BlueMelon News

Sell Photos in your Local Currency

2012-04-13T03:36:00.000-07:00

You can now sell your photo downloads, prints and gifts in one of the following currencies : USD, EUR, AUD, CAD, NZD or GBP. Your customers will certainly love seeing the prices in your local currency if you decide to make use of this new feature.

In your account there are only two changes you need to notice :

1. when creating a price list, you need to enter its name and currency

Each of your price lists can have only a single currency. Before this change, a new price list was created simply by entering its name. Now both the name and a currency are required.

2. when creating a coupon, you need to enter its currency as well as the usual characteristics

The coupons are now bound to a currency. A coupon in one currency cannot be applied to products sold in another currency.

Although you can have multiple price lists - each in a different currency - and apply them to various albums, your customers cannot combine products sold in various currencies within a single shopping cart. E.g. : if their cart contains a product sold in USD, they cannot add a product sold in EUR unless they empty their cart first. Each checkout is hence in a single currency and your sales page displays the profit, the net profit, and the fee in the currency of each sale.

When setting up your selling price, you specify it in the price list's currency.
This has a drawback for products provisioned by the lab, as their base currency is specified in USD. The base product price is always re-calculated according to the exchange rate at the time of sale. The consequence of this is that your profit can change according to the current exchange rate. If it happened that the exchange rate changed so as to put the sale price below the base price, the affected products would be disabled to protect you from financial loss. Your profit, will probably be large enough to compensate for the currency rate changes, but you are safe even if it is not.

The previously mentioned possible drawback of using a different currency does not affect digital downloads, as they have no base price.

USD remains our settlement currency and your profit as well as your payouts are calculated according to the exchange rate on the day of each sale. You can see each the used exchange rate on the sale details page by clicking "Show Summary". Payouts will also continue to be sent in USD as before.

The currency rate is updated twice daily. The used spread is 3% which is the spread we usually get from our payment providers.

The various currencies can have different processing fees and checkout options. Please refer to the feature list for details on fees and checkout options.

Single photo view redesigned

2012-02-16T08:06:00.000-08:00

The single photo view has been redesigned for a more pleasant, usable, and accessible browsing experience.

As you can see in the screenshot below, the "Like" and "Dislike" buttons have been moved into the new panel at the bottom of the page. A new button has also been added into this panel : "Comments". This button displays the comments side-panel which you can also see in the screenshot. The comments side-panel is hidden by default. However, you and your visitors can always see the number of comments on a photo is always visible in the button's caption.

The photo's label, its description, as well as the view and like statistics have all been moved to the new panel at the bottom. The panel will automatically stretch vertically to accommodate your description even when it takes up several lines. You can, of course, still conveniently edit your photo's title and description using their respective editing links next to them.

New styles available for photo home sections

2012-02-16T02:50:00.000-08:00

The homepage sections whose content are lists of photos have a new display style and new settings available. These sections are : Recent Photos, Most Popular Photos, Photos I Like, Featured Photos, and the Album Preview gadget. All of the sections are accessible via the homepage's "Layout" button.

There is a new style for you to choose from : "full width". This style displays your photos in the full width of your homepage content. The photos are not stretched if they are smaller than the required width, but with this style there is only one photo per row even if the photos are smaller than the full available width.

You can display up to five rows of photos in any of the sections and you can also have the photo label - either the title or the description - displayed below each of the photos. Unlike any other of the display styles, the new "full width" style allows you to directly edit the displayed photo labels conveniently from your homepage.

Changes to registrations and setting panels

2012-02-09T12:25:00.000-08:00

The settings have been made easier to manage and navigate in by being redesigned in a single consistent way. The setting panels for albums and categories have been replaced by setting pages which are very much like the Control Panel page, but with the respective settings for albums and categories. The settings are not only easier to navigate within, they also take up the whole page and are more usable and accessible than ever before.

The visitor registration settings can now be set for categories as well as albums and the whole account. The registration settings have also been simplified in there being only one form now - the settings simply change the display mode to either of : optional, mandatory, not displayed. Even when not displayed anywhere at all before the content is shown, you can still link your registration form from your custom menu, or your custom header or footer.

You can also leverage the standard setting inheritance which is applied to themes and privacy modes. As an example, you can set the visitor registration as optional for the whole account, but some categories (and thus also, the albums within them) will have it mandatory, while some albums will not have the form displayed at all. There is a multitude of variations on the example. It all depends on what you need, but it is there when you need it.

Mobile interface has been updated

2012-01-19T04:54:00.000-08:00

The whole BlueMelon mobile interface has been remade to better match the current design and usability standards, as well as support the wide variety of available mobile devices.

You can still switch between the mobile and the desktop interface, but you will find the mobile one to be much improved. New features for the updated mobile interface include :

The mobile interface now supports the voting 'like' button in albums where voting is enabled.

In the single-image view mode, you can swipe your finger to navigate among the photos on touch-enabled devices.

Support for visitor registrations where these are enabled has also been implemented.

Updated help section and a new support system

2012-01-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

We have moved both the help and the support system to a new provider.

The support has been moved into an external service. When you use the Contact Us link from any BlueMelon page or the Email Us link at the right side of any help page, you will be presented with the new support interface.

Before the email is submitted, the support system tries to intelligently suggest articles and questions from the relevant help section based on the content of your email in order to give you immediate answers whenever possible. People often ask the same questions which have been answered many times before. This may save your time by quickly finding solutions to your questions.

Moreover, the new support system makes it possible for you to easily write to us by replying to the support emails. You don't need to go to the support section to submit your replies anymore. You can also add attachments to your messages.

You can also use the new system to post a Public Question. If you feel your problem is of a personal character, simply use the first option. If you feel others may benefit from our answer, ask publicly.

The help has been updated and new sections have been added. You can browse the new help by topic or search.

We hope that the new help and support will help you use your BlueMelon account more efficiently and to the full.

New indication of your running processes

2011-12-30T03:26:00.000-08:00

Processing uploads, applying watermarks, and transforming photos (flipping or rotating them) all take time to finish. Until now, when you scheduled an operation, you had to check back if the operation was completed or not.

However, from now on, you can see an indicator of the status of all your currently running processes. The indicator shows the number of current uploads, photos to be watermarked, and photos to be transformed. The indicator is displayed in the top right corner of each BlueMelon page so that you can always easily find out when your scheduled processes complete.

Below, you can see a screenshot of the top-right corner when the indicator is displayed. The photo count is updated real-time, so you do not need to refresh anymore.

Rename your sections and hide the zoom icon

2011-12-17T06:20:00.001-08:00

We have just added two new customization options :

the hover zoom icon can now be hidden
the labelled homepage and category sections can now be renamed

The zoom icon is available when you point the mouse cursor over a photo - clicking this icon automatically displays the photo in the highest available resolution. The new feature works well with the right-click protection setting, since this prevents the visitors from right clicking the zoomed photo.

The second feature finally enables the BlueMelon users to arbitrarily rename any of their labelled homepage and category sections. To rename a section, simply point your mouse cursor over the section and click the displayed "Change Look" button. Within the panel that opens, you will find a text field for the section name.

A new access mode system

2011-12-04T07:42:00.001-08:00

Much like the themes (which are now available for categories as well), the access mode system has been upgraded to give you greater control over what of your content can be accessed by whom.

you can still use the standard password protection on the account-wide level

when someone tries to access any of your content, they are asked to enter your chosen password

each of your categories (including your homepage) can have an access mode of its own (public, private, unlisted, password protected)

when you create a new album and do not explicitly specify its access mode, it will automatically use the access mode of its parent category (or the homepage)

your albums can either use their parent's access mode, or have their own specified (public, private, unlisted, password protected)
each of your photos either uses its parent's album derived access mode or can have its own specified (public, private, unlisted)

When you unlock an album on the homepage which is password protected, and there are other albums with the same derived access mode within the homepage, they will be automatically unlocked as well. This is to spare your visitors the need to enter the same password all over whenever accessing a new album within a password protected homepage.

All in all, both you and your visitors will have an easier time and you will enjoy more freedom in how to set up your access settings.

Themes in categories and new theme system

2011-11-30T16:39:00.000-08:00

From now on you can also set a theme for each of your Categories as well. With this come a few changes in way the theme settings are applied to albums.

Until now, when you created an album, its theme was determined by the "theme" setting from the Control Panel's "Album Layout" tab. The new system applies the theme from an album's parent category to the album. You can still choose a different theme for each album, but an album on your homepage will by default have the theme set for the homepage. The same applies for your categories : an album within a category will have the default theme always equal to the theme set for the category.

To sum it up : whenever you change the theme on your homepage or a category, the albums within which do not have a theme selected will be automatically displayed with the new theme.

Enhanced order approvals

2011-10-31T16:37:00.000-07:00

Enterprise users can now set up manual order approval for both, digital downloads and prints & gifts. By default, the orders are sent to the lab automatically, but you can set up either type to be approved manually.

As far as digital downloads are concerned, your customers will receive a pending approval message. Within 7 days, you can review the order and replace the ordered images with higher quality, resolution, or re-touched images. The customers will receive the download links after you have approved all files or after 7 days.

Prints & gifts work the same way, but you also have the possibility of correcting the cropping your customers chose. Within 7 days, you can review each order, change the cropping or replace the ordered images with images of higher quality or resolution. The order will be sent to the lab after you have approved all files or after 7 days.

The 7 days limit is implemented to prevent your customers from waiting too long in case you cannot approve some of your orders.

iPhone and iPad Uploader released

2011-10-22T16:30:00.000-07:00

We have realeased our official BlueMelon Uploader for iPhone and iPad. BlueMelon Uploader enables you to directly upload photos from your iPhone or your iPad to your BlueMelon Photo Sharing account. You can select an album to upload photos to and use one of the two upload methods :

upload multiple photos from your camera roll
automatically upload a photo immediatelly after you took it

The process is simple : after you have installed the application, you simply log in with your BlueMelon login and password, select an album and start the upload.

You can also enable the auto-login feature to simplify the process even further if you use only one account.

New cropping display in the cart

2011-10-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

The cart display has been updated to make it easier for your customers to notice the current cropping of the prints and realize if they want to change it. The standard cropping link still works the same way and displays a panel that makes it possible for your customers to change the cropping to better fit their expectations. Clicking the print thumbnail with the cropping marker displays the same panel.

We hope your customers will find it easier and more comfortable to buy your prints. You can see a cart entry with the cropping marker below.

Account add-ons available

2011-09-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

From now on, you can use our new add-ons to upgrade your account without changing your account-level. The account add-ons can be found on the "My Account" page accessible via the "SETTINGS" top-menu entry. There are presently two add-ons available :

Remove "Powered By" Addon

This add-on enables you to de-brand and eventually re-brand your BlueMelon pages by removing the "powered by BlueMelon" from your custom footer. This is the only way to remove the text such that does not violate the Terms of use, so if you want to completely de-brand your galleries, this is the add-on for you.

High-Volume Seller Addon

This add-on effectively increases your profit by more than 3% by decreasing the service fees from the usual 12% to as few as 9% of the profit. Whether you are an able photographer or able salesman, you will definitelly profit from purchasing this add-on.

New theme enhancements

2011-09-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

Several major theme updates have been made :

All of the existing themes have been enhanced to enable you to present your photos in a more professional manner. In addition to the upgrade, there are three completely new themes available for you :

Vivid Colors

Wall

Nature

In addition to the possibility of creating new themes, you can now customize all built-in themes as well. To do this, simply :

apply the theme to your album or your homepage
open the Theme Designer using the "SETTINGS" menu at the top

The currently applied theme will then be available for you to edit with a preview of your last opened album or your homepage. You can - of course - save, import, and export your themes as before

Create custom content pages

2011-08-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

From now on you can not only customize your header and footer, you can also completely manage the content in between them! This can be achieved via the "My Stuff" menu's "My Custom Pages" entry. On the settings page that opens, you can create an unlimited number of your custom content pages with their own title, url, and content. The management page features a word-like editor which supports direct HTML editing as well as basic text formating tools and image insertion. Your page's url is automatically pre-generated for you according to the title you specify, but you can set your own this by simply typing any character sequence to the url field - invalid characters will be automatically removed or replaced.

The BlueMelon's built-in pages cover many of your common needs, but if you need to step outside the box, the custom pages are here for you.

Theme import and export available

2011-08-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

The theme designer has been improved to allow you to import and export your themes. Once you open the theme designer from the Control Panel or a theme selection panel, you will find two new buttons at the top of the designer page: one for import and one for export.

These buttons load and save a theme from and to your computer respectively. You can use the feature to back-up your themes, or to share your themes with other users. While there are only built-in themes publicly available as of the time being, there are new themes being prepared and these will be soon to be available for you to download.

Full-album download pricing available

2011-07-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

Until now it was possible to only sell digital photos one by one or in the form of packages. From now on, you can use your existing digital products (or create new ones) to sell all photos within an album.
When creating or editing your price list, scroll down to the products section and select the "Per-album pricing" option in the select-box on the right - you are now in the album-products editing mode. Then simply click the "Add Products" button to add one of your digital products. You can conveniently create a new product right from the price list editing page by clicking the "Create new product" button. After you have set your price, assigned and saved your price list, your visitors are now ready to buy your whole album for your price.

The "Buy" menu now contains a new entry on the left side - your album product. You can see an album product as it appears in the cart, in the screenshot below. Your coupon codes can of course be used with album-products as well - by setting a minimum order price limit, you can effectively restrict specific coupon usage to album-products.

Depending on whether you have manual or automatic order approval selected, you may be notified of a pending order. You can then replace your photos by higher quality ones or with software-correction applied. After your order has been approved (this happens automatically if you keep the default settings), your customer will receive an e-mail containing a link to the individual photos from within an album and a link to a zip-file containing all of the album's photos.

Photo selectbox available

2011-05-31T16:16:00.000-07:00

Using the new selectbox, you can select multiple photos from multiple albums and perform batch operations on them.

As can be seen in the screenshot below, the photos are selected and deselected by clicking a checkbox in the upper left corner of a photo within an album. You can also see that there are four buttons on the selectbox : "Owner's Tools", "Buy", "Clear", and the minimize button.

The "Owner's Tools" button gives you - as the owner - access to the common batch operations you may want to execute on the selected photographs : access mode change, geo-location update, description & keywords update, featuring the photos, and reorganizing them within the album structure.

The "Buy" button works the same way the classical "Buy" button but you need not select the photos, since they are already chosen and the best thing is that they can be chosen from multiple albums instead of only one.

The "Clear" button simply clears your selection and hides the selectbox, since it has no use without any selected photos. The last button minimizes the selectbox so that only the number of selected photos and a link to restore the selectbox are visible. The minimize button is especially useful when navigating between albums, since the selectbox is visible wherever you go.

You can have both, yours and others' photos, selected at a time and still use the "Owner's Tools" to manage your photos and the "Buy" button to add products of all the selected photos to the cart.

Customize navigation on your homepage and in the footer

2011-05-21T16:15:00.000-07:00

Now, you can customize links at the top of your homepage and also in the footer of all pages using the built-in pages, links to your albums, categories, or even external links - e.g. links to your own website.

The settings are available to power and enterprise account users via the "Menu Designer" entry which can be found in the homepage's "Tools" menu. Clicking this entry opens the "Menu manager" page in which you can add, remove, and drag&drop your custom menu entries. There are two menus available : header and footer menu. The header menu can be seen on the homepage only and the footer menu is visible on all pages.

You can choose from four menu entry separators and you can create entries linking to either of the pages mentioned above. Albums and categories have a convenient selector so all you need to get a link is point-and-click on the chosen item.

When you do not want the menus displayed, you can simply de-activate them and have them prepared for later. You can see the designer below.

Buy or Sell Calendars with your photos

2011-05-08T07:14:00.000-07:00

From now on, you can compose a monthly calendar using the photos on BlueMelon, or you can profit by setting your price and selling calendars. When creating a calendar, you can use up to 14 photos : one for each month and one for both, the frontpage and the backpage. You can find this product in the "Gifts" category in the "Various Gifts" tab. After you have selected your photos and the calendar, you can assign each of the photos to a month or a page.

Youtube gadget is available

2011-04-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

You can now use a new homepage gadget : "Youtube gadget". This gadget makes it possible for you to embed up to three Youtube videos in a row on your homepage. If you embed only one video, you can choose to either horizontally center the video, or align it to the left or right.

The section can have a title, you can set each video's dimensions in pixels, and you can also choose to display or hide the section's header.

All you need to embed a video is the video's URL or the video's embed code. You can get the embed code at Youtube and once you paste the code in the gadget settings panel, the relevant data are automatically extracted.

Just as any other gadget, this gadget can be added via the homepage's "Layout" drop-down menu. It can be added multiple times onto the homepage or any subcategory.

Three new homepage sections available

2011-04-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

There are three new homepage sections available : "Recent Public Photos", "Most Popular Photos", and "Photos I Like". Each of the sections contains a selection of your public photos and a link to a special album-like page containing the whole set of photos. The special pages can also be accessed via an optional menu which contains their links and a link to your guestbook page as well. To enable or disable this menu, click the "Menu" entry in the homepage's "Layout" drop down menu.

"Recent Public Photos" contains your publicly available photos ordered by the upload date.
"Most Popular Photos" contains your publicly available photos ordered by popularity. You can choose the ordering based on "likes" only, or the ordering based on the number of likes, dislikes, and comments. The ordering setting is available via the section's "Change Look" menu.
"Photos I Like" contains all of the publicly available photos that you have marked as "liked" - including other BlueMelon users' photos.

The special pages linked from these sections behave in the same way albums do and are rendered in the same theme as your homepage.

Registration available

2011-04-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

Power and enterprise users can now make it possible for their visitors to register with their BlueMelon accounts. The registration can be enabled for the whole account or for specific albums only. The registration can be mandatory or optional and the registration form consists of a heading and a message. During the registration you can request any of the following : name, e-mail, phone number, and answers to three custom questions. Each of the fields can be required, optional, or hidden. You can also set up notifications so that you receive an e-mail every time someone registers with your account and you can have their e-mails automatically added to your BlueMelon contact list.

After your visitors have registered, they can view your photos if the registration is mandatory. Once someone has registered, you can see them from the "My Stuff" >> "Visitor Registrations" page. On this page, you can see all of your registered visitors, their details, and the photos that they have marked as "liked". You can also add visitors' e-mail addresses to your contact list or remove registrations.

New 'Like' and 'Dislike' voting buttons available

2011-03-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

You can now give your visitors a chance to vote on your pictures they like or dislike by enabling the buttons 'like' and 'dislike' buttons displayed below each photo. Visitors can click any of these buttons to express their opinions.

The buttons can be both hidden, or only the 'like' button can be made visible for those who do not need a dislike option. The voting results can be also set up in a way as to 1. hide both like and dislike counts 2. show only likes 3. show both.

Once someone has liked or disliked a photo, the button is changed to a cancel link which makes it possible to cancel the choice for the photo. This feature can be used to either get others' opinions on your pictures, or as a means of communication with your customers who may select photos this way.

The buttons are displayed in the comments' section below each photo in the right bottom part of the website and the results can be seen above this section if you choose to have them displayed.