PhotoShelter Festive Fall 6-Pack for Websites

Back in the summer, we released our Summer 6-Pack — a set of six new features to enhance your PhotoShelter website. Now that the weather has cooled down, there’s no better time to announce another set of six great features that we like to call the Festive Fall 6-Pack. I’m so drunk with excitement that we had to split the announcement into multiple blog entries to give you the real nitty gritty, so without further ado…

Drink #1: Typekit Integration
Pace yourself. The first three drinks are strong.

When I was a kid, my sister really got into graphic design, which rubbed off on me. And around this time, I got my first Mac Plus, which had primitive page layout capabilities and resulted in a pretty intense interest in fonts and typography.

Yes, I was a kid who owned The Font Book by Erik Spiekermann (he’s soooo meta), and I prided myself on being able to identify hundreds of different fonts on sight. In college I worked at a small design firm in New Haven named Strong Cohen, where I continued my unhealthy relationship with fonts.

Then the Internet came along, and we were stuck with Arial and Times New Roman for 15 years! So when I heard about a little company called Typekit, started by some Internet bad asses, I got more than a little excited. These guys figured out how to deliver fonts on the web using open standards like CSS and javascript, and partnered with some of the best foundries in the world.

Translation: Your websites are about to look a lot better. Get all the nitty gritty on our the PhotoShelter integration with Typekit.

Drink #2: The Portfolio
Have you had this conversation with yourself? “I really want to use PhotoShelter, but I really like the way those Flash portfolio sites look, and I don’t want to deal with integrating two sites.”

We know what you mean. Nobody wants to manage two websites. And it seems like everyone is aware of the limitation of Flash nowadays from the iPad to SEO. Hm, what should one do?

I have an idea. Now that the websites look great with Typekit, why don’t we add a Portfolio option too? We’ll build it with open standards like AJAX so it works on desktops, laptops and mobile devices. Oh, and let’s not charge any extra for either.

Read more about how the Portfolio will save you time and money, and make you look good.

Drink #3: Photo Wall
Photographers are creatives, and they are constantly trying to differentiate themselves from the pack. After all, a website is an extension of a photographer’s creativity and brand. But you might have noticed how deathly similar websites look — particularly when they’re all made by a single vendor. Sure, you could hire a designer for a few thousand bucks, but who has the dough? Plus, I still want to highlight more than a single gallery on my homepage.

Let the our new Photo Wall option cure your malady. Give your homepage customizable pizzazz, and showcase a bunch of different galleries rather than a single one.

Drink #4: New Theme
In boxing parlance, a Southpaw is a left-hand dominant pugilist. Until now, all the PhotoShelter themes have had a main navigation on the top of the screen, but we figured it was time to add some variety up in this jam. Our new Southpaw theme gives you navigation options on the left-hand side of the screen.

 

Oh, and we threw in some Typekit fonts in there and added the dynamic drop-down menu for your Portfolio, too.

Drink #5: New Styles
You might be one of those people who likes things the way they are. Who needs change? Well, maybe you want a little bit of change, so we added a few new styles to our themes, and we’re digging the results. Check out the Funhouse style for Maui.

And the Swiss style for Mars.

Drink #6: Image Height Constraint
Now that you’ve had five drinks, we can shift to the slightly more esoteric. PhotoShelter allows you to select the size of the images you’d like to display. A lot of our clients choose large images in the 800 pixel range, which look great on screen. This is all well and good, except that when you have a vertical image that is 800 pixels high, it’s difficult to see it all without scrolling.

So we’ve added a way to constrain the vertical height of the image as a secondary parameter. In our themes, it’s automatically set to 80% of the horizontal width. If you’re a manual customization client, you can set it to whatever you want. It sounds like a subtle change, but it actually enhances usability (and enjoyability) quite a bit.

We’re pretty darned excited about this release, and don’t worry, if you don’t find anything you like, just stay tuned because we’re already working on the next set of features that will help you make more money…