The Official Fotojournal Blog

One of the most common emails we get from photographers is: “FotoJournal looks great and I’d love to switch — but can I import posts from my WordPress blog?”

Right now, the answer is unfortunately no.  But we’re working on it.  WordPress makes it super-easy to export your posts, pages, comments and more into a single XML file.  Our plan is to allow you to upload this XML file and load all that content into your FotoJournal blog.

We need your help!

We’ve got most of the importing functionality built.  Now we need to really test it.  Sometimes WordPress export files can be a bit … weird … and we want our import feature to handle all these weird situations correctly.  It would be a huge help if WordPress users could send us your XML export file for us to test.  The more files we can test, the more confident we can be in releasing this awesome feature.

How to export your WordPress blog

It’s very simple (see screenshot below).  In the WordPress sidebar menu, click Tools > Export, and then click Download Export File.  After downloading the export (usually named something like wordpress-07-12-2010.xml) email the XML file to info@myfotojournal.com.

(Click for full size)

Please note that we will be running the exports on our testing servers, not on your actual blog.  So help spread the word to anyone with a WordPress blog — we’re extremely excited about this upcoming feature, and we hope you are too!

You may not realize it, but FotoJournal allows you to display your photos in a slideshow within your blog posts.  You can do this with the + Attach Photos button when creating a post.  For more detailed instructions, have a look at our tutorial.

Today we pushed an update to the styling of the slideshows.  This update includes a more elegant interface and fixes some issues with photo alignment and sizing.  Extra special care was taken to ensure slideshows are as large as possible while accommodating both landscape and portrait photos, and making sure images are never cropped.  If a photo doesn’t fit perfectly, we simply scale it down to make it fit.  You might see some black borders around the photo in this case, but in our opinion this is a better option than cropping your photos to fit the slideshow.

This update affect the Single Column theme and Two Column theme.  If you’re using that theme, all your slideshows will use this sexy new style.  (The Grid Iron theme has a different style slideshow style, so it remains the same as it was).

Check out some of the demos and let us know what you think!

• Single column theme
• Two Column theme

It’s been nearly three months since FotoJournal officially launched, and equally long since our last blog post.  So it’s probably time for us to give you an update of where things are currently at.

Here are some quick stats:

• We have almost 800 bloggers
• Nearly 15,000 photos have been uploaded
• There have been about 3,000 posts published
• Almost 3,000 comments have been left

Again, we’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback we’ve received from new users.  It’s been very cool watching people sign up for free blogs, and then soon upgrade to a Hobbyist or Pro account — it means people are trying it and then finding it useful enough that they feel it’s worth spending their hard-earned money for added features.  That’s a really good feeling, because it tells us that obviously we are building something people need.

Since launch we have focused 100% of our effort on customer service: mostly answering emails, improving documentation, and fixing minor bugs.  We didn’t spend any time building new features.

After working on FotoJournal so intensely for the last year, we decided it would be beneficial for us to take a step back for a short time.  Anyone who creates can probably relate to this feeling: sometimes you end up staring at your photo/drawing/painting for so long that you loose sight of it.  Taking a short break is like pressing your mind’s reset button, and when you return you come back with fresh eyes and a new perspective.

The last few months have been incredibly rewarding and encouraging.  We have a stronger-than-ever vision of FotoJournal’s future and how to get there.

After much hard work and anticipation we’re proud to announce that now anyone can create a free photoblog with FotoJournal!

We’ve been absolutely amazed at the amount of interest photographers have shown in FotoJournal: there is clearly a demand for a better photography-blogging platform, and we think FotoJournal provides exactly that.  The feedback we’ve gotten from users has been especially encouraging to us, and has reaffirmed we’re on the right track.

Put simply, FotoJournal is the quickest & easiest way to create a professional photography blog.  We’ve got batch uploading, gorgeous customizable designs, custom domains, search-engine optimization — and lots more.  Be sure to check out our full list of features.

We heart our beta testers!

We particularly appreciate all the hard work put in by our terrific group of beta testers.  As a way to say thanks, we’ve given our most active beta testers a free, lifetime Pro account.  If you were a beta tester, check your email for details.  For more information on what’s included in the Pro account, head to our plans & pricing page.

Limited-time launch offer: save 60% on a Pro blog!

To kickoff our launch we’re offering a one-time offer: $80 for a full year of our top-end Pro account — that’s a $112 discount!  If you’ve been considering starting a photography blog, now is definitely the time to go Pro.  You even get a free 30 day trial, so there’s nothing to lose.

This offer is limited to 500 people and expires on April 30, 2010!
Don’t wait too long, because they’ve been going quite fast. Sign up today!

More on the way

The best part is, this is only the beginning.  We have loads of exciting new features on the way, and many ideas to enhance the growing FotoJournal community.  We’re confident that very soon FotoJournal is going to be the online community for both professional and hobbyist photographers - we hope you join us!

Happy blogging everyone!

Media can also view the official press release.

In preparation of our upcoming launch (seriously, it’s coming very soon) we’re asking for your help!  We want to set up some demo blogs in order to showcase our growing selection of Themes, and we thought it would be extra cool if those themes featured photography from the FotoJournal community.  This will be a fantastic opportunity to get your work in front of thousands of new eyes!

How it works

Send your photos to info@myfotojournal.com with Theme Photos as the subject line.  Each person can submit up to 10 photos.  Be sure to include your name and a link to your website or blog so we can properly give you credit!  Photos should be no larger than 900 by 600 pixels, and should not have a watermark.

Who can submit photos?

Anyone!  We think this is a great way to enhance our photographer community, and we welcome participation from anyone with an interest in FotoJournal.  So if you’d like to see your photography featured in one of our demo blogs, send them our way!

The fine print: all submitted photos will retain the copyright of the original photographer. By submitting photos you authorize us to publish them in our demonstration blogs. We will include proper attribution to you, and will not use your photos for any other purpose without express consent from you. We reserve the right to accept or decline photos at our discretion.

Last night was Launch Party, an event organized by Startup Edmonton.  We had a blast showing off fotojournal and talking with visitors and other local companies.  There was great music, food, and even free margaritas sponsored by Yardstick Software.

The turnout was spectacular — roughly 250 people attended, in addition to the investors and media. Here are the other companies that participated last night:

• Beamdog
• Connect13
• Edistorm
• Empire Avenue
• Mailout Interactive
• PureInbox
• Seek Your Own Proof
• SnowSeekers
• Yardstick Software

Rob and Lauren snagged some awesome photos and even managed to create a time-lapse video of the fotojournal table.

 Jon relaxing with a coffee while Kyle (happily) lugs the iMac.

Jon, Lauren and Kyle setting up the FJ table.

Wowzers, our logo printed on this pro looking billboard!

Kyle doing some last minute prep stuff.

Lauren mentally preparing for the crowd of people eager to see fotojournal.

Kyle looking like a deer in headlights while giving the 60-second “elevator pitch”

Jon articulating upon the finer points of fotojournal to a group of engaged visitors.

Our pal Greg K. after several margaritas

A huge thanks to the organizers Mark, Cindy, Cam, and Ken (not pictured below) for putting together such a high-class event.  Startup Edmonton is doing a great job of connecting the local entrepreneurial community, and we’re really looking forward to the next event!

Updates: be sure to check out what others are saying about Launch Party:

• Edmonton’s Rockstar Tech Community (Chris Labossiere)
• Launch Party Edmonton A Huge Success (Doug van Spronsen from Tech Vibes)
• Recap: Launch Party Edmonton 1 (Mack D. Male)

Our Beta program is coming to a close, which means we are very close to fully launching fotojournal.  And good timing too: Startup Edmonton, a local non-profit organization, is hosting an event called Launch Party, and fotojournal is one of the featured companies!

Here’s a bit more about Launch Party from the Startup Edmonton website:

Founded by local entrepreneurs, Launch Party Edmonton isn’t your typical networking or tech event. No formal presentations, no panels. It’s all about giving you the opportunity to meet our city’s brightest entrepreneurs and developers, demo their products, and celebrate everything that our startup community has to offer. And do it in a way that’s creative and interesting, celebrating with drinks, demos, and DJs to set the mood.

Launch Party is on March 3, 2010 at the Matrix Hotel.  Tickets are $10 and doors open at 6:30 pm, but media and investors get a sneak peak starting at 5:30.  You can read more about Launch Party and buy tickets here.

We’re very excited to be featured alongside some amazing Edmonton companies at such a cool venue.  And we would love to meet some of you fotojournal bloggers who call Edmonton your home.  Hope to see you there!

Once again, over the past few weeks we’ve been continuously rolling out new changes. Most of these are minor but are nonetheless important to improving the workflow and usability of fotojournal. You may have noticed these changes when poking around with your blog, but if not here’s a list of whats new:

Comment form remembers you

The comment form will now remember who you are, and if you are currently logged into fotojournal be able to tell who you are, when viewing another fotojournal blog.  Eventually we plan to roll this into the comments themselves so that your profile picture shows beside the comments you’ve left on other people’s blogs. 

This addition goes a long way to improving the experience when commenting on a blog.  These sorts of community-driven features should be as easy to use as possible, and we hope that this change encourages even more commenting on fotojournal.

New pinging system

Every time you publish a blog post we ping various search engines and blog indexing websites.  A ping is a message that tells the search engine your blog has been updated, and that it’s crawlers should come re-index your blog.  Pinging is an extremely valuable way of giving your blog maximum exposure to search engines.

We re-wrote our pinging system to be much more efficient.  Previously, we would send the pings as soon as you hit the “Publish” button.  This was convenient, but took a long time — you had to sit there and wait while fotojournal finished sending all the pings.  The new method involves sending the pings in the background after you publish.  This allows your post to be published almost instantly and have the fotojournal robots scurry around behind the scenes to notify the search engines of your new content.

Description/Avatar in blog theme

A new description and avatar (profile photo) section has been added to the blog theme templates (see screenshot below).  You can upload your profile photo by clicking the “Profile” link in the top menu of fotojournal, and you can edit your blog’s description by going to “Settings > Description” from the main fotojournal menu.

Post thumbnails

Last but not least, you can now assign a Thumbnail to a post, giving each post it’s own visual identity.  Think of the Thumbnail like an album cover: it’s one image that represents the whole post.  We have a lot of cool things planned for the Thumbnail feature, so make sure you add a thumbnail when publishing a blog post!

You can already see the thumbnails in use on our new homepage prototype, myfotojournal.com.  All new blog posts will appear on the homepage, along with the post’s Thumbnail.  (If you don’t choose a Thumbnail, you just see that boring grey box!)

To choose a post Thumbnail, simply click the “Thumbnail” tab when writing a blog post.  You can check our Wiki for more information.

That’s all for now!  Stay tuned, because we have a lot more stuff coming down the pipe very soon.

Here’s a handy resource for all the fotojournal users out there! We recently started a wiki that will include a lot of tips and tutorials for how to use fotojournal to it’s fullest potential.

Here is the link: http://fotojournal.pbworks.com/

At the moment there is a quick guide for getting started, as well as a really thorough article regarding how to edit the design of your blog. It covers changing and adding themes, and uploading header photos and your logo.

Make sure to check it out, and create an awesome custom design for your blog!

This wiki will be continually updated, so feel free to leave a comment or contact us if there are any articles you’d like to see added!

We recently pushed a big “under the hood” update to our Theme engine, which we’re very excited about.  It’s going to make a lot of cool new things possible.  One thing it allows us to do is create totally different layouts.  Until now, we had only one layout available: the single column theme.  Even though it’s a good theme for many photographers, it’s not perfect for everyone.  The update allows us to create all sorts of different layouts really quickly, which can then be customized further using our Theme Editor.

The first new layout is a simple two-column layout.  Here are a couple of the two-column designs we’ve made so far, but this new update allows us to create more extremely fast, so keep an eye out for new ones.  Give them a try!

Another thing different about this two-column Theme is that the Menu doesn’t contain Tags / Archives links.  Instead, those are shown in the sidebar and the Menu just shows posts you’re using as pages.

As always, let us know if you have any comments or suggestions regarding designs you’d like to see.  And stay tuned for more cool Theme stuff coming soon!

Please view our wiki for instructions on creating a new theme.