By a special arrangement with Santa, we are very happy to bring you the Photo Comments and Guestbook functionality in time for the holidays. We know some of you have been waiting for this feature for a long time, and we apologize for taking so long.

Photo Comments and Guestbook Features

This is a fully functional implementation and includes the following features:

• Available Guestbook allows visitors to post messages on your Home page as well as any group, gallery or collection. Photo Comments are associated with individual photos.
• Photographers have full control over allowing or disallowing photo comments or a guestbook for any group, gallery, collection, or individual photograph
• Ability to allow Public (for anyone), Private (for photographer only), or both types of comments and guestbook entries
• Control over non-registered users leaving comments
• New E-mail Notification Preferences which control how often you are notified when new entries are posted to your pages. Options include sending immediate e-mail (default), daily, or weekly e-mail digests.
• A new comment browser makes it easy to read all the comments attached to photos in a single gallery
• Photo comments offer special tools including suggesting alternate cropping or bringing attention to a specific area of a photo
• Entries can be edited or deleted later by registered users
• Photographers can customize how much presence comments are given on photo pages, including the display of the Last Comment left

By default, all current users have this feature turned OFF. If you would like to enable it, select the item you would like to apply this to in the Organizer (such as your Home page or a specific gallery), then click the Edit link in the Access Control section of the Toolbox. You can enable both Photo Comments and the Guestbook under the Comments tab in the Access Control window.

Other feature enhancements

In addition, the following enhancements were released:

• Your own page views will no longer be counted by Google Analytics when you are logged in
• Theme selected for the Visitor View is now displayed in the Edit View (listed in the Cover Photo section of the Toolbox)
• Improved photo Title and Caption alignment for photo layouts with a centered image

New Mpix products and services

We continue to extend our integration with the Mpix Lab:

• New 24" x 36" print size which was made available a few weeks ago from Mpix.
  This print size is available in E-Surface Color Paper finish only, and it is possible to add double-weight backboard, foam core mounting, and Lustre coating to it during checkout. No frames are available for this large size print.
• Added 4"x8" custom blank greeting cards.
  Create your own custom greeting card by applying your own design to this full image card. Greeting cards include envelopes at no extra charge.
• It is now possible to mix prints of the same size with mounting and framing services in the same order, this saves on shipping charges
• Lustre coating service was added for greeting cards, magazine covers, and other specialty prints

Our next release will include selling digital products, which we have been working on concurrently.

Alex, your last sentence about digital products is very exciting and can't come soon enough for me.  Keep plugging away.

 Tim

I have quite an extensive directory tree of photos with various attributes, but would like to turn on this fearture (or others as they develop) globally.  Is there a way to make this happen without having to go into each & every folder to turn this feature on?

Thanks,

Tim

timsphoto.zenfolio.com

Thank you for this feature.

Is it possible fro me the user to delete a persons comment, if they use swear, be offensive or spam ?

 Any news on when we might actually get some new templates or the abilityto add our own? It has been over a year since the "coming soon" was put on the web for features.

Coming soon is a few weeks or months, not years IMHO

marque.zenfolio:

Is it possible fro me the user to delete a persons comment, if they use swear, be offensive or spam ?

Yes, as the owner, you can delete any of the comments posted for your photos.

matthewsauk:

 Any news on when we might actually get some new templates or the abilityto add our own? It has been over a year since the "coming soon" was put on the web for features.

Coming soon is a few weeks or months, not years IMHO

They actually did add a new template just recently, but I know that once they started upgrading a year or so ago, they quickly realized they needed to upgrade the network infrastructure to handle much of what they planned.  So they devoted much time and money to that this past year.  With that in place, and more developers on staff, things should move along at a more regular pace.  :)   I personally am excited to see what this year brings!

This is really terrific news Alex!!! What a great Christmas present!!!

 I can't say how much i appreciate that this finally have been introduced. Also they way you have implemented it is way above what can be seen on other sites.

Though i didn't really expect anything less from you guys . It looks really sleek and user friendly. Great idea with the crop & highlight option.

 Now off to really try it out!!

 MERRY CHRISTMAS ALEX & THE ZENFOLIO TEAM!!!

Edit: Ok i have been testing the new features out together with a couple of photographers, an editor and a few ordinary visitors. The overall impression is really, really positive.They just love the sleek way how the comments have been introduced. Neat and simple with no mess.

The only thing that came up a few times (and i tend to agree with them) is the slight confusion with the different guestbooks. As each gallery, collection, group and home page have different and individual guestbook it gets rather confusing.

Everyone thought that after posting in the guestbook (no matter from where you sign in it ) you expect that the comment would end up in a single main guestbook (accesible and viewable from the start page) as most sites generally have just a single guestbook, not one per section, gallery etc.

I think it would be far better to change the name of the individual guestbooks so people clearly understand where their comment actually wil end up to something more clear like "gallery comments" "gallery guestbook" or similar.  So we would end up with just one single main guestbook for the whole site, individual gallery guestbooks (or whatever you prefer to call them but not only "guestbook" to avoid confusion) plus all the individual image comments.

I agree with Michael about the multiple guessbooks as well. Maybe one single guessbook is better???

MBolognesi:

The only thing that came up a few times (and i tend to agree with them) is the slight confusion with the different guestbooks. As each gallery, collection, group and home page have different and individual guestbook it gets rather confusing.

Everyone thought that after posting in the guestbook (no matter from where you sign in it ) you expect that the comment would end up in a single main guestbook (accesible and viewable from the start page) as most sites generally have just a single guestbook, not one per section, gallery etc.

I think it would be far better to change the name of the individual guestbooks so people clearly understand where their comment actually wil end up to something more clear like "gallery comments" "gallery guestbook" or similar.  So we would end up with just one single main guestbook for the whole site, individual gallery guestbooks (or whatever you prefer to call them but not only "guestbook" to avoid confusion) plus all the individual image comments.

yes, please: one "guestbook" for the photographer, but individual collections of comments for galleries and photos. Ideally, though, the photographer could view all comments to all galleries and all photos in one "message box".

I guess I'll have to take issue with Santa on not providing Digital Download befor e Christmas.And I specifically asked the old fella to oblige me [:'(].

Thanks a lot for the Guest Book, though!. Great feature!

www.phototerrestrial.com

 This makes a lot of sense.

Yes, yes, YES! - ONE global guestbook please....comments for individual images or whole galleries. 

Sorry message deleted

Alex has solved my problem already

Jem Hopkins

 Brit

 Dear Zenfolio Crew, Thank you for your hard work! I look forward to future growth with you. Happy Holidays!

David Lloyd