Zenfolio experience

It’s looking nice Lon! There are some learning curves with smugmug, but once you get over those I think it’s one of the easiest platforms to use. Personally I don’t like the grey, especially for the articles, you really need contrast to make text more readable. Just about any site you go to is either going to be close to white or black for the background because of this. I may have to steal your ‘by format’ idea, hadn’t thought of that!

Thanks @David_Kingham. Yeah, that’s one thing I’m struggling with the interface. I want the lighter bg for text as you noted, but I also want a much darker background for displaying images. I haven’t quite figured that out yet. I’m wondering if I’m able to configure a unique bg for each photo gallery. Going to be checking in to that.

Also trying to figure out how to remove/exclude the folder/page icon on the About and Articles pages.

Thanks again. As Preston always says, Research continues…

You’re gonna hate me, but this could be done with css :grimacing:

White background with black text:

.sm-page-widget-text p {
	background-color: white;
	color: black;
	padding: 20px;
}

Then you can change the overall theme to be dark so your image look good on the dark background.

As for the folder/page icon, the best way would be to set a featured image in the page settings for each of those, or you can just add them as text and use hyperlinks to them instead.

Sorry I didn’t chime in earlier, Lon. I had a Zenfolio account but dropped it because I never got into selling images and they hit us with a 25% price increase which I thought was grossly in excess of inflation. I ended up just doing a Flickr page, which is now owned by Smugmug.

I looked at your new site, and it looks quite nice. If I were going to do a personal site again, I think you would have sold me.

Nah… in fact I already added/modified some CSS for the default Contact form. Was never great at CSS, but I did a ton of it on my old site. Can’t believe what I went through to use an MS Access database where I entered all the keywords there… oh, the good ole days…

Great idea just using a text link! duh. Thanks!

1 Like

Thanks Dennis! Yeah, you should do one. I’m sure you have lots of spare time… :roll_eyes:

Thanks for the shout out and sorry to derail your Zenfolio thread and turn it into a smugmug thread :laughing: I had no idea there was such a big price difference!

I think your site is off to a great start. I agree with David in that once you get used to where all the buttons are it’s not so bad. It can be confusing sometimes - there’s like 3 or 4 different place where there are options. I also agree about the background.

Maybe you’re in the middle of something, but when I click on any portfolios I get sent to a blank “Artist statement” page.

Yes, I’m in the middle of making some changes. And all I was trying to do, which now works, was to change the icons on the About and Articles pages to text links. HOLY F*, I don’t know what I did, but lost my Portfolio link. Looks like I have to rebuild the folders/galleries.

One shining flaw here… there’s no UNDO button, history to go back to etc. Once you make a change it’s done.

If you’re still working on the white background for the blog I came up with a better method as I ran into some major limitations the other way.

You have to add this to each page unfortunately as a css block, but otherwise it works great.

.sm-page-widget-text p {
	color: #444;
 	font-size: 150%;
  	line-height: 1.5em;
  	font-family: 'Lato', sans-serif;
}

.sm-user-ui .sm-page-layout.sm-page-layout-sitetemplate .sm-page-layout > .sm-page-layout-region > .sm-page-layout-region-center {
    background: white;
}

@media only screen and (min-width: 640px) {
  .sm-user-ui .sm-page-layout.sm-page-layout-sitetemplate .sm-page-layout > .sm-page-layout-region > .sm-page-layout-region-center {
    padding: 100px;
  }
}


.sm-page-widget .sm-page-widget-pagetitle-m {
  color: #222;
}

.sm-user-ui h1, .sm-user-ui .sm-h1 {
  color: #222;
}

.sm-user-ui .sm-page-widget-text a, .sm-user-ui .sm-page-widget-text a:hover, .sm-user-ui .sm-page-widget-text a:active, .sm-user-ui .sm-page-widget-text a:visited {
  font-size: 75%
}

Here’s an example: https://davidkingham.smugmug.com/Blog/A-Long-Overdue-Update

1 Like

I have been using Zenfolio for 6-years. I can say that at first Zenfolio met my basic needs as a new photographer. The service is highly geared towards portrait and event photographers, so if you are a landscape photographer, be warned, the service is not set-up well for your needs!

The good:
The service itself is easy to set-up in terms of getting a good out-of-the-box site up and running quickly.

Zenfolio allows for self-fullfillment which is a nice (and necessary) option for landscape photographers (more on that below).

Zenfolio allows unlimited data storage for your images which is great.

Customer service has mostly been pretty good in terms of responding to tickets quickly. The outcome of the service is another story at times (see below).

The bad:

The shopping cart experience is awful. The worst in the industry. It takes far too many clicks, the theme of the cart does not match your CSS for the rest of your site, image previews are cropped and clunky, and the process itself takes too long to complete. I have lost tens of thousands of dollars because of this.

Images previews when you click on them are too small and on mobile they don’t allow for pinch zooming. Its really hard to get people excited about buying a large print when they can’t actually look at the details of a photograph.

Zenfolio has a lot to learn from services like artstorefronts where they have Virtual reality where you can see how the photo will look in real life on your wall.

Zenfolio has a fair amount of downtime and service interruptions.

Zenfolio takes a large percentage of EVERY sale you make, even on self-fulfilled orders. This is on top of your monthly or annual cost of hosting, etc. To get around this, I just encourage buyers to contact me directly and we use PayPal.

Zenfolio’s labs are pretty average. None of their vendors can do accurate reproductions on metal or acrylic. I once argued for days because they messed up an order on a print and they refused to re-print it for me, so I had to pay out of my own pocket to get it done correctly for my client. It was an absolute disaster. Due to this and the absolutely terrible shopping cart, I self-fulfill all of my orders now using other labs outside of Zenfolio.

Zenfolio does not promote the landscape photography community like services such as SmugMug does. They are really catered to wedding and portrait shooters.

The marketing system inside of Zenfolio is not intuitive nor useful. I direct all of my clients to sign-up through MailChimp instead. The “auto” marketing that Zenfolio sets-up does not work either. My clients never received an email for the programs I signed up for.

All-in-all I would not recommend Zenfolio for anyone. I used to sing the praises of Zenfolio but enough is enough. I’ve moved on and worked with @Jack_Brauer on a Wide Range Galleries site. I know you said you can’t afford one, but depending on how you plan on selling prints, you’ll likely save money in a couple of years.

2 Likes

I’m a couple months late to this thread, and also I don’t have anything to say about Zenfolio vs Smugmug; however, I just wanted to chime in to respond to @David_Kingham’s comment above.

My experience in the last 15 years of selling prints online has been the polar opposite. Easily 90% of my print sales happen through my website without the customers contacting me first. I suspect that the vast majority of customers (who have the disposable income to afford fine art prints in the first place) are buying on impulse, and would prefer the instant gratification of buying immediately through a cart rather than the cumbersome process of emailing back and forth.

For these reasons (again speaking for myself) I think it’s absolutely crucial to have your prints available for purchase online if you’re serious about making an income with print sales. Secondarily, I think it’s also crucial that the print ordering process is very clear to the customers, and that your print products/options are clearly explained along with real example pictures of the prints on the walls (not just the photoshop mockups of images in stock room pictures).

Anyhow, I know all our experiences are different and there are many variables, but I just wanted to provide the counterpoint that it is certainly possible to sell prints online and how important it is to have them available for purchase to encourage impulse buying.

1 Like

Lon. I think that is a good choice. I have had Smugmug for 5 years now and it is pretty simple to set up. I chose it for just that reason. Learning cameras and software takes enough time- I did not need or want another complication! They have very responsive techs who you can message . They are extremely helpful and patient. :slight_smile: