EXPOSURE MANAGER

[Lonewolf]

This is my fourth season photographing Little League Baseball. Each year the demand for photographs grows. Currently I find myself spending more time than I'd like printing my photographs.

I've decided it's time to let someone else do the printing so that I can have more time "in the field" and more importantly with friends and family. I've chosen Exposure Manager to assist me.

I'd be interested in any advice you have for setting up my new site. I'd also be interested in seeing how you've got your site setup.

Thanks - Wayne.

[prplegophr]

Wayne,

I've been using Exposure Manager since March. It's been sort of a love-hate relationship for me, but since you've already chosen them, I won't go into details. (ie: Customer service is excellent... but I seem to use them a lot more than I should need to.)

In any case, my site is at www.minutesixteen.com and the EM galleries are masked to gallery.minutesixteen.com.

The quirks I've noticed so far:
1) The multi-file uploader is useful and automatically resizes images for you, but it will often hang and you'll wind up having to start the upload over from scratch. Definitely use an FTP program instead. I wind up resizing images on my own then uploading those thumbnails via FTP. Another advantage of using an FTP program is you can upload a sub-directory structure which then automatically creates seperate galleries for you.
2) If you do display-only photos, the web-based uploader will sometimes hang if you try to upload more than 2-3 files at a time.
3) There are multiple layout templates available, but if you plan on selling photos, use the "sales" template. I tried using one of the other ones and all sorts of snafu's showed up. The tech rep told me to switch templates and it has more or less worked fine since.
4) Be really really careful with the "apply to all sub galleries" option when editing your galleries. Make use of the "lock all" or "lock password only" options.
5) If you add a photo product, it automatically makes it available for each subsequent gallery you create, which may or may not have been your original intention.

That's about all I can come up with off the top of my head. If I think of more, I'll post them.

Good luck,
Herb

[MJPhotos24]

I've been a spokesman for EM on here oh to often, and though would like some upgrades to the system the print quality can't be beat, and I've tested them against several companies. For me, I resize before uploading using PIXresizer and just copy the folders right over using ftp and never had one problem. Just sit and wait for it to get done uploading, log in and select the action and done. I keep the layout of my site very very basic and plan on upgrading a bit more with some bells and whistles (more info) soon as the baseball season ends and I have extra time on my hands...but you can see how I use the site through my signature, I use my own site and EM is just the order page linked to.