of the selected photo.
• The Zenfolio site is now fully compatible with the recently released Internet Explorer 8 web browser. If you are still using the Internet Explorer 6 browser, please consider upgrading. The new versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox are much faster and more secure than IE6.
• Added the ability to save a Free shipping method for custom products. This is particularly useful if you are personally fulfilling and delivering orders, and there is no need to charge for shipping. Setting the shipping price to 0.00 automatically displays FREE in the Shopping Cart.

New Mpix products and services

We continue to bring you the benefits of our partnership with Mpix as they make available new products and services:

• added 20"x20" size print in all paper finishes
• added magnets as a new product in two sizes: 2"x3.5" and 3"x4.5"
• added a two-sided acrylic key chain product
• Lustre coating is now available for Metallic prints
• introduced tracking numbers for USPS Priority Mail and USPS First Class orders. This is really big as customers are able to track and get delivery confirmation on all shipping methods with no additional charge.
• 5"x5" and 5"x7" size prints in quantities under 50 are now eligible to be shipped using the inexpensive USPS First Class mail service. All small size prints up to the size of 5"x7" can now be shipped using this economical method.

Alex,

These are very welcome additions. Some of them I've been waiting for a long time (like having Zenfolio collect payment for custom products).

Thanks for you and your team's hard work putting these features in place!

A couple of notes:

• Whenever I click the button to print one of my price lists, I am presented with a popup window that says "Loading...". And that's it. It doesn't matter whether it's a big price list or a small one; they all just say "Loading..." Glitch?
• While I can see the benefit of linking to an external site as the home page for those who maintain such a site, I really wish you'd gone the route of allowing the Zenfolio user's homepage itself to be customized instead. I don't maintain an external site related to my photography any more, and have no desire to begin doing so again. Also, all of the links I've ever given out to my customers begin with www.aaronbrownphotography.com/path/to/gallery, and I'd not want my home page to be any thing other than www.aaronbrownphotography.com, so this feature is of no discernible benefit to me. I'm still waiting for customizability of my Zenfolio launch page instead.
• Why are fotoflot prints so damned expensive? I really can't see any of my customers ever going for something that expensive. They may indeed be gorgeous, but the strike price is just too high.

Aaron, which browser are you using? We did a quick test and your price list appears to work for us in Firefox.

AF [Zenfolio]:

Aaron, which browser are you using? We did a quick test and your price list appears to work for us in Firefox.

Safari 3.2.1 on OS X 10.5.6 is where I encountered the behavior.

I confirmed that it works for me, too, when I use Firefox 3.0.7 on the same OS, so it looks like it might be isolated to Safari?

This should be fixed now.

To address your other points, yes, we are still planning on adding a built-in customizable photographer home page. fotoflōt pricing is not something that we control, I suggest you raise this question with fotoflōt directly.

Excellent work guys.  I had a big grin on my face when I came across that information about Paypal tonight.  I have yet to try it out, but it is definitely a big kudos for the developers.  I'm still trying to figure out the external website as a custom page thingy and what it does...but just wanted to say thanks to the Zen guys.

Ok, I set up the custom page/external website - awesome. Love the functionality and that it makes the proof site seamless from my main website.  Only thing now is my featured galleries are gone...any idea why they are no longer displaying?

Brian, send the featured gallery issue to support@zenfolio.com and they can help you best, because they can look at YOUR site... and it's a very fast response... those guys are top notch!

And let us know where your new homepage is so we can see how you integrated it!  I'd love to see some examples of how people are utilizing the new functionality!  :)

Hey Kevin.  First of all, I'd like to thank you for taking so much time as a user in taking part in this forum for noobs like me.  I've been a zen member since December but have noticed you take the time to respond to a lot of posts.  For guys like me, it really helps.

Anyway, the new feature is pretty neat.  From the outside, it doesn't seem that big, but it does make the proofing site a more seamless expereince for our clients - much like this new paypal feature.  I'm still learning all of this "technical" stuff from the ground up, but feel free to check out how I've implemented it at www.luxephoto.net.  When you click the "Proofs" tab, you'll notice you are taken to my zen site but it is now labled as if you are still within the Luxe universe.  There may be something I'm missing as I just dove right in last night, but if anyone has any better tips or whatever, please let me know.

Brian,

The way you have this working is exactly how it was intended. Your site looks very nice and clean and the integration is smooth. We tried to make it as simple as possible for as many people as possible. Here are a couple of additional tips that might be useful here:

• You can change the title of the 'All Photographs' group to anything you like, for example you can change the title to read 'Client Proofs'. This is done in the Description section under Toolbox.
• You can further customize the URL in the browser address bar. Right now, you have it as 'http://photos.luxephoto.net/f1070538558' but you can edit that under the Links section to be something like 'http://photos.luxephoto.net/proofs' for example.
  
  One thing to keep in mind is that if you change the URL address, you will need to link to that new address from your portfolio site.

We are also working on a better Home page layout option so this feature is an add-on for those who already have portfolio sites hosted somewhere else.

Enjoy!

Alex Peyzner [Zenfolio]:

 

• You can change the title of the 'All Photographs' group to anything you like, for example you can change the title to read 'Client Proofs'. This is done in the Description section under Toolbox.

Alex:

I cannot find where exactly I can change the ALL PHOTOGRAPHS title anywhere under Toolbox.  I can change my Display Name, change my picture, Contact and About info but not the "Description".  Where is it? 

Marcos 

Very pleased to hear the news and although I have to now remind my customers that all the prices are in dollars (grrr) I am pleased to be able to pay via Paypal in particular.

One problem though (and it's probably user-error!) but when I try to buy one of my own prints, fill in the address and then click the PayPal button I get an error about unencrypted buttons and the only option is to go to my account, not really what I expected.

Is it my browser settings?

Quick question...is the "Paypal ID" the same is the email address we use with our Paypay account?

In case you are interested in another example of integration...I've linked my home page/blog...  www.ericruddphotography.com, with my zenfolio account. Please click on the link, "Client Proofing" at the top of my page. Once you get to zenfolio, clicking on my Eric Rudd Photography link sends me back to my home page.

Nice job, folks. Next on my list....simply the process by which my guests can select favorites (email only), and have a way where I can see each favorite collection that my guest makes. I would use this for my clients to select their favorites for inclusion in an album for example.

Thanks!

Eric

Quick question...is the "Paypal ID" the same as the email address we use with our Paypay account?

In case you are interested in another example of integration...I've linked my home page/blog...  www.ericruddphotography.com, with my zenfolio account. Please click on the link, "Client Proofing" at the top of my page. Once you get to zenfolio, clicking on my Eric Rudd Photography link sends me back to my home page.

Nice job, folks. Next on my list....simply the process by which my guests can select favorites (email only), and have a way where I can see each favorite collection that my guest makes. I would use this for my clients to select their favorites for inclusion in an album for example.

Thanks!

Eric

yes, your paypal ID is the same as you use to log into paypal, which should be your paypal registered email address.