Author: rhaggart
If you have not yet upgraded to version 10 of Design X (information here) it has been released from beta and is rolled into this update.
If you have any questions or you need to report a bug submit a support ticket here:support.aphotofolio.com
You must login into your site admin and hit the update button under Account –> Notifications to receive these new updates. Always check your entire site after updating and be prepared to make minor adjustments due to unforseen configuration changes.
New Icons, Embed Your Blog, Fotomoto Update, Contact Form Deliverability, NavBar and Mouse Cursor Improvements
New Social Media Icons Added. We’ve added yelp, houzz, imdb, behance, digg, reddit, 500px, dribbble, ello to our list of available icons.
New Custom Colored Icons. We’ve added the ability to create your own 2 color icons. You can also scale these icons now.
New Circle Icons. The custom color icons come in square and circle.
Visit the social media icon section in the manual to see how these work: http://dxmanual.com/adding-social-media-icons
Embed Your Blog. You can now embed your blog on a text page within the site using our new “responsive iframe”. Go here to see how: http://dxmanual.com/embedding-a-blog-in-your-website
Fotomoto Update. If you are using Fotomoto to sell or license images we’ve made it so the Fotomoto cart only shows on images you’ve designated for sale/licensing. Go here to learn how: http://dxmanual.com/fotomoto-integration
Contact Form Deliverability. We are now using a 3rd party to deliver contact forms from your site to your inbox. This should improve deliverability dramatically. Simply update and you are good to go.
New Thin Navbar Icons. We have a new icon set for the navbar called thin. I think you will love it. Simply login into your admin and in the Layout panel under Navbar select Icon Syle: Thin. You can also now scale the icons.
New Navbar Spacers. We’ve added a spacer to the navbar options so you can further customize the look of your site navbar. Launch the Navbar panel in your admin and choose ADD + then change the button type to Spacer.
New Mouse Cursor Option. We’ve added none to the options for mouse cursor icons for a cleaner look (images still advance when clicking just no arrows or plus signs). In the Layout panel under Cursor choose Icon Style: None.
How To Update Or Switch To Design X
To add these new features to your Design X site log into your admin, select the account tab and you will see an update available under Notifications (unless we already updated you). You can also force an update using the same button.
If you are not yet using Design X and want to give it a try (it’s free and will not affect your current site to install and test) follow these instructions:
1. Submit a support ticket under the category Design X: http://support.aphotofolio.com
2. Visit the manual to learn how the admin works: http://designxmanual.com
3. You will receive an email with information on how to access the new design
4. Once you are ready to go live submit a ticket asking to take the new design live
Onward!
Rob Haggart, aPhotoFolio.com
We know you’re going to love this little detail that will help you customize the experience for the visitors to your site. We created new social media icons that allow you to adjust the size and color to match your branding and you can now choose between square and circle icons.
In addition to these new icons we added a few more that our clients have requested for Houzz, Yelp, Ello, IMDB, Behance, Dribbble, Digg, Reddit and 500px. Enjoy.
More Information on how to apply these to your site can be found on the manual: http://dxmanual.com/adding-social-media-icons
Scrolling Galleries
We’ve added 4 new transition types to our galleries including horizontal and vertical sliding. We’ve also moved control for the transition type to the individual media items (images, video, text or all three) so you can mix and match thumbnails with sliding, fading and now scrolling. We can’t wait to see what you will create with this cutting edge customization. 
Gif Thumbnails
Did you know the site thumbnails in sizes small, medium, large and xtra large are all automatically created on the fly from your original image uploads? Did you know you can also upload a custom thumb for each image instead? Well now you can upload a gif for your thumbs. Perfect for videos or simply wild looking thumbs… make spinning wheels to hypnotize your clients.
Index Gallery
Ever wanted to provide an overview of your work using thumbnails and text? Now you can with a new feature that allows you to create thumbnail links to specific media items (images, video, text or all three) within your site. Oh, the possibilities are great with this one! Watch this special video to see how to do it: vimeo.com/104355192 
Vertical Navbar
The navbar, providing all those important controls and information to your visitors, was always happy to lay at the bottom or top of your site. Now it can be stacked vertically on the left or right. The options keep growing… can’t wait to see what you come up with. 
Text Kerning
You know how much we like to control the look and feel of every single little thing on the site. Well now you can include the space between letters in your text, AKA: k e r n i n g. I know… what took us so long.
More, Always More
- Recently added a form viewer so you can see all your contact forms and who is emailing your images
- Galleries with a large number of thumbs will load on demand now
- Intro pages (logo, image or gif) can scale or fill now to fill all sizes of screens
- Landing media has new sliding transition options
- We’ve also done some code refactoring to increase site loading speed
Here’ the manual video showing all the new features: vimeo.com/104525689
We made a minor update to all the sites to fix a couple things:
1. We added a form reader to the admin so you can see when someone sends you a contact form (occasionally the contact forms can go to spam). There’s an added benefit to the form reader in that you can see when people are emailing your images to their colleagues.
2. Vimeo made changes to their video embedding and we made an adjustment on our end to ensure the videos do not have any issues.
As always we’re constantly making refinements and feature upgrades to all the sites.
Enjoy.
Could not be more proud of what our photographers have done with our software that resulted in 12 awards from PDN (Photo District News) for Best Website Design. In the last 5 years we’ve won 31 times.
We just made an update to our Design X iPad App which adds a couple great improvements.
- Custom Thumbs – All the custom thumbs you are using on your site for photos, videos, text pages and contact forms are now uploaded to the app.
- Multimedia Swipe – You can now swipe between images, videos, text pages and contact forms. True multimedia support.
Additionally there are bug fixes and an iOS7 update to keep up with the latest improvements from Apple.
Download the app for FREE here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hellowork-portfolio/id689700469
Announcing A Major Update To Our Design X Admin
The admin, which previously used flash to accommodate older browsers, has been completely rewritten from the ground up in HTML5. This update eliminates flash completely from our system.
You will not find a more advanced easier to use admin for building your site anywhere in the world. We have a Patent Pending on the unique and intuitive software we invented for building websites.
Sell And License Your Images Through Fotomoto
FotoMoto is a print-on-demad e-commerce widget that now integrates seamlessly with your Design x website. Signing up for an account with FotoMoto will allow you to sell prints and licenses (and other things if you are interested) to all the images on your site. This integration adds a cart to your navbar that launches a clean and simple sales window. This is the best solution we’ve found and we know you’ll love all the controls they offer.
Major SEO Update
We’ve been seeing and hearing about how well our sites are performing in google searches since we made a major structural change to the sites that allows search engines to crawl them better. Additionally we hired an outside SEO consultant to audit the sites and have made changes based on his recommendations. I know you will be pleased with how your site performs (given time for the search engines to do their thing) after this major SEO update
More… There’s Always More
Along with hundreds of under-the-hood improvements to Design X and a more intuitive user iinterface, we’ve also incorporated some new features:
- iOS 7 changes/fixes for iPhone and iPad version of the site to open the menu easier (you can optionally display the desktop version instead).
- Drag and Drop images, videos and text to upload to your media library.
- Unlimited potential for html embedding and css on the text pages.
- Access your admin from phones and tablets now (since it’s all HTML5).
- You can now have more than one contact form for your site all with different email addresses.
- Upload spots for iPad and iPhone logos plus adjustments.
- Fix for masonry thumbs to make the bottom straighter.
- Randomize landing page media button.
- Percentage can now be used in logo and menu settings.
Now that our entire system is running in HTML5 you should see faster feature updates from us. We’ve got a few already nearing the testing stage.
The best part for existing customers is all they have to do is hit the update button to gain access to all these new features. Updates come standard.
Domains will be disabled, if you don’t verify them
ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has new rules implemented where domain registrars are sending verification links out to the contact email listed for your domain name. If you don’t press the link the domain will be disabled after 15 days. We’ve seen a few customers who suddenly have their domain disappear and email shut off because of this. Don’t be one of them, make sure your contact information with your domain registrar (godaddy.com, namesecure.com, etc…) is current.
One of the most important parts of your website are the servers that deliver the pages to the internet. Since the very beginning we’ve worked exclusively with Rackspace to lease servers for our sites. Working with Rackspace allows us to continually upgrade the servers so they’re always the fastest most reliable we can get. Today we’re announcing two big upgrades to our hardware:
1. All demos and new signups are now on our new Everest server with the latest-greatest hardware. We’re in the process of moving all our existing sites there as well.
2. We’re attaching an Edge Cast CDN (the world’s fastest and most reliable content delivery network) to the front of the server to deliver files at 10x the current speed from locations all over the world.
Here’s a map of the different locations where your site files will be located giving you ultra fast service no matter where your clients reside.
We know how important speed and reliability is to our customers and this puts us in the very elite of website providers.
If you have any questions email them here: rob@aphotoeditor.com
Or visit YouTube: http://youtu.be/WrS77wlfzYw
