22Slides

We’re happy to report that early Saturday morning we made some big server changes to improve both page speed and overall reliability. This means pages should be a bit snappier than before, especially when there are lots of images to display.

The graph above shows the average time our servers took to deliver pages. Things were fast before, but now they’re even better and more consistent.

For those of you that like to dig into the details, here are some specs on our new setup:

• Intel® Xeon® E5-2670 processors
• RAID 10-protected, data-center-grade SSDs
• 40 Gigabits/second network throughput
• Triple-replicated file storage
• Files are distributed across 219 locations around the world, to ensure people get fast performance, no matter where in the world they’re located.

New Website Layout

We’ve introduced a new responsive site layout that features a full-width design, allowing your images to span your viewer’s entire monitor.

New Text Page Layouts

Along with a new site layout, we’ve also introduced new layout options for text pages. Now you can put your image to the left, right, or centered above your text.

Sharper Home Page Images

Home page image resolution has been increased from 1600px to 1800px along their longest side, so your home page should display your work more clearly than ever.

New Temporary Placeholder Page

If you’ve ever wished you could hide your website temporarily while you work on it, now you can. A temporary placeholder page can keep visitors out of your site until you’re done working.

Improved Contact Form

Our contact form got a facelift, complete with better alignment, larger text, and “required” field indicators.

Improved Formatting for Mobile

We’ve made big improvements to the way our “sidebar” layout is displayed on mobile, allowing your site to be displayed on mobile devices almost exactly like it is on desktops.

Other Stuff

• The design editor now allows customization of space between images in horizontal-scrolling galleries.
• Improved page naming. Page names will be much more predictable when multiple pages have the same name.
• Improved alternate home page URLs, so the home page will always be at the root level address, not matter which page is assigned as the home page.

One thing I think makes 22Slides different is the fact that it’s run like a freelancing business, because that’s what we started out doing: freelance photography, design, and web development.

What does that mean? It means we can relate to our clients, we appreciate efficiency and actively search for the best tools for any job. In doing so, we’ve found some services that we find extremely useful to not only us, but anyone running a small business, and I’d like to share our favorites with you.

1. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is a great online billing and accounting service. I’ve been using it for years with my freelance work and couldn’t imagine working without it. Their customer service is amazing, and is actually a huge influence on how we run customer service at 22Slides.

With it, you can send invoices to clients, collect payments online, keep track of expenses, client contact info, and it will even spit out reports for your taxes at the end of the year… basically all the stuff that’s no fun to do yourself, yet extremely important to running a home-based business.

My favorite feature though, is the fact that it can automatically send payment reminders and apply late fees to overdue invoices. No one likes tracking down a client for payment, so it’s a welcome relief to let FreshBooks take care of that part. And, because the reminders are coming from a 3rd party (FreshBooks, rather than yourself), I’ve found that problem clients are actually more likely take it seriously and pay up, because they know they can’t negotiate with it.

2. Square

Making it easy for clients to pay is important, making it borderline fun is even better. Square allows you to accept credit card payments with your phone, which is great for collecting deposits for work on the spot.

There’s no setup fee, and you only pay a small percentage of each transaction, so there’s really no reason to not sign up and get a free card reader, just in case you need one.

3. HelloFax

I don’t have a home phone, but still need to send/receive the occasional fax. Driving to the local office supply store and paying for each page gets expensive and takes way too long. Having to tell a client that I don’t have a fax machine is even worse.

With HelloFax, you can send faxes straight from their website and receive faxes to your email. You don’t need an extra phone line or a fax machine. It’s all handled with PDF files, which is great for those trying to cut down on paper.

Google Drive

Microsoft Office is as expensive as it is terrible, and many find Apple’s office apps to be a bit “weird”.

Google Drive is a solid (and free) alternative that works really well. You can create documents, spreadsheets, online survey forms, and even powerpoint-style presentations.

It’s also worth noting that Google Drive’s iPhone app is the best spreadsheet editor I’ve found for the iPhone.

5. Google Voice

Don’t want to give clients your cell number? With Google Voice, you can create a new business phone number that’s just routed through your existing phone.

You can have a custom voice message recording, and a nice little bonus is that it will let you send free text messages.

6. Dropbox

Dropbox puts a folder on your computer that syncs with any of your other computers/phones/devices. It’s a great way to keep things synced up if you have multiple machines for your work.

A lesser-known use though, is for backups. Dropbox will keep multiple backups of your files. This means that if you accidentally erase or overwrite something, you can go to their website and recover it.

You can also use it to send large files to people, and 22Slides even has an add-on that uses Dropbox to create a client review area to your site.

7. A Physical Mailbox

Clients treat you differently when they realize you’re working out of an extra bedroom. Getting a mailbox somewhere will make your business look more professional and offer more privacy, as you don’t have to share your home address.

UPS Stores offer a really good mailbox service. They’ll give you a real address (not a PO Box, which is good for a few reasons), let you call in to ask if you have any mail, and offer a mail forwarding service.

US PO boxes are a lot cheaper, but don’t accept certain kinds of mail, don’t work for some business directories, and don’t allow you to call in to see if you have mail.

As you may have already heard, there are now more options when buying domain names. Rather than your typical .com, .org, .net, etc… you can choose from domains like .photography or .graphics.

Here’s a complete list of the new domain extensions:

• .estate
• .photography
• .ventures
• .guru
• .bike
• .clothing
• .gallery
• .singles
• .camera
• .lighting
• .plumbing
• .equipment
• .graphics
• .holdings

Before you go nuts and buy every .photography domain name you can think of, we wanted to let you know our thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of these new domains:

Advantages

• You can get the keyword “photography” right in your domain name, which is worth points when it comes to SEO. (Though, you can also put “photography” in your domain name with a .com domain name too.)
• Domains are like real estate, and now is an opportunity to get some better real estate for your business.

Disadvantages

• More traditional domain extensions like .com and .net are typically seen as more valuable by search engines, since they’ve been around longer and are harder to come by. As it stands now, JoesPhotoStudio.com would outrank JoesPhotoStudio.org, which would outrank JoesPhotoStudio.photography.
• They’re not familiar to people. Having to explain to someone that your website is “dot photography” is a conversation you’ll need to get used to, because no one will know what you’re talking about.
• They’re not familiar to browsers. If you type “JoesPhotoStudio.photography” into some browsers, it won’t know what you want and start a web search instead of going to the website (This may change in the future).
• There’s a chance they could be a passing fad, or never really gain popularity.

Conclusion

We feel .photography domains are a little too close to the bleeding edge of technology to be practical. If you find a .photography domain name you like, We’d recommend registering it, but forwarding it (using a 301 redirect) to your main .com domain for now. You can always make it your primary domain name later.

I don’t care, I want to use a .photography domain now It’s bad practice to have more than one domain setup with a single website. Search engines will penalize sites like this for “duplicate content”.

Instead, you’ll need to choose a primary domain, then have any other domains forward to it using a “301 redirect”. It’s very important to not use masking, cloaking, domain hiding, or any other option that sounds similar. These options will hurt your site’s SEO dramatically.

For example. Lets say you own JoesPhotoStudio.com, but you would like to instead use JoesPhotoStudio.photography. Here’s how you’d do that:

1. Be warned that your domain name may be down for a few minutes during this process, so don’t change anything during peak business hours.
2. Sign into your domain registrar’s website and setup the DNS records for JoesPhotoStudio.photography just like you would any other domain (instructions here http://help.22slides.com/article/custom-domain).
3. Also from your domain registrar’s website, forward JoesPhotoStudio.com to JoesPhotoStudio.photography, using a 301 redirect (no cloaking, masking, etc).
4. Login to your 22Slides control panel, go to your Settings page, and change your domain name to JoesPhotoStudio.photography.
5. You’re done! It may take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or two to start working.

P.S. Here’s a $2 coupon for domains at Hover.com: https://hover.com/4KXQoGLE

Have you ever added a photo to a website and noticed it looks slightly softer or sharper than you originally intended?

Image sharpness can vary due to a lot of things like JPEG image compression, the way different color tones interact with JPEG compression, resampling for the web, and browser rendering.

It’s that unintentional variation in image sharpness that we’re trying to remedy today, by introducing a new image sharpening setting, which will let you choose between no sharpening, low, and strong sharpening.

• “No Sharpening” has been 22Slides’ default behavior and works well for most images.
• **“Low Sharpening” **has proven to help retain an image’s original crispness that may have been lost in the compression/resampling process.
• “Strong Sharpening” is for those edge cases where you either want the absolutely grittiest vibe, or desperately need to mask a blurry photo. This new option can be found on the “Settings” page of your control panel.

Please note that changing this setting will not affect images that have already been uploaded. Instead, it’ll only affect images uploaded after the setting has been changed.

(Example photo by Cameron Rad)

Our new custom code editor was released today! Although this is big news for our more advanced clients, there are definitely some benefits that everyone can take advantage of:

• Syntax coloring: This makes it a bit easier to understand the code at a glance and identify typos.
• Automatic resizing input fields: The input areas now automatically resize to fit the amount of code they have, so you no longer need to scroll around to view all your code.
• Error highlighting: Now if your code has any errors, it will be highlighted to draw your attention.
• New structure: Now custom code is divided between “Head” and “Body” code, instead of “CSS” and “Javascript”. This makes it much more universal and opens up possibilities to include any sort of code you like, including HTML.
• Meta tags, etc: Now it’s much easier to add meta tags for things like search engine optimization and site verification (We still advise against using the “keywords” meta tag though).

William is a great young photographer from NY. He’s also one of 22Slides’ early adopters, so we’ve had the pleasure of watching him refine his craft over the last few years.

Just like he’s constantly pushing his own work and not scared to try new things, he’s also pushing his website to explore what’s possible. His website with 22Slides has seen a few different revisions, but right now it’s a nice blend of built-in functionality and his own custom coding, providing a great example of a classy and beautifully minimal online presence, which compliments his work wonderfully.

[The photos in this article are just a small sample from a single project he’s working on, we definitely encourage you to check out more of his work on his website.]

So how did you get into photography?

I have always been interested in photography, but didn’t fully realize it until I was 18 or so. I had cameras before then, but that was the age when I started shooting regularly and reading a lot about photography. Many of my early images are of my family.

Can you tell us a little about the photographs here?

Sure, these are all pictures I’ve done in New York. They’re part of a long-term project I’m working on, where I document window displays - mainly of luxury and designer storefronts.

What do you look for when you are shooting the images for this series?

I am drawn to photograph the displays or pieces I find beautiful, or strange, or sometimes both.

What kind of equipment do you use most often?

For this series (and most of my work), I’m using a compact mirrorless camera with on-board flash. I’m walking a lot when I do these images, so I wanted something light.

Is there any one subject you would love to photograph?

Not one in particular. I usually have an idea about the storefronts from the runway shows, so sometimes I will go look for specific pieces. As far as people… There are a lot of models I would love to work with, too many to name really.

Have you read anything interesting lately?

I just started “On Photography” by Susan Sontag. I’ve been meaning to read it for a really long time, so it feels good to finally start.

Do you have any favorite films?

I have many favorites. For photography-related… “Helmut by June,” “Blow Up,” “Persona,” “Rear Window.”

What is some good advice someone has given you regarding your work?

Shortly after moving to New York, I met with a few photographers I’ve looked up to, and I asked them for some very direct criticism of my work. It was difficult to hear but also incredibly inspiring - it made me realize I could do much better work than I was doing.

Do you have any advice for aspiring photographers?

I would recommend taking a lot of time to reflect on your images after you shoot - not only to analyze their strengths and weaknesses, but also to try to view them with someone else’s eye in mind.

Why do you use 22slides for your site?

Simplicity, ease of use, interface/design, and of course the unparalleled customer service and support. It’s a great service - I’m very thankful to have their support.

Today we’re releasing an update that allows you to place text in your website’s header/sidebar area. We’re calling the feature “blurbs”, and you can add these to your site by choosing the “Informational Blurb” page type when creating a new page.

These should be perfect for adding abbreviated contact info right to your home page, or dividing up your navigation into section by using these blurbs as headings (like the image above). They’ll also offer another tier of hierarchy to your pages, if used in conjunction with drop down menus or other page groups.

Also with this update, we’re adding customizable footer text. Before, your copyright notice at the bottom of your website was set in stone, but now you can place whatever text you like there.

Note: Explicitly forbidding usage in your copyright notice doesn’t actually carry any more legal weight than our previous more “minimal” copyright notice, but it could help scare people from even trying.

We just released a new toolbar that can be added to the top left of the images on your site, allowing people to share that individual photo on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

You can enable this for your site from the “Social Media Sharing” section on the “Add-ons” page in your control panel.

[Screenshot from JordanVoth.com]

Today we launched a some new gallery layouts!

• New “Carousel” layout for sidebar-style websites.
• New “Horizontal” layout header/centered-style websites.
• New “Tile” layout, similar to the style made famous by Pinterest, available for both sidebar and header-style sites.
• All layouts are now available to Flickr pages too!

As always, you can change a gallery’s layout at the top of its page in your control panel, by clicking on any one of the layout icons.