Justin Lund
posted this on October 14, 2011 11:11
Nimbus is the new web for photographers. It simplifies your online presence so everything you need is at your fingertips – anytime, anywhere! Your website, blog and galleries are finally connected in the cloud.
Think of it as a channel to communicate and collaborate with your clients. Everything from your portfolio to your paperwork is connected. It’s never been so easy – and fun – to build your business and share your photos online.
In Nimbus, each brand gets its own website. If you need to enable Nimbus on another brand, you can do so from the settings to Manage Sites. Learn more about brands in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Themes control the look and feel of your Nimbus site and your publicly-accessible areas of ShootQ. Update your site with a whole new look by changing themes and tweaking colors without affecting your content. Choose your theme in the Themes settings in Atrium. Learn more about themes in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Menus are the navigation links that appear on your site. Their location is theme-dependent and most often appear at the top or side of every page. There are several pre-configured for you: Home, About Us, Blog, Galleries, Contact and Client Login. You can add, remove and modify these links to go to internal Nimbus pages, ShootQ pages, even to a specific URL from the Navigation Settings. Learn more about navigation menus in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
You create magnificent images, now show them off to the world. Create galleries by importing images from Pictage events, flickr, Instagram and directly from your computer. View your Galleries. Learn more about galleries in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Pages are places for your content. Each page can have text, images and video. Create a page in the Pages settings. Learn more about pages in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Already have a blog? If so, you can import your previous posts from a Wordpress or Blogger site - even import from an RSS or Atom feed. Import your blog.
If you don’t yet have a blog or want to start fresh, create a new blog post in Posts. Learn more about blogs in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Want to use your own domain name? No problem! Let us know your domain name in the DNS settings and find information about configuring your DNS settings. Learn more about DNS in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Users in Nimbus are separate from the users in ShootQ. Additional users can be created in Nimbus to manage content and author blog posts. Create new users in the Users settings.
Learn more about users in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
SEO, or search engine optimization is built into each Nimbus site. Configure permalinks for pages and blog posts when creating them. Additional SEO configuration is available for configuring your URL structure in the SEO Mapping settings.
Learn more about basic SEO settings in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Learn more about advanced SEO Mapping settings in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
You can upload files to link to them from one of your pages. You can also upload music files that you have rights to for gallery music. Learn more about files in Nimbus in this knowledgebase article.
Comments
Has anyone been playing with Nimbus? My first impression is terrible, so I'm wondering if anyone has had a good experience and created a webpage that they are proud of with it. The template "Stratus" is barely like the LaCour example they give, and the navigation within is practically nonexistent. I'd love to be able to see a working website made with Nimbus that I could click through, not just screen shots. And one that uses what they offer, not something that has been overly customized with HTML code. Any good feedback would be great!
I am sorry to hear that your first impression with Nimbus hasn't been a good one. Have you had a chance to watch the set up video? If not you can view it at http://vimeo.com/26811587 I thought I could share a few other sites with you to click through. I am sure there are photographers that can chime in to share their own too.
http://crystalized.photosit.es/
http://snellman-photo.photosit.es
http://other.photosit.es/
Katie
Edited to correct vimeo link
You're welcome to go check out our site. We're using the Crystalized theme. I've been using it in Beta for a couple months now and so far I have been very happy with Nimbus and the direction it is going. There is still a lot of work I would like to do on our site and a ton of blog posts that I need to import from our old Wordpress blog but once I'm done with all of that I will be shutting down our Showit site and Wordpress blog.
www.vidamiaphoto.net
I've been playing with nimbus and been noticing some kinks which I'm sure will be worked out, but I'm really curious how I can get drop-down menus from my page headings so that I can have, say, three additional pages under the heading About Us or two additional pages under Services. I currently have this format in my old website and definitely need the additional pages than five or six. Also, there's an option in the Navigation settings to choose a "Category" and yet there are none in the drop down menu. I don't want all my pages to be formatted like the Home page where there's the blog roll on the right hand side.
Hi Melanie,
I may be wrong but I think what your looking for is going to be a theme specific customization. The current themes don't have any built in drop-down menu functionality. Maybe upcoming ones will. I know there have already been a few other people that have requested the same thing. You could always try contacting one of the custom Nimbus designers and see if they could help you out too. David over at Wolf Snap Designs is one of those folks. He's been pretty active over on the Pictage forums talking about building custom designs. Here is is contact info if you want it. http://www.wolfsnap.com/contact/
Ben
Hi Melanie,
I am glad you are getting the chance to play around with Nimbus. At this time we don't have this feature available. This feature is theme dependent and we don't have any themes that support this yet. We appreciate the feedback and have heard this one, so we have it noted. I don't know if this is something that David can customize for you or not, but I am sure he can answer that question if you contact him. ;-)
Katie
I hate to chime in with a negative thought, but I am struggling to understand how to set up a Nimbus site. I have submitted help ticket, but I really did not get an answer. Example, the Private URL? Huh? I just want my site to look like the samples. There needs to be much more published on how to set one up. I have spent hours trying to set one up. I have uploaded images to a gallery, clicked on view site, and it always says "We're working away on getting our photos ready for you to view. In the meantime, check out the rest of our site".
I currently use Live Books and it was easy to set up Live Books. I realize that it is a work in progress but Nimbus set up is not easy at all.
Hey Don, negative feedback is usually much better than positive feedback! The lead developer of Nimbus and I reviewed your feedback and will be working on making things easier. One way we'll do that is with better documentation and simplifying the interface. You're exactly right that it's a work in progress. We'll be making lots of small releases to fix minor issues as well as adding new features. Thanks for hanging in there with us!
Drop down menu's are normally a deal breaker for me. Are there any plans to create a theme with those features? Are there any themes available for purchase with more advanced features?
Also, is there a different link to the set up video? the one Katie posted earlier gives me an error every time I click on it.
Hi Dawn,
This video might be the one that was meant to be posted above. http://vimeo.com/26811587
Thanks Ben. Dawn, it looks like it was keeping the "." in the link I gave. The one Ben posted above works and is what I meant to provide. :-)
Hello Dawn,
As of right now we don't have drop down menus as an option. It is a feature we plan to incorporate into a future theme. Right now we don't have any themes available for purchase with more advanced features. However, David over at Wolf Snap Designs is building custom Nimbus sites. Here is is contact info if you want it. http://www.wolfsnap.com/contact/
Katie
I had a contact form integrating into my wordpress site, and it worked wonderfully. I just have my website redesigned, and the contact form was integrated into it very nicely, however, I need to change the colours of it to match my new site. If I mess around in Nimbus to change the colours it turns my contact form into an ugly nimbus themed layout which is not what I want.
How do I change the colour of my contact form, and how do I change the logo on it as well.
Nimbus makes my head hurt.
Oh dear, looks like my contact form is messed up too. I had it perfectly embedded in my wordpress website so that it flowed and looked like you never left the site, however, now it looks awful. How do i fix this?? I didn't even change anything in nimbus, it said no changes would be applied unless I "published" them, which I avoided for this very reason.
It looks like when you are browsing the themes, and you choose to preview the theme, it actually saves the settings even if you don't click the "update nimbus theme" button. Just the act of clicking on the theme and previewing it will apply those settings.
Can we adjust the css (site width? - I Imported my feed and the pics are all squished...
How do we obtain the Crystalized theme? I really like what you guys are cooking up here and would love to dive in. Looking at the negative feedback does raise a few questions, but as with changing platforms, it can always be a headache. How do we import content from our blog over into the theme? Hope you guys have an in-depth tutorial soon. If all goes well it would be nice to dump my livebooks site & wordpress blog & consolidate all the multitasking!
I have same question as Jason, I imported my feed and all my images are squished...yuck! How do I fix?
I can see the advantage of having your website and blog in the same place, however I already have that with a wordpress blogsite. I don't have pictage, so are there any other advantages I can have using nimbus over wordpress, or does it stop there without utilizing pictage galleries?
I can't wait to get everything switched over to nimbus but some work still needs to be done. We need at least some customization features instead of having to outsource everything and not look so generic. Having the word "Home" on your front page is not very appealing to visitors. Also maybe different options for the gallery, and how it looks to visitors, and like others said more animation with the menu would greatly enhance the look.
Trying to import my wordpress blog content over & I get this error message "The uploaded file is not a valid Wordpress WXR export." I'm following the instructions on import settings from Nimbus. The exported file from wordpress is XML....but on the Nimbus site it says WXR?????
@Andrew The "Home" that I was referring to was the text on the page. It is not possible to remove this. It seems that it can be renamed, but that's it.
Mine was not just the preview, I had to go and fix it this morning. It was applied to my contact form on my site, my client areas and my price list. All were checked on different computers. It did apply those changes when I selected preview. After that, I'm not touching nimbus again. I still can't get it to look exactly the way I had it. My fonts are all messed up and the build and estimate bar at the bottom of the price list is all huge, and half off the screen with text cut off. It's badly in the way and I don't know how to fix that.
Thank you Dawn, for bringing this to my attention as well! Nimbus has totally screwed up my client areas. It was not made clear at all that I couldn't test changes in Nimbus without affecting my already implemented client areas, proposals, etc. Also, when I log out completely to see what my clients will see, there is still a drag down bar from the top that gives the login window to my ShootQ account. This looks completely unprofessional. The fonts are also completely weird on the proposal site, switching half way in both size and color, which was not at all the case before. And this is a past proposal sent out pre-nimbums.
What's going on here?! I had been in contact with my rep at ShootQ, anxiously awaiting Nimbus as I didn't make it on to the Beta list, but was told over and over that it was being delayed because you didn't want to release a product that wasn't finished. Frustrated with the lack of accountability for the delays, she assured me that you didn't want to release a product you weren't proud of.... Yet this is the crap you release?!
I just want the old ShootQ I had back, so I can implement it into a Wordpress site and be done with this crap.
I'm trying to clean up the messy pricing page I ended up with, and I don't see anything to correct the way the columns are being displayed for the add-ons. This is what it looks like, please help.
I just tested it in IE and everything looks fine. In chrome it looks like hell. Not sure why. Snap Cubby, take a look at your pages in a different browser and see if they look ok.
I just submitted a ticket, but when I preview the website I've ben working on today it looks like this. In preview it should be the Crystalized theme.... Any idea as to why it looks this lovely?! :)
I figured out the the problem I mentioned above, but the photos that I've created for my header shows up for a split second and then disappears. Is there any troubleshooting on this that I haven't found yet?
Jennifer please tell us what the fix was for that issue. I have been unable to figure mine out.
@Jennifer, I've been playing. If you add the image more than once, it won't disappear.
For some reason, my image is looping. The image is the specified size, see screenshot. There should just be 3 pictures, the beginning of the "4th" one shouldn't be there.
http://memorylaneportraitboutique.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Sc...
Nevermind, images weren't the specified size after all.
@Jennifer - the style sheet isn't loading. Try re-publishing. I bet that will fix the problem.
Hey @Snap Cubby...
I just checked a couple of your ShootQ-generated pricing pages in several different browsers. This is what the public would see:
http://crossbrowsertesting.com/users/34729/screenshots/z2e2cb4bb4b6...
http://crossbrowsertesting.com/users/34729/screenshots/z40626ce0e9a...
Hey @dawn:
I just checked your contact form. It looks like this:
http://crossbrowsertesting.com/users/34729/screenshots/z6b133ff5f48...
Our lead Nimbus developer thinks that you guys have some stale preview cookies on your browser. That's not your fault, but it's also not a serious problem (thank god.) Your comments above about Internet Explorer support this theory. We suggest quitting your browsers and going to your public areas without logging in. Let us know if this doesn't fix the problem. I'm still convinced it's a preview issue...
after playing around with Nimbus, i don't think it's going to work for me in its current state. how do i turn it off and go back to just me and shootq, bffs4ever?
@Heather - you don't have to do anything. If you're seeing changes to your public (branded) areas of ShootQ, just log out, quit your browser and then re-visit the public pages in ShootQ without being logged in. You'll see they haven't changed.
We're working hard on Nimbus. It's a big project and it's going to take time to make it awesome. More themes will be coming over the coming months and I'm sure you'll hear from us regularly.
right, but i had published it so i could make changes to my outfacing shootq contact and pricing page colors. when i clicked to change them within shootq before i published it, it would just take me to the nimbus theme styler page. i'd make changes there, but the settings weren't saving, so i published the nimbus site. now the settings are where i want them, but i don't want to leave the nimbus part up.
@john to answer your question, when working with the template and it wouldn't show it in the preview I just chose a different template and published for a second and then went back to the Crystalized theme and it works great. It literally only took me 3 hours to set up my entire Nimbus site (still working on getting all the right photos up) but I am actually thoroughly impressed with how integrated it is. I have already received a few comments of people saying they like the look of it. Thanks ShootQ :)
Hey Heather, since you've published it, Atrium has now taken control over the theming of your ShootQ (and Nimbus) accounts. We have a theme which you can use called the "ShootQ Classic" theme that will look the most like the original ShootQ theme you had.
Nimbus, if you choose to use it, will also have that theme.
i'm pretty sure nimbus had taken control over it before i published the nimbus site. no matter where i went i couldn't update my shootq pages' colors/logo, so that's a problem with your code you might want to look into. if nothing else, at least some sort of 'THIS IS IRREVERSIBLE NEVER DO IT!' warning would have been nice before i got all excited and joined beta and published my page. now i'm stuck with extra crap on my pages i can't get rid of since you don't allow css customization. i'd appreciate some way to turn that off in the future. for some reason nimbus' fonts are blurry looking on the menu bar on my nimbus'd site and i don't like that i have to deal with that now if i want to keep using shootq.
Hey heather,
Can you upload a screenshot of what you're seeing?
Hey Heather,
Can you give us some feedback on our warning messages before publishing? Here's what it says...
If you're currently a ShootQ user, this will change the layout and design of your customer-facing pages (such as your contact form, pricing pages, online bookings, and client portal). Clicking publish will make these changes permanent and cannot be undone.
I want to make this clear so people get it. I want to know what your thought process was when you clicked past this message and publshed. Were you trying to preview something that you thought you couldn't preview unless you published?
I really need to get to the bottom of why this is confusing so we can help people understand what they're doing because right now they're confused and we're trying to figure out why.
Heather,
Re-reading your post it sounds like you thought that the changes were published even though they weren't. Nimbus uses cookies in your browser to simulate what your public areas will look like without actually publishing them. The purpose is to give you a full preview without having to publish and commit permanent changes.
We've tried to communicate this with a yellow bar on the Nimbus dashboard that says: "Customers cannot see your Nimbus site. When you are ready to share it with the world, click here to publish."
So what you were seeing was simulated and in your browser (and only your browser). If you weren't signed into ShootQ or Nimbus, you would have seen the public pages of ShootQ the way they were before you published. But I bet you thought the Nimbus-themed public areas were live to the whole world, and in trying to get back to what you had before, you published your Nimbus site, which at that point really did permanently alter your ShootQ public areas. And the message above on the Nimbus dashboard isn't enough.
A lot of people think that this is caused by bugs - meaning that the code is malfunctioning, which it isn't - it's working the way it's designed to work. It sounds like we may need to work on the design to make it less confusing - so that you don't think you've accidentally published a theme when you're actually just previewing it.
Am I getting what's going on here?
BTW, I also am going to see what we can do about getting you back to where you were, but I need to meet with the development team next week about it.
Okay, I'm starting to understand the confusion. It's funny, because this came up a little in beta testing, but we thought we had it fixed with the publish warning and messages.
I've called a meeting for Monday with our head developer of Nimbus and Justin Lund so we can make sure we're thoroughly understanding the confusion and make appropriate changes.
"Re-reading your post it sounds like you thought that the changes were published even though they weren't. Nimbus uses cookies in your browser to simulate what your public areas will look like without actually publishing them. The purpose is to give you a full preview without having to publish and commit permanent changes. "
Nope nope and nope. That's not what I was saying at all. I completely understand what Nimbus was doing. It was obvious when I logged out to check what it looked like that nothing I had done was saving or affecting the actual look and feel. What I wanted to do was to actually have the changes I was making on the customization screen save and show up on my public pages - but I didn't really want the Nimbus part. The thing is, there wasn't a way to do that at all. Every time I attempted to publish the changes just to shootq.. all I was met with was a publish your Nimbus site - so after awhile I figured that was the only way it was going to go down. It was publish the changes so they stayed and have some half-baby-arm site attached to it or have my shootq pages not match my recent rebrand at all. Like I said before, I was trying to customize them - not Nimbus - I wasn't trying to get back to what I had before at all - I wanted to change what I had before.
Ok. I'm going to make this super simple. Hopefully seeing the whole story will make this more understandable.
- Heather and ShootQ, happy
- *Nimbus descends from Cloud* (ooh! Shiny!)
- Heather asks to be in Nimbus Beta, is accepted, starts playing with how it looks
- Heather leaves Nimbus alone. It needs more work before it's a viable option.
- Heather works long and hard on a new wordpress blog site, herding the SQLs and tending the SEOs
- Heather changes her blog background from a canvas .png to good ol #ffffff
- Heather obsessively simulates her customers' experience on her site in different browsers, on different computers
- Heather is annoyed that ShootQ client area pages are still canvas .png and old logo - they don't match!
- Heather logs into ShootQ and goes to settings to change the shootq Colors & Logo (www.app.shootq.com/controlpanels/public)
SWOOP! BAM! Heather is whisked right into the Nimbus page!
- Heather sees the customization area for Nimbus, but is only given the option to 'Preview' or 'Publish' Wanting to make ShootQ match again, Heather tries several times to find her way back to the Shootq Color & Logo customization page, but it's been eaten by Nimbus.
- Sad and desperate, Heather publishes Nimbus so that her ShootQ pages will change to #ffffff and the new logo, knowing full well this means Nimbus will go from a preview-only, to permanent. But how else was there to get those ShootQ pages in line? IF ONLY she had known BEFORE ADDING NIMBUS' BETA to her shootq account at all.
And that was my problem. If you come up with some way to re-divide up the customization areas for the sites once the user has decided to attach Nimbus to their ShootQ account but before they've published Nimbus, so they can make changes to their existing shootq side, I think that would be a really good idea.
Ben: Did you put your logo on each photo in the header? I tried loading a logo where Nimbus asks for a logo, but I couldn't get it to take one with a transparent background and without the transparent background the logo looks tacky.
Hey Cindy,
No I am just using the logo. You'll just need to save your image as a png file with a transparent background and it should work fine.
Here is your logo (I assume based on Google searching you) as a transparent PNG. It's pretty rough because I just selected and deleted the whites but it should give you a placeholder for now. It should be sized correctly too.
Not able to upload any photos to my gallery or Assets section... The pop up come up but when I click on Assets, nothing happens. On Mac latest OS.
glad to see others are having problems........I thought it was just me..........how to a get the header photo to stay in the 'Crystalized' theme........once in a while I see it flash in momentarily. Is this just a bug that needs to be worked out??
.
Do we have any idea when some/all of these issues will be resolved? I'm building the rest of the content hoping the rest will work itself out over time. My blog content isn't coming up on the front (home) page. I can't see galleries. I understand with anything new comes problems, but it appears in a rush this was launched?
Hey Keri,
We're pushing out maintenance releases weekly; we report these issues as they emerge and investigate and fix.
On your site, you're correct, the blog isn't coming up. Not sure why; I suspect it has something to do with the preview environment. I'm asking the lead developer to look into this.
As for your header images, the Crystallized Theme control panel is not showing you have any uploaded. Could you upload those again in the Themes settings panel? Make sure you click "Update Nimbus Theme" after you're done to make sure the settings stick. If you have trouble after doing this again, please post and we'll investigate.
Your logo issue is a little more straightforward. The optimium logo size for the Crystallized theme is 173x140. The logo you uploaded was 1276x433. What happened was that your logo was showing at full-size, but just the upper-left hand corner was displaying in the space for the logo within the theme. The problem is that the upper-left hand corner of your logo is clear, so it looked like there was no logo at all; the rest of it got cut-off. Here's a screenshot to illustrate. (I downloaded your full-size logo in the background of your Nimbus test site.) I've put a black border around the whole file and a red box around the portion the site was displaying:
I resized your logo to fit within the 173x140 size and re-uploaded it. You'll see the whole thing now.
This user interface could use some improvement down the line, but for now, that's how it works. I'll submit tickets to the development team to get all of these issues addressed.
Sally - the image that "flashes" is a known issue - we've got a ticket in to get that fixed. I don't think it's in the next release, but should be fixed within the next few weeks.
Bond,
I'll have the deve team check that out. I'm betting that if you refresh a couple of times it will start working. Sounds like it needs some technical love...
Hey Heather,
I think I'm following you here. So in short, you're asking to be able to use Nimbus themes on your ShootQ public areas without using Nimbus. Right?
How come we can't upload video from anywhere, how come I have to take my video and upload it to flickr then link it to Nimbus? In reality it would be great to have a link to animoto.com so I don't have to go through all those steps. Also I can't get any of my uploaded from my computer images to appear they act like they upload but when I come back later its not there. I have no problems importing from Pictage sessions though.
I'm having problems attaching video in my blog post, it didn't import my embedded videos and now even after uploading the videos to vimeo or flickr I still can't get them to import - ideas?
Here are a couple of things I noticed with the import of my data from my Wordpress Blog. The date and time of every post is set to the time I imported it, instead of retaining the original date and time. I noticed that the comments retained the original date and time, however. I just went through and manually changed mine, but I don't have that many entries. I'd hate to be someone with even twice as many as I have as it took me an hour.
Also, and this is a weird one, Wordpress stores the time in military time. So while I was re-entering the dates and times manually, I would just enter the military time into Nimbus. So if I entered in 18:18 on Nimbus, it correctly converts it to 6:18pm. However, if I enter 00:55, Nimbus makes it 12:55pm (instead of am).
Now, I was planning to keep my Wordpress Blog going, and when I was ready to cut over to Nimbus, I was planning to just re-import the blog (and destroy the data that was already there), but now that I've gone and changed all of the dates and times, I'll have to just copy and paste any new entries.
Another thing I don't like is that if I want to add a photo (and I'm assuming video) to a post, the image first has to be in the Assets folder? It's much easier in Wordpress in which you can upload the photo directly from the post as you're creating it. Even if it saves the images in the Assets folder eventually, I'd like to be able to just add it on the fly as I'm creating the post. I'd also like to just add the photo directly from Pictage on the fly as I'm creating the post. Now, I'll admit, it's possible it will let me do this. But right now, when I click on the "add image" icon, it brings up a window with a link to Assets on it. I click on that link, and nothing happens. I assumed this was because I had no images in the Assets folder, so I attempted to upload one, and well, that's not working either.
I am finding that the template does not carry over from the Nimbus site to the ShootQ client area for the same brand. I am unsure of how to go about fixing this, but when clicking on "client area" it sends me to the old template we were using not the new selected template. This ONLY occurs when clicking the "Client Area" link in the menu. When I use the link I had created in the past that is on my other site the new template does apply to the client area. This is very odd.
How do we add menu sub-menu pages (drop down menus)? For instance, Blog menu would drop out the options for other pages set to show individual categories?
@Andrew, I've read through the entire thread, and I have a question for you - "We've tried to communicate this with a yellow bar on the Nimbus dashboard that says: "Customers cannot see your Nimbus site. When you are ready to share it with the world, click here to publish."
Why can we not view how the entire site will look in preview mode? According to Justin on the Galleries thread, we can't view the Galleries page unless the site is published.
Also, from what I've read, Heather is trying to get her ShootQ Customer Facing settings back to the way she'd like, not using the Nimbus theme, but it will only let her make the changes in Nimbus. This concerns me too. I haven't published yet because I want to be able to preview the entire site as a functioning entity before I publish. I don't want to publish until I'm certain it will look and function exactly as I expect. But I have years in the software support industry, and I know that you can never plan for everything, and I know that some bugs will be flushed out when I publish. So what concerns me is that if we do publish, there doesn't appear (at least from reading through this thread) to be a way to unpublish, then continue to use the client areas with our old website if we need to go back to that. Am I understanding this correctly?
Hi David,
At this time we don't have this feature available. This feature is theme dependent and we don't have any themes that support this yet. We appreciate the feedback, we have a lot of people asking for this feature, we have it noted. ;-)
Katie
Now after working on this a little more I have found that you can add drop down menus in the page section, only the page section does not allow you to use content in the same manner as int he blogs. IE. I have imported my 9 RSS feeds to bring over all the product/ service information. Inside the blog section, it has easily moved over the images inside of the articles I have created. In the page section there is no way to bring over the articles in the same manner, it will only allow for the text itself, but without the imaging inside the article, the visual impact of the article is lost.
As of right now, I am finding the NImbus system to be damn near useless. Pricing pages do not show the customers the product, only a small text blurb about the product. The pricing page also only allows for the selection of 1 product per item listed. My blogs showcase the products in detail with images to allow the customers to know what they are buying, only I cannot show those on my site in a manner that makes any sense without over running my menu with an extra 9 product tabs.
Here is a list of issues I have found that could definitely use attention.
I believe that as the system is worked on, a few additions for us to use that would be great could include:
Here's a question that I have - once we switch over, and have all of our DNS settings correct, will the client portal link still have shootq as part of the link, or will it have our domain name instead?
How do I remove the Galleries section on the contact page?
@Kevin, did you already try to go to Navigation and delete the Gallery page?
Yes, I erased the pages and the navigation. It doesn't give the option to delete galleries from the media tab.
@Kevin- go to your galleries, open the gallery you want to delete. Down on the bottom right, where the the publish and save button are, there is the "Delete" button. It is only text, small and to the left of the publish button. This will delete the gallery you are currently in.
I published our main brand site just to see how it will actually function. There in nothing but a white screen with text. I have tested in IE, Chrome and Firefox. This is the case for both brands we have published. No logo, verticle left justified menu and plain text only.
Everyone who is having theme issues when publishing read this.
I have found that after publish the public view, you must go back into the settings, go to your theme, and re-save the theme as you want it before it will show on the front end.
This is of course a pain and confusing as all hell, but it will fix the issue so it seems.
How do I un-publish the Nimbus sites to ensure no one will see them? Without them working I want to make they do not exist publicly for my clients to accidentally stumble upon. Please either let me know how to un-public h these or if you can just take all Nimbus published brands offline. We will still be using ShootQ of course so only the Nimbus sites need come down. Please help.
Can someone tell me how to get the facebook and twitter links on your site? Thx!
@sharon: Vimeo and YouTube do a great job hosting video; we're not trying to re-invent the wheel. Have you tried adding videos from Vimeo or YouTube?
@Christina - thanks for being patient with us. 1.0 software has lots of stuff to improve upon :)
I've put in tickets with the development team to address the following concerns:
Issues we're already working to fix:
To answer your questions:
Once you switch over to Nimbus, your ShootQ public areas will still contain the ShootQ domain. This is for SSL (https) reasons. SSL certificates are domain-specific, so you would have to purchase your own SSL certificate for your domain, and they would have to be configured on the Nimbus servers. While this is something we may address later, the ShootQ domain must control all secure pages until we would add such a feature. Using a page on your domain with elements coming over SSL from ShootQ would cause a "some parts of this page are not secure" dialog when your customer is using the site, which would often cause them to be sheepish about putting in sensitive information into your site.
Currently, when you start playing with Nimbus, ShootQ "freezes" your public areas and you can't make changes to them. If you haven't published your Nimbus site yet, your ShootQ public areas look the same as they did before you activated Nimbus, but you just can't go change your colors or fonts or logos.
@Kevin -
"How do I remove the Galleries section on the contact page?"
You can't at the moment, but I've got tickets in to be able to "switch off" galleries and the blog.
@Christina - I think I understand the source of the confusion. We use the term "publish" on galleries and your whole Nimbus site. You have to publish galleries to see them in preview mode, but publishing galleries is not the same as publishing your site. Try publishing your Nimbus galleries and see if they show up in the preview. This will not publish your site, I assure you...
@David Higgins - thanks for all your thorough feedback. I've got my responses in Italic below:
@Andrew
OK, to answer your questions and follwo up on a few.
Video use in articles; I am a Vimeo user, I have linked accounts in Nimbus, when I select the video addition iceom a popup window opens asking for me to select provider. As I have only added Vimeo this icon is the only that appears, but there is no button/ video add function attached to the icon at all. The icon is just an icon.
Theme specific issues, item descriptions and item images bot showing, I have all Brands set to Crystalize theme.
As for a second menu on bottom or side columns, we would be able to use these as we do on other sites, any and all link that might not pertain to the main function of the site. For me, I would use it to have a link for careers with our growing studio, for links back to our workshop site and to our association pages, ect. It would be of great use to have if people even only used it as a secondary way to make sure their potential clients find and see the links they are looking for. Having functionality same as the current menu would be fine, linking inside Nimbus or to an external URL.
As for widgets, it is similar to what I was thinking, having the option to add in any custom item, whether test or HTML. If you take a look at my personal site http://kalistaimaging.com I have several custom module positions I have built into it to give more information and emphasis on the particulars we want put forth on the home page. Things we do not want our potentials to miss. ie, our Giving Back section and of course the new Bamboo and Acrylic Prints that are available have been showcased here with links to the specific product page it corresponds to. ect.
I think you should leave categories, but make it a bit easier visually to see categories and subcategories. We have our article system set up this way, allowing us to have a category for services and subsequent subcategories to explain each of the services int hat genre (catagory). Then if pages can show a category, sub-category or specific article, we would be able to provide information in a manner that best suits our business model. Leaving it only to tags (especially with auto tagging software active) pages will become jumbled with information that is not pertinent to the clients search.
Right text editor is fine, but if I am not mistaken, the way searching will work when bots are crawling the pages, they will pick out sections tagged as header. I am not sure if I an accurately explain what I actually mean, but can very easily show you the text editor we use on our sites now so you would know exactly what I mean. Article layout templates might be a good way to go too, we could also be talking the same thing in different manners so who knows.
Thanks for your response and your team is welcome to contact me. I am very open to testing and searching out issues that will arise. I know some of the issue we find with the system apply to larger studios with several brands and staff members with traveling equipment ect, but we honestly believe your company does have the best attitude in customer service only to be held back by digital functionality.
@Andrew, thanks. Yes, was able to get the galleries viewable in preview mode based on help from the Galleries thread, sorry I didn't come back here and update.
I think I'm going to have to stop using the ShootQ contact form then. The stuff I have there was specific to the Fall Season, and I'm already ready to change it. I'm not ready to publish my site using Nimbus yet.
Hi........I am starting to have an 'ahhhha' moment........I can see how this will be very good........I am really starting to like it!!! Please let me though what size is best for photos in the gallery.
Thanks
Hey Sally!
The slideshows should automatically resize your photos for you. Depending on what theme you're using you should be able to decide whether or not you need super high resolution versions of your photos or can have smaller ones. Generally speaking a good rule of thumb is to keep your image sizes to around 800px maximum, and that'll work for the free themes in there. For new themes we're working on for the system, we'll be offering full-screen themes that would be great for larger images.
Hope that answers your question! Please do let me know if you have any more questions! Have an awesome day!
Hi......just wondering about he 'pages' in settings........I want to add another page.......I have tried but can't seem to see it........how do I do this and will I see the new page on the navigation bar of the site??
thanks
:)
@Sally: Go to Settings > Pages and make sure the page you created is there. If it doesn't appear in the Navigation, go to Settings > Navigation, and create a menu item by first putting in it's name, then going over to select where it links to from the dropdown (you'll select Page), and then when the new dropdown appears select which page you'd like it to link to and click "Add Men Item"!
Best of luck!
Hi James.......worked like a charm!!! Thanks xo
Thanks, James. Sally, I want to make sure that's not confusing :) I'm going to make a note.
I've just started working with Nimbus, and it's definitely looking promising. I would love to see many more options for customization, but I understand that may take a while to implement. I have a few specific items that would make it much more useful to me, and some wishlist items.
*Homepage Slideshow option-I would like to be able to have a native slideshow on the homepage, instead of one static image, or needing to embed a slideshow from another site.
*Product Options Should Display on Public Pricing Pages
I know this is more of a ShootQ issue, but myself and several other users have been asking for this for ages in the ShootQ forum with no luck. What use is it to be able to set up product options when they don't display in contracts or public pricing pages? Actually, product options not showing up in contracts is an even bigger issue than it not showing up on the public pricing pages.
*Why does it say 'NEW GALLERY' above every gallery on my site?
*What happened to the full screen button that was on the galleries a couple days ago, and mysteriously disappeared?
Wishlist:
*SmugMug integration (probably a long shot since they could be seen as a competitor to Pictage for print fulfillment)
*Complete customization via editor or CSS
*Full Page Slideshow Option
That's what I have for now, it's definitely a good start, but not quite fleshed out enough for me to fully switch over just yet. And the product options thing, really, that's just annoying and I'm a little embarrassed for the team there that it's such a poorly implemented 'feature.' I have contracts that just say 11x14 Flushmount Album, because I was thinking that specifying 40 pages, and a brown leather cover would actually show in the contract.