So Let's see if I have this right.

I work hard on SEO to get people to my site.  Then when they are there, the search will not allow them to find the images that I hope to sell?

Does anyone see a problem with this?

Are people hand coding search terms?

I don't think you've got it right, but I'm not sure. Why do you think people won't be able to find your images? All the images need is keywords, as always.

Although the search doesn't currently work for phrases, it's pretty good on multiple single keywords. If I search on our site for 'chicken curry' it returns everything with 'chicken' and 'curry' but no lamb curry. Is that bad?

ETA: OK, I see what you're doing. Your single word searches are OK, but the multi word keywords don't work. I was annoyed at that to start with, but realised that it's actually far more efficient to have single keywords with an implied 'AND' in the search. Until Leo gets the advanced search ready, you might do better with a category cloud than a keyword cloud. That works very well as is.

btw Leo,

I want to add a favicon but wanted to ask your opinion.. what's the best way?

- should I add it with a code placed into header or,
- use a plugin?

or would it be easy for you to have an option in the settings that people can link to a favicon image they uploaded? (just like the logo image)

Just upload a 16x16 icon file called favicon.ico to the site root, replacing the one alredy there. The code to load it is already in the WP core.

ETA: Whoops! No it isn't! I must be seeing a cached one...

Tahoma is the One True Sans font!

Quote from: SNP on April 11, 2013, 12:54

Despite having dropped my exclusivity in February, I haven't felt the surge of concern I thought I would. In fact, I've felt the opposite. I'm inspired by new beginnings.  I'm experiencing the initial drop in income, which I prepared for and which I expect to be a factor for about 6 months to a year. It was a huge letdown to watch TPTB erode and decimate everything that was so unique about iStock.

Going through my portfolio of almost 8K images has reminded me how many great files were best match casualties with hardly any views. I'm working very hard to get established on the other sites, and I will keep my files non-exclusively on iStock. But ventures like Stocksy, and GL can be truly sustainable marketplaces for artists and the companies that run them; companies created by fellow artists and ethically run with a focus on long-term success. I haven't looked back since ditching the crown. iStock and Getty are simply building a new breed of exclusives who have much lower expectations than our 'generation'. I was once so genuinely proud of being an iStock exclusive. iStock is no longer a community, nor is it an agency in which artists are motivated to strive for growth or to excel in their art. It isn't even an agency anymmore. It is now a Walmart, looking to sell to the highest bidder, with the smallest royalties possible going to suppliers. There is no opportunity left there. I don't know that change could even occur today. The window for change, for wooing unhappy contributors back into the fold has passed.

Glad you are doing well.  I'm actually on pace for a BME although it's still early in the month.  I'm also seeing a lot of older files with no downloads getting sales, half of the last 20 had 0 or 1 sale previously and many are from more than 2 years ago.  If you were worried about the smallest royalties possible going to the contributor I don't see why you contribute to Istock as a nonexclusive, Shutterstock, and Fotolia you'll surely make most of your money on those sites and get a smaller royalty than you were getting.

Tickstock, why do you think you are still doing so well when so many others are going down?
Superior portfolio?
More creative?
Luck?
Other?

Thanks in advance, will be interested to hear what you think.

Right, I see it on our image. Oh well, we'll need to go to ImageMagick anyway, to do the profile conversion.

Hi Leo, just a couple of little things that might be nice sometime.

1. On a decently wide screen thumbnails show 6 abreast, so paging in 20s isn't all that neat. The number is hard-coded in functions.php, and although I've changed it to 24, it will have to be redone every update, as there's no easy override I can see in the child theme.

2. Likewise, the hover text for the Category tag cloud is 'xx topics'. That's hard-coded in the core , in category-template.php; anybody got any idea on changing it to 'xx images' without editing core files (which I have done for now) ?

Quote from: Travelling-light on April 09, 2013, 18:43

Well, I may not be producing "art",  but I do think there has to be something in between 38 cents and $500.

What a ridiculous statement. You are comparing the royalty paid on a minimum of a one-month subscription on SS with the potential total selling price of an image to the customer on Offset (if, of course, it ever sells) and also not taking into account the volume of each. They are not the same thing, not even close, and it is absurd to pretend that they are.

You can say what you like about Alamy, etc and the supposed 'benefits' of higher prices but the truth is that Alamy generates considerably less than one-tenth the revenue-per-image than SS does.

Not sure what this is all about. Didn't you just say that there is money to be made by charging more? And why bring Alamy into it?
And haven't I said repeatedly that many images are better on micro sites, but not all?
Maybe you need to sleep more.

Just a strategy for you established people -

Your never going to have the time to meet that checklist on every image. Its grading article-style content.

But if you have a favorite image(s) which you know will do well, use it as a sort of "lighthouse" to the rest of your site. Put the love into it's description, try to complete the checklist...etc. Even if that image doesn't get purchased, it will be responsible for netting a lot of visitors because its highly searchable. Its a good strategy.

The more images you do this with, the more they will act as a lighthouse bringing in people to the rest of your content.

This sounds like good thinking. And it's something you can keep going back to, once you've got the bulk of your images uploaded.
Thanks Leo!

I see this in the SEO program - I thought it was used to judge the SEO worthiness of the page - is it used for something external that helps the placement of the page?

Steve

It's just internal, we're using it as a check that it appears in the right places - the title and description are all optimised before upload, so save/check and see what colour the indicator goes.

Just a hint on speed of processing - you may already know this - but after processing an image you can click and hold the back button, a menu will come up, and you can go back to your previous page and process the next image. For us it's usually the third one down on the menu. Hope that makes sense!
Had forgotten about this, and spent some painful time going the long way round!
We are using Firefox, don't know if it works with other browsers.

ok, so that worked great, i know understand a little more CSS!

But I cannot for the life of me work out how to remove the boxes in the footer. I don't want the borders.

None of the css footer classes seem to relate to the boxes?

The .footer_section classes control the three boxes, and the .footer_info is the full width one below. I just changed the border colour via the child style.css to check. Look at http://photo.travelling-light.net to see the red borders.

Quote from: Travelling-light on April 07, 2013, 23:45

Yes, you still have an admin login. I was doing the same searches earlier, before I updated, and they were working OK.

Fixed. The slug somehow got changed, but I don't think that was the latest theme update.

Great, thanks! What got changed? Is it something I could have affected?

On another matter, we upload files in AdobeRGB. Are the site files converted to sRGB? They look a bit flat on screen.