First, we’d like to thank all the people who took the time out of their busy schedules at WPPI to stop by our booth and talk to us! Many of you had questions, and we are happy to continue the dialog via our forum, or email or online chat. Second, we would like to thank everyone who entered our competition, we had over 400 entries in all, and have selected our winners at random.

The second place winners of our FREE two hour SEO consultations (worth $250 each) are:

Erich Chen

and

Jacob Marrow

The winner of our Grand Prize winner of a custom Identity from our sister company Identity Kitchen (worth $3000) is: Kristie Nicoll.

CONGRATULATIONS everyone!! We will be emailing the winners (or feel free to email us also!) so we can discuss details. Hope everyone is rested up after the crazy week at WPPI!

Did you know you can password protect any page or post in WordPress?

Just look over to the right as you edit any page. Under the Publishing area, you will see a section for “Visibility”.

Simply select “Password protected” and choose a password.

The content of the page will now be hidden unless you know the password.

We are so grateful to all the amazing people we met at WPPI. The response to our sweepstakes was overwhelming. We will be announcing the winner of the Identity from Identity Kitchen and the two SEO Consultation Sessions from our own Marty Thornley on Monday.

Thank you WPPI and all the amazing photographers we met!!

Video Home Pages

As of tonight, we have a great new feature that is requested often… Full screen video home pages!

(view on live site)

You can now choose whether to use the slideshow of images, like all sites have had up until now, or replace that whole area with a video.

Simply login and visit “BlogSite Options->Home Page Options”. Select which option you want and paste and embed code from Vimeo, YouTube or any other site. You will want to customize the code as you grab it and make it 1000px wide.

We recommend using the “New” embed codes offered by Vimeo or YouTube. Why? Because they will automatically provide replacement versions for mobile, iPhone and iPad. If you use the “old” versions you only get a flash player that will be unwatchable on some devices.

How do you know what the “old” or “new” emded codes are? They will ask as you grab the code from the site, but generally the “old” codes start with the word “embed” or “object”. The “New” codes start with “iframe”.

Full screen video on any page

Did you know there are lots of ways to add video to anywhere on your site, including a full page video?

Here is an example from our Latte Demo (view on live site):

Other Ways to add Video

You can add a smaller video to the side of any page (where the thumbnail image would normally go).

You can add video or any other embedded media anywhere in the middle of your normal page content with the embed shortcode.

There are lots of options, all of them spelled out on our “Adding Video” page on the support site.

Feeling overwhelmed by the idea of setting up your Photography Blogsite on your own? Wishing you could just sit down with someone and have them just setup your Blogsite and teach you the magic of WordPress? Have we got a deal for you! Purchase a Lifetime Membership of our Photography Blogsites for $499 – this includes our search engine optimized blogsite, any and all of our themes, 4 GB of hosting, our support, maintenance, upgrades and much, much more, with no recurring costs EVER – and we will give you one hour of our White Glove Service while at WPPI (worth up to $500). You bring us your photos, your colors, your logo (or studio name), your current blog login, and we will set up as much of your blogsite as we can in an hour. We’ll also walk you through all the amazing features and options built into our sites, including how to maximize our SEO tools. One-on-one!

Once you have purchased your Lifetime Membership, simply email us at info@photographyblogsites.com and we send you a password to sign into our automatic scheduler. Choose any available hour during the WPPI Trade Show, and get ready to be treated like royalty!