Requests for New Features

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Vitas [Zenfolio] — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:53:37 GMT

Thank you for the kind words. Please no donations though. Your words are the best reward for us, as it is very encouraging to see that Zenfolio has become an essential tool for many photographers.

We are growing at a good pace, and we are profitable. As our service becomes more complex and as the number of customers grows, we have to be extra disciplined about releasing new features, testing them properly, and dedicating enough time to infrastructure, monitoring, and service continuity.

We are moving at a good pace, delivering new features every 2-3 months.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Kevin Pepin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:12:21 GMT

Kudos to Laura and Vitas. We may not always like the answers we get, but at least they take the time to answer. Being part of the internet age makes us expect instant gratification. Need an answer, click here! We all need to have a little patience (myself included) and roll with the punches a little. I'm not sure who owns zen or how large the staff is, but improvements cost money and it has to come from somewhere. Our economy is in a rough patch now and I'm sure they are not seeing stellar sales or profit lately either.

Maybe they can set up a donations page to help pay for overtime or larger servers or more developers. If you really need the improvements that fast, donate. I would rather see a great end product than something that is rushed out half... hearted just to make the masses happy.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

J_W — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:05:08 GMT

Niphotos ~ chill dude. :-) Read the email again. This feature *is* coming. They can't do *everything* at once. ;-)

I for one am really impressed how fast Zenfolio respond to requests - even if the answer is 'no' - which it isn't in this case.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Laura — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:02:04 GMT

niphotos:
This is rediculous , i paid $100.00 for this , only now to find out that Google throws out my rss files because the site cannot be verified !! this fresh in from the support team .............

Hi Joe,

Thank you for explaining. Support for Google verification will be in one of the next releases. we do not have a release date yet but it wil be sooner rather than later.

We are happy to answer any other questions you may have.
All the best,
Laura
Zenfolio Customer Support

What I said directly in support is the same thing Vitas said earlier in this thread. This is coming in a future release.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

niphotos — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 20:57:43 GMT

This is rediculous , i paid $100.00 for this , only now to find out that Google throws out my rss files because the site cannot be verified !! this fresh in from the support team .............

Hi Joe,

Thank you for explaining. Support for Google verification will be in one of the next releases. we do not have a release date yet but it wil be sooner rather than later.

We are happy to answer any other questions you may have.

All the best,
Laura
Zenfolio Customer Support

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

MagickMichael — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:51:49 GMT

Just want to bop my 2 cents in here. What Vitus says above makes logical sense. There is little need (not no need) to add Webmaster Tools first if the homepages have little individuality. If ZF adds it first we will all show up in google the same way essentially. By giving us the ability to customize the homepages each person has a better chance of showing up individually. As individuals trying to promote ourselves we will bring ZF up too.

If we bring ourselves up in rankings and subsequently ZF too, then they get more clients. that means each hit on the ZF servers cost less and brings more paying customers as a whole. This reduces cost based on ROI and hence they make more money where they can then add more services which brings them more hits, which brings them more paying customers which reduces cost per visitor which...

I think you get my point. Although there is a more immediate ROI with each visitor to a wedding shooters site, eventually you have to look at total ROI. Limiting your investment to just one niche in the photography world is silly. ZF knows that. So perhaps there was a push at one time that benefited one group more. If so (and I'm still not convinced of that) then it was used as a means to an end. The end is to be the #1 turnkey supplier for photographers, period.

SmugMug has its own issues and its own growing pains honestly, I am not thrilled with their offerings or their prints. ZF uses the suppliers I used prior to being a member, they also have a lot of tools that would be expensive and maintenance intensive were I to do this whole thing on my own.

No ZF isn't growing as fast as I would like them to but in the current economy, what other than the unemployment line is growing quickly?

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

stephenlinhart — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:49:30 GMT

Thank you for posting this. It's encouraging.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Vitas [Zenfolio] — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:36:22 GMT

Here's the plan. We are working on the release which will include new home page layouts and theme customizations. After that release we will be adding the support for Google webmaster tools.

We do not have any incentives to minimize search traffic. We would like to provide a complete solution, where Zenfolio is used as a primary site for displaying photographs.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

stephenlinhart — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:44:37 GMT

I used to think they planned to add this. But it has been many months since they said that and it is not on the list of things they plan to do.

Also, the search promotion that is on the list is not in the next announced batch.

I'm afraid the incentive for Zenfolio is to minimize search traffic because a lot of their expense is per visitor and they make more money per visitor by focusing on invited visitors. Much like Printroom, I think they'll move slowly toward just Weddings, Sports, Events, etc.

I don't think they have anything against the rest of us, we're just not were their main profit is. As a paying member, this is frustrating. But ZF is still the best print on demand store for anyone concerned about reliable quality. So I guess I just need to resign myself to using ZF as a store and maintaining a separate website for promotion. Expecting them to really address the promotion side is looking unrealistic.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Kevin Thompson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:40:50 GMT

this has been discussed in other threads and I believe it is something zenfolio plans on adding.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Kevin Pepin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:40:37 GMT

Can we maybe get at option box in our account settings to add the code that Google webmaster tools provides and have the meta tag added to our home page head section? This doesn't seem like it would be very difficult to add. More business for the photographers means more revenue for Zenfolio. It seems like a no-brainer.

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Kevin Pepin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:11:58 GMT

It's been about 5 months since the last post to this topic so I assume this is still an issue.

+1 Vote here

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

stephenlinhart — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:29:45 GMT

It seems like they are NOT planning to do this for some reason. Their list of things to do includes "Improving Search discoverability of photos and photo pages", which is large and complex; but not Google Webmaster Tools Site Verification which is small and simple.

I'm trying to imagine a reasoning, but I can't think of any reason for this...

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

Cornish-Photos — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:15:25 GMT

any news on this being added? For that matter any news on the general search engine optimization being fixed?

Re: Google Webmaster Tools-Site Verification

cepler — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:54:22 GMT

stephenlinhart:

The weird thing about this is they say they're going to do it, it's been months, and its really, really simple to do. This creates a trust issue because we have to speculate about WHY they're not doing it, and why they're TELLING US they will do it.

And it makes me question my reasoning for using a 3rd party to host my images vs. doing it myself where I have full control.