Help and Frequently Asked Questions

General Assistance

Registration

Registration is fast and simple. We don't ask for much information - just the bare minimium.

The most important part of your registration is your Nickname. This is what will be presented to the public and other Village.Photos members. It's also used for sharing to social media, as well as friendly URL's and SEO optimization. Please use only numbers, letters, and spaces in your Nickname.

Examples are "Jimmy Joes Studio", "Mikes Gaming League", or "Betsy Dean Photography".

After providing your nickname, there are two methods to complete your registration:

Method 1: Manual Registration
You can register by providing the remaining information on the form - your First Name, Last Name, Email address and Password. Click 'Complete Registration' when you have finished providing this information.

Method 2: Connect using Facebook
If you are a regular Facebook user, the quickest registration method is to use Connect using Facebook. This will use your basic Facebook account information to create an account on Village.Photos.

You will also be prompted to approve our application to connect with your account. Our application has been reviewed and approved by Facebook, and we don't scrape any of your information we don't need - we only collect your Facebook ID, email address, and name. We won't post to your wall or perform any Facebook activities that you don't initiate.

If you have provided a valid Nickname, click Connect using Facebook. If you're already logged into Facebook, your account will automatically created after being prompted to approve the permissions we need to connect to your account. If you're not logged in, you'll be prompted by Facebook to enter your login credentials.

When using the Connect using Facebook method, when you return to the site you can log in with a single click in the Login process. Click Login in the upper right corner of the site, then click "Connect using Facebook" to be logged in.

Your Portfolio

Your portfolio page is the first page you see after registering or logging in. Think of this as your Home page on the site.

The main parts of this page are:

Cover Image Area
- This area contains your portfolio cover image - either the default image or the one you've assigned.
- Your Avatar - either the default, your uploaded avatar, or your Facebook profile picture.
- Link to your About / Bio page
- Link to your Articles
- Link to your Albums
- The total number of photos in your account
- The number of fans you have (coming soon)
Photo Albums - all of your photo albums, public, private, password-protected, and mature - are listed here. The public will not see private albums listed here.
Create New Album button
URL Details - the URL to your portfolio which you can share with others, on social media, via email, etc.

Creating a Photo Album

Your Portfolio Page has a "Create New Album" button on the top right, under your cover photo. Click this to open the "Create an Album" dialog.

Once you have created at least one photo album, you'll be ready to add photos.

Album Name
This is where you enter an album name, the only required field on this dialog. This name you pick must contain at least one letter or number - but other symbols are permitted.

The URL to your new album will be a "cleaned up" version of the album name. Characters and symbols other than A-Z and 0-9 will be replaced with a dash.

Description
In the "Create an Album" dialog, you can add a description. This description will appear under the albums' title when viewing the album, and will also be used for search engine indexing.

Additional Album Settings

Meta Keywords and Meta Description
These settings are what are encoded into the web page for the album, and help significantly with indexing your content on search engines.

Contains Mature Content
You should check this box if your album contains Not Safe For Work photos. Failing to check this for albums that do contain content which should only be viewed by adults will not result in penalties, but if we receive reports we may check this flag for you.

Private Album
Checking this box will prevent people from directly accessing the album page - or seeing this album listed on your portfolio. Only you will see it, when you are logged in.

Require Password?
Check this box to require a password to view the album. A "Password" entry box will appear, and you can specify a password up to ten characters long. You can share this password with people to grant them access to this content.

Managing a Photo Album

Adding Photos

Adding photos to your album is a breeze. After logging in, or from anywhere on the site, visit the album you want to put images into. If you haven't created your first photo album yet, see the section on creating albums - it only takes seconds.

Once you have at least one photo album, you're ready to go. Go to your Portfolio page (your home page on Village.Photos), and you'll see a list of your photo albums. Choose an album to add images to by clicking on it.

Once you're in the album you want to put images into, you have two options to upload images. The option you choose depends on the way you're accessing the site, either PC or mobile device.

Drag and Drop (Desktop or Laptop PC's, Windows Tablets, iPads)
This is the best way to upload photos. Its fast, has progress indicators for each file, supports multiple file upload and more. Your device must have file browsing capabilities to use this method.

Look for the yellow box that starts with "Drag image files here." That is the target "drop zone" for drag and drop uploading.
Open Windows File Explorer (Windows) or the Chooser (Mac) on your computer. Navigate to the file(s) you wish to upload.
Select the file(s) you want to upload. You can select more than one file by holding down the CTRL key (PC) or Option key (Mac).
Resize and position the File Explorer (Windows) or Chooser (Mac) window alongside the Village.Photos window, so you can see both. You only need to see a part of the yellow "Drag Image Files Here" box on Village.Photos if you don't have enough room.
Click and hold on the files to upload, then drag them from your file browser, over to the "Drag Image Files Here" box.
Let go of the mouse button to being the upload process.

Browse and Upload Single Image (best for mobile devices)

Look for the yellow box titled "Drag Image Files Here."
Click the Browse button in that box to open the File Explorer (PC) or Chooser (Mac).
Click once on the image file you want to upload, and click "Okay" or "Select" on the file browsing dialog.
The File Explorer / Chooser dialog will close.
Click the Upload button in the "Drag Image Files Here" box to upload your image.
After uploading, the page will refresh and you will be able to see your newly added image.

Manage Album Images

Use the "Manage Album Images" button, on the top right of each album page, under the cover, to manage all of the images in a single album at once. This is where you remove images, set titles and descriptions, and more.

Removing an Album

You can remove photo albums any time, but first the album must be empty. To remove images from an album, use the Manage Album Images button to remove images.

Once an album is empty of all images, that album page will now contain a "Delete This Album" button on the top right, under the cover photo. Click that, and click Okay on the warning that pops up, to permanently remove this album.

Note - once an album is removed, it cannot be restored. You can create a new album with the same name, but we cannot "undelete" albums or the images.

Manage Image Settings

Open the Manage Image Dialog

There are many important settings you can use on images. Open the 'Manage Image' dialog to view and change these settings.

Visit the album which contains the image you want to adjust settings on. Click on the image, which opens the "lightbox" view. If you're logged in, and if this is your album, you'll see an edit (pencil) icon on the top left of the lightbox display of the image.

Clicking the edit will open the Manage Image dialog. This dialog has many settings, such as the Name of the image (which appears at the top of the lightbox display, the photo's description, privacy settings and more.

Name: This is the name of the image as will be shown to your visitors. It will appear in the top of the lightbox, as well as on the image viewing page. It's also used for social media sharing and linking, and is what other people will see - "John Doe shared 'IMG_6668.JPG' for example. The name is also used in meta tags, page titles and therefore important in search engine results.

Description: The description of the image is also presented in the lightbox, under the photo, as well as with any social media sharing or links. This is also important for search engine optimization, and will be indexed along with the image.

Privacy Settings: Changing the privacy of an individual image from its default Public setting will hide it from anyone but yourself, when you are logged in and viewing an album. Additional advanced privacy features are coming soon.

Use for Portfolio Cover: Check this box to use this image as the cover phot on your main portfolio page. Adjustments to your cover images are described below.

Use for Album Cover: Check this box to use this image as the cover phot on for the current album you are viewing. Adjustments to your cover images are described below.

Available for Purchase: Our ordering option is in development and not yet available. Once it is ready, you can use this option to make this specific image available for purchase.

Base Price: When our online ordering option comes online, customers will able able to order prints (and other products) of this image, if you've made it Available for Purchase. The "base price" is the amount, in US Dollars, that will be added to the cost of the product being purchased. All products, prints, canvases, mousepads, etc., will have a specific cost, depending on the product type and size. The base price you set will be added to the specific cost of each product to determine final pricing. The base price is the amount you will receive when online ordering is available.

Share this Image: See the section below titled Direct Linking an Image for information about using the direct image link we provide for embedding images into other web pages or applications.

Direct Linking an Image (Embedding an image on another web page)

You can directly embed images into other pages by using the image URL we provide in two places.

The first place is in the "Manage Image" dialog, under "Share this Image." You can read the "Manage Image" dialog in two ways.

By visiting the album that contains the image, then clicking the Edit icon you see in the top left of an image when you hover over it.
Or, view the image in "Lightbox" mode, by clicking on it (the screen will go dark and show just the image and details). Look for the Edit icon in the top left corner.

In the Manage Image dialog, at the bottom, is the "Share this Image" section, which contains a URL directly to the image.

Alternatively, you can get to the image URL by viewing the image's page.

Visit the album which contains the image.
Click the image to view it in "Lightbox" mode.
Click the "Zoom" icon (magnifying glass).

This will take you to the page dedicated to this image. Above the image, are two URL's. The first is the direct link to the image, which can be used in an HTML image tag:

<img src='(image url here)'/>

Or with EZCodes:

[IMG](image url here)[/IMG]

For either of the locations we provide the direct URL, simply highlight the URL in the textbox, and press CTRL-C (PC) or Command-C (Mac) to copy the URL, so you can paste it using CTRL-V (PC) or Command-V (Mac) into another application later.

Replacing an Image File

There may be times when you need to replace an existing image file, in place, without resetting the associated data (views, likes, shares, direct links, etc.) of the original image.

You may also want to upload a higher-resolution version of an image for print sales.

Use the "Replace Image" feature to upload a new file, and overwrite the existing image file(s) without losing any other data. All of the meta data associated with the image will remain intact.

We always retain the original image uploaded, without altering the file, but in cases of extremely large image files, we do create a "view" version of the image, for faster loading times. This reduced version of the image is stored with a different filename, is used for direct linking.

Normally Direct Link URLs will not change, although the original image may be cached, by your browser, your ISP or a proxy server. It may take a little time for the new image to appear when it's direct linked.