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?????