Folio Flow - Photography websites for professional photographers

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you have a question or would like to request some information? Don't feel lost, we are here to help.

If you are a registered user you can submit a Support Ticket and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
For community support, we have a support forum, where you can find tips and tricks and get lots of other information.

But firstly, take a look at our frequently asked questions to see if the query you have has already been answered here.

Managing Pages
How do I add pages?
What’s the difference between a page and a sub-page?
Is it possible to re-order pages so they show how I want on the menu?
When adding text to a page with the editor when I press ‘Enter’/’Return’ I get a big gap between the new line and the previous one, is there any way to reduce this space?
 
Managing Images
What are image collections?
What is the difference between a standard image collection and a common image collection?
How to I add a logo to my website?
I've uploaded some images, but they are not in the order I want them to be displayed on my site, can I rearrange them?
What methods do you have for uploading images?
When adding images, what does 'insert filler' mean?
I want to upload my images via ftp, but I'm not sure how to, help?
When I upload my images to the ftp server why do they keep disappearing?
I've uploaded some images to the ftp server but I cannot see them in the administration console, where are they?
Do I have to resize my images before uploading them to FolioFlow?
Is there a maximum size for images uploaded?
I have given names and/or descriptions to my images in my photo editing application; will these be automatically imported into FolioFlow?
What is image watermarking?
I want to change the watermark that I've placed onto a picture, is that possible?
 
Free Sites, Free Trials and payments
Is there any minimum contract when using FolioFlow?
Are the free websites really free, if so how do you make money from them?
Is the free trail limited in functionality in any way?
How to I pay for my subscription?
Can I cancel my subscription to FolioFlow?
I'm concerned about supplying my payment details, am I safe to do so?
 
Shopping Carts
How do I set up a shopping cart?
Do you take any commission for items sold through FolioFlow?
When setting up a shopping cart I am asked for PayPal API details, how do I get these?
Are the shopping carts safe, who has access to the information?
Are shopping carts available on all types of pages?
What shipping options can I set up?
How do I track payments made to me?
Can I issue refunds to clients?
 
Managing your website
I already have my own domain name and want to use this to point to my FolioFlow website is this possible?
I don't have a domain; can you set one up for me?
I would like to have more than one website, is this possible?
 
Monitoring your website
Is it possible to tell how many hits my website is receiving?
What other monitoring information can I see?

Design Templates
I have chosen a design template and have now decided I would like to change to another, is this possible?
How do I make my site stand out from the others on FolioFlow?
What are custom templates and why would I want to use them?
How do I design my own template?
I already have an idea for how I want my website to look, or I already have a website that I would like converting to FolioFlow, what are my options?

SEO
I've heard that dynamically generated web pages are not as friendly to search engines as static pages, is this true?
Do you have any extra ways of helping with search engine optimization?

Managing Pages

First click on ‘pages’ from the home page of the administration console. On the left hand side there will be the option to add either a page or a sub page.

Adding a page adds a top-level page that would be visible on the main menu if you require it to be. Sub pages are used for drilling down into more specific details about a section.

Yes, if you have multiple pages, you will notice that each page has a ‘Move Up’ and a ‘Move Down’ button on it. Clicking on this will rearrange the pages and therefore move them around in your menu.

By default pressing return inserts a paragraph break into a page. If you want a line break then press ‘Shift+Return’ at the same time.

An image collection is a set of images you have uploaded to be displayed on a page that can be rearranged in their order and can have titles and captions added to them. They are stored separately to the page so that if you decide to delete a page, but reuse the images on another page you can simply reassign the image collection to the new page.

A common image collection is a set of images that will be available on all pages of your website. For examples, logos or background texture images. Whereas a standard image collection is only available to one page.

All you need to do is upload an image to the common image collection and place it as the first image in that collection, every design expects the logo to be the first common image.

Yes it's simple to rearrange you images. If you choose the appropriate image collection to edit you will see thumbnails of all the images in the collection. You can drag and drop an image into a new location to change its order.

You can upload .jpg, .png and .gif files through the administration console. If you have a few images to upload at once you can place these images into a .zip file using tools available on most operating systems such as Windows and Mac OS. You can then upload the .zip file containing the images and they will automatically be extracted back into the individual files as they are uploaded.
Another option is to use our ftp server.

There are occasions where a template may be configured to display several images, for example a blog template may expect an image associated with every blog item. In this situation, if you do not want to display an image for one of the blog entries, you could insert a filler, which will create a blank image into the image collection.

To upload images via ftp you will need an ftp client on your computer, such as FileZilla or CoreFTP. Then you need to connect to our server at ftp.folioflow.com specifying your username and password. To find out where to place your images go to the ‘images' section in the administration console at www.folioflow.com and each image collection has an id, this will correspond to a directory that exists on the ftp server. To upload images to that image collection just place them into the corresponding directory.

The area you upload images to is just a holding area. Once you've uploaded them they are then processed so that the thumbnails and watermarking can take place. Once they have been picked up for processing they will be removed from the holding area.

Your images will not be available in the FolioFlow administration console until they have been processed, the time this takes varies depending on how many other images are been uploaded. Once your images are uploaded you will receive a message with a summary of the files uploaded.

Most images require no resizing as the appropriate size images for the design will be generated automatically. A few images like logos should be sized correctly for the template, as this gives more flexibility on ensuring you logo is clear and readable.

There is a limit of 5mb per image file, although it is recommended to keep images much smaller than this to save on your uploading times.

Most photo editing applications store meta data such as titles and descriptions in either EXIF format of IPTC. FolioFlow supports importing the information from both of these formats. Some applications like Windows Vista's gallery program store the data in a different format which is currently unsupported.

Image watermarking is a way of protecting your images from being saved or printed by adding a watermark into the image. FolioFlow allows you to add one of several patterns repeated across your image and also allows you to add some text.

At the moment it is not possible to change the watermark on an image once it's been uploaded, the watermarking process takes place on the image while you are uploading it. Therefore if you need to change the watermark, you will need to delete the image and upload it again once you've selected a new watermark style.

Free Sites, Free Trials and payments

After your free trial, if you choose to register for a paid service, you can cancel at any time. Effectively the minimum term is one month.

Yes, they are free, there is no advertising on them, they are just limited in the number of features you can have on them.

All that we require you to do is to log into the administration console at least once every 30 days to ensure we keep your account active.

We do not make any money from this service, but hope at some time you'll upgrade to one of our paying accounts if you like the service to obtain all the benefits available.

Dependant on the free trial you selected, you will have full functionality for the options you chose, therefore you can see exactly what you would get if you choose to subscribe once the trial has come to an end.

Payments to FolioFlow are set up using PayPal's subscription service. This has the advantage that you don't have to keep remembering to send payments to keep your website available. If you would like to pay via direct bank transfer then please contact us to arrange this facility.

To cancel your subscription to FolioFlow, just contact us. You can also cancel your subscription directly through your PayPal account, but we would also appreciate an e-mail so we can ensure your account is properly closed.

Yes, FolioFlow holds no payment details. All we hold is your name and contact details. All payment details are taken by PayPal via a secure website.

Shopping Carts

Setting up a shopping cart with FolioFlow is simple. In the administration console choose the shopping cart option and answer the questions asked. Once the shopping cart is set up, you can then set certain gallery pages to use the shopping cart. This will automatically add options to the page for clients to buy products by placing them in a shopping cart.

We do not take any commission for any sales through FolioFlow. PayPal will take a small percentage for using their payment system.

Perform the following steps:

1. Go to http://www.paypal.com and login to your Paypal account.
2. Click the My Account tab.
3. Click the Profile subtab.
4. Under the Account Information column, click the API Access link.
5. Click Request API Credentials.
6. Click the API signature radio button.
7. Complete the API Credential Request form by clicking the agreement checkbox and clicking Submit.
8. Write down the values listed next to API Username and Password.
9. Select the value listed next to Signature Hash, copy it, and save it to a file or some other location. This is your API Signature.
10. You have now generated your API Username, API Password, and API Signature.

Payments to your site are safe, neither FolioFlow or yourselves will have access to any credit / debit card details the client enters into your site, this is all handled by PayPal (owned by ebay) who are one of the biggest online payment companies in the world.

Shopping carts are only available on certain types of gallery pages. We envisage adding shopping cart functionality to more page designs in the future.

You can set up a collection of shipping options. For example you may offer to let your client collect orders directly from you, or you can offer them several methods of shipping each with their own price.

You will get an e-mail from PayPal notifying you of any payments received. All details of the order will be available to you by logging into PayPal and viewing your account with them.

Yes, through PayPal it is possible to issue either partial or full refunds to clients.

Managing your website

As long as your domain provider allows you to set up a CNAME entry for the domain you should be able to use the domain name with your current provider. Otherwise you may need to transfer your domain to another provider

We can assist you with setting one up. There is a fee to pay which varies depending on the domain type (ie .com or .co.uk etc). If you need any assistance then contact us. We use and recommend using www.123reg.co.uk for your domains and you can buy a domain by entering the domain you want in the box below:

Once you've registered and paid for your domain, we can then take you step-by-step through the process of linking it to FolioFlow. We don't currently offer buying the domain names directly from us, as we could not provide them as cheaply as 123reg can!

If you sign up to a premium account, then you can have an unlimited number of websites. This allows you for example to have one website for commercial work and another for weddings, as your style for advertising may be quite different. There is no additional cost with a premium account to having more websites.

Monitoring your website

Yes, by going to the statistics section of the administration console you can see the total number of hits over a period of time and see which pages or your site are most popular.

We recommend registering for google analytics and then setting up your FolioFlow website with your unique id provided. This enabled may more statistics to be gathered about your site.

Perform the following steps:

1. Go to Go to Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/).
2. If you do not have a Google account, click Sign Up Now, to the left of the sign-in box. This will take you to a page where you can sign up for a Google account.
3. If you have a Google account, use your email address and password to sign in.
4. Click the Sign Up button to continue.
5. In the next window, provide Google with the URL of the site you wish to analyze.
6. Give the site an account name that is easy to remember. If you will be tracking multiple sites, this is especially important.
7. Select the country your site is based in, or the country it is serving. Then select the appropriate time zone.
8. Click Continue.
9. In the next window, provide your contact information.
10. Click Continue.
11. In the next window, read the Google Analytics terms of service. If you agree with them, click the Yes box.
12. Click Create New Account.
13. Google will provide you with a block of code, in it there will be a reference in the format UA-123456-1. Copy this reference and place it into FolioFlow's Google Analytics Tracking Id field.

Design Templates

Yes you can change the design template as often as you want. Once you have changed it, you may need to make some modifications or change individual page designs to find the one most appropriate to match the images and text of your old design.

There are several design templates available, each one offering a set of predefined styles. On top of this you can change the colour scheme to your own liking with custom colours, allowing you to matching it to your own branding. 
Most design templates allow you to add textured backdrops to add individuality.

We also have several designs available for each type of page, so for example your calendars, galleries and general pages can all have different styles.

With all these combinations, you are not likely to have a site that's like somebody else's.

Finally if you want a completely bespoke website, then look into using our custom templates or contact us to see what additional services we can offer.

Custom templates give you the freedom to use your own design for your website but with all the flexibility of easy editing and managing of your website that you get from using FolioFlow.

You can design your template using any normal editors for generating HTML pages and then with some additional tags added to your file you can get the dynamic data for text, images or any other aspects of the FolioFlow system. A detailed tutorial will be coming soon on how to write your own templates.

If you feel happy at writing your own template for use in FolioFlow then you can do that and have it instantly available. If do not feel comfortable doing this, then contact us and we can discuss doing this for you.

Search Engine Optimization

Lots of search engines do not index dynamic pages very well, but this is based on the style of the web address in the browser. FolioFlow ensures that the web addresses of your pages are search engine friendly by have no funny characters in them like ?, &, and =

You can enter search engine keywords and a search engine description for your site within the website section of the administration console.

We also allow you to choose the Title of each page which is a good way aid search engines to index your pages correctly.

All of our templates are also designed so that your home page doesn't just have one link to enter your site, but has all your menu items available as this also helps optimize the search engines to finding your pages.