Wordpress you can't go wrong, 

I recommend it to all of my clients who have various styles of website including joomla, plain html, and integrations between the two.

I have a stand alone wordpress blog and have installed six for clients, and I am extremely impressed with their attention to security, but what really sells me on their Free package is the ease of use - with a few plugins you can autoupdate, backup, restore,  they have a robust spam thwarting system, and you can change themes in a few seconds if your in a redecorating mood.

On one of my word press blogs I have the 'slidepress' plugin which is the port for slide show professional for wordpress which can handle images and video. but there are other image gallery plugins and video modules that are  open source non commercial

the automatic update of plugins features however are what I love about wordpress, no more downloading revised core code and ftpying to sites, its all done automatically after you click the steps.

Google eats up wordpress blog metadata like candy and theres even a goggle analytics plugin

and with the html side bar widgets you can add http://www.projecthoneypot.org/home.php  honeypots to helps nab spammers and harvesters.

just my opinion...

I have a set of these and im very happy with them
http://www.vistek.ca/marketing/procentre/lastolite/lightingcontrol.aspx?t=Softboxes#ezyboxhs

Theres a good reason you did not receive any views - During your  test updates were being implemented on CanStockPhoto as you can read for yourself  as the associated glitches were being discussed in the forums.  Views were not being recorded completely during this time anyway, so your findings are a little uhh inaccurate, or perhaps a better description might be your test is completely skewed

You actually deleted your images the day the upgrades were completed.

my my how time flies

started at a site in 2003 was banned and then found a home at canstock.. - this was one of the first (not sure if it was the first - but one of the first ten) images I uploaded  I just took a look at it at 100% and will probably use it as an example of isolation with the dull chainsaw technique.. ;0)

The ideas' list is indispensable to develop an inspirational work-flow; this is not my idea, but what I was taught when I was at art school 30 years ago (omfg - that's scary to see in type) my prof enforced the rule we must keep a journal of ideas... he learnt  that 40 years before  from some dude who learnt it 529 years before that, who ground pigments to make Da vinci's ink ...  it was written on his headstone ... KEEP  A JOURNAL.

 The ideas list - or the artists 'journal'  gives you a constant personal reference to refer to in an ever changing environment of trend and fashion, in 'dry' periods we can refer to the journal for inspiration.    The journal can take any form - napkins or pigskin-bound archival paper to cell-phone snapshots of subway ads. Record all of your ideas, and make note of what you like about images you see in magazines, newspapers and on bill-boards.  Don't worry so much about what you see on microstock sites,  pay more attention to current live media.

Get in the habit of recording your personal ideas in your own code or short hand or endlessly rambling dissertation.  Make the habit regular - aim for daily - capture your ideas and hunches of what might make a good photo.   Don't hold back on what you journal, and don't edit it. Just keep stocking up the ideas and squirrelling them away. (it is important to actually write them down on paper or record them digitally in some way And write on the image the point you want to make.)

By doing this you will develop a habit that promotes a very successful frame of mind to support your inspirational process. In a month flip through what you have journaled, and you may find certain ideas really take hold - - they might even change as you re-read them and inspire new entries in your journal.  If you are able to commit to journaling your creative ideas regularly over an extended period of time - for the rest of your life - you will get the greatest benefit from it. Creative journaling is - without doubt - an essential tool in the photographers bag of gear.

It is very important that you don't just journal your ideas.  After the first month or so of learning the habit of 'journaling your ideas' start turning them into photographs... take a day or so after the first month and review your ideas, then pick one that grabs you and do it - turn it into a photo series.  then keep journaling, repeat process.

Eventually you will start identifying trends in media, and through the journaling process see how those trends differ from your personal direction - eventually through the process you will develop a skill and confidence in your ideas to begin to produce originally styled work that is new and fresh and becomes the inspiration of others.

I've had no experience with this brand, but recently purchased Elinchrom D-light 400

I use the D-light as key and have a 430 ex in a softbox for fill, and overexpose the 9 foot paper background with canon speedlights and a sunpack slaved optically. the studio is 15 feet by 30 feet with 12 foot ceiling, painted white, the ceiling is gabled and provides excellent bounce

typically subject is 5 - 6 feet from backdrop and key and fill lights are 3 - 7 feet from subject and camera is 5 feet from subject - so its a tight studio but works well with these low wat strobes

so if your set up is similar I would assume a 500 set will work just fine to light the  subject or the background (but not both if you want perfect seamless white isolation) I often shoot at 100 f18 - 22 at iso 100 - when im using my canon efs-18-55, when i use the sigma 55 - 200 ill stop up to 8 - 11

but ideally you want a set of something to light the back ground independently of the subject


this is a really good example of the set up im trying to describe. http://www.zarias.com/?p=71

hope that helps

Thanks for the responses Leaf and Fintastique.

I downloaded camtasia and its nice and slick as far as recording goes - I haven't completed and delivered a tut yet with it.

That is a lot along the lines of what I will be doing is helping family members out with their support questions lol

heres a typical message:

Me: "ok click start and select control panel"
Them "ok where do I find Start"....

snip
I normally use two elinchrom lights for the background, and 1 key light. Should I be using 4 background lights instead to cover the four corners of the background?

If I may ...  which Elinchrom lights are you using? - Im considering purchasing 2 D-Lights 400 for backgrounds - for now id be slaving them off the built in optical eye. Ive heard good things about them, and I think the 400 power will suit my small studio 15' x 20' with a 9 x 10 white paper background - Ive been told if you set one say - bottom left corner the other top right corner and make sure the exposure is 1 - 2 or so stops overexposed of the lights on the subject that you should get good white - ffffff, 255 255 255, 0000,

And did you hear about that new nano-tech material they developed, where on the size of a dollar bill and about as thick, you could store someting like the equivalent of 1000 dvds... years yet from production but they were able to store data in the lab

I have a 500GB Lacie hard drive but things are changing. Hard drive could be an old story in a couple of years, replaced by Flash memory. The flash memory is thinner and you can drop your flash drive on the ground without loosing your data. Exactly like our memory cards, there's no mechanical parts.

The Auto Category reads your keywords and automatically selects categories based on your keywords - it can save you time.  But you must ensure the auto-categories are relevant to your images

if auto categories selects people women and there are  no women visible in the image you should alter the categories before submitting.

There is no conflict with auto categories and iptc

It takes a few minutes to process all the images.  Depending on how many other images are in the Q before yours it could be hundreds, could be thousands.

Generally I wait about 25 to 20 minutes

How many percent of your total income is from microstock photography

 should read

What percentage of your total income is earned from microstock photography