It’s no secret that we LOVE our ProPhoto Blog theme – we’ve been fans of Jared & the gang at NetRivet (the crew behind the whole thing) for years. Not only is it a great platform that’s been built & coded very smartly – it’s also SUPER easy to customize. They’ve included a wide array of point & click options within the admin panel to get things looking how you’d like – and then if you need to get super specific with the look it’s really simple to add custom CSS styles to the theme – which is LARGELY to blame for the custom look of our site.
By FAR, one of the most frequent types of questions we get from photographers is regarding specific customization questions relating to ProPhoto4. So, we thought we’d start compiling a Q&A here! If you’ve got a question, ask it below in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer it.
Also, if you haven’t purchased the theme yet – use the promo code “theyoungrens” to save $10 off the price of the theme.
On to the questions!
What design are you using? Is it one of the included templates?
Our site is a custom theme, built by us, but it’s based on the included theme “Elegant” which is sort of funny because it doesn’t look anything like that theme anymore!
How did you make the home-page on your portfolio so clean?
We made a “static” home page that has a post with a slideshow embedded in it – and then used CSS to remove the title & background elements. The ProPhoto crew has a step-by-step tutorial of how to do that here.
What plugin are you using for Facebook Comments? Do you prefer this over the standard comments?
We’re using the ever-popular Facebook Comments for WordPress plugin and there’s pros and cons for doing Facebook comments. The HUGE upside is that it makes it easy for people to have a discussion and make comments, and discussion is hugely important to this site. More important than tracking, SEO, and custom comment styling (all of which you lose when you do FB comments. Word on the street is that the ProPhoto gang is working on integrating Facebook comment right into ProPhoto, which would be HUGE.
We’re ALSO using a lesser known Plugin called Facebook Comments TO WordPress which basically watches the Facebook Comments plugin, and imports each comment into the wordpress database, so we can retain a copy of the comment. We’re not doing anything with this right now, but the hope is to develop something that will display these “backup comments” when Facebook is unavailable. Back burner for now, though!
Who did the graphic design / logo / graphics for your site(s)?
Our logo design was done by Tegan Laing, and then all the blog graphic design and concept was done by us, and was based on photographed images. We basically wrapped a present to look like our blog, took pictures of it in the studio, and then chopped it up in Photoshop to create what you see here.
I’m digging thee “love this” button that’s under each image on your wedding blog. How did you do that?
That’s the Image Voting plugin from Flaunt Books. It was really easy to install and customize with our own button. There’s a bunch of other things you can do with that plugin, including having it display your “most loved” images, but we choose to use it just to keep people connected with the images. The only thing it does for us is help us get excited about what images people are loving!
[more coming VERY soon]
If you’ve got a question about customizing ProPhoto4, ask it below in the comments and we’ll do our best to answer it.
Cheers!
Jeff
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Answered! Check the post!
What widget do you use under your photos with the love this link? It’s amazing!
Answered! Check the post!
What plugin are you using for your facebook comments? Do you prefer this over the standard prophoto comments?
Also, who did your logo/graphics?
Answered! Check the post!
Answered! Check the post!
I like how your contact for works. Is this a plug-in or special coding on your end? Thank you greatly in advance!
what slideshow plugin did you use for your front page slideshow? And how did you get the gift tag to stick over it?
how did you make the portfolio section? is that on the prophoto4 upgrade..the sliding chapters?
or the investment section?
Guys, this might seem like a stupid question, but at the top of each post, how do you get the title to appear on two lines. I thought it might work by hitting the return key (as you would do in Word for example) but that doesn’t work. Your help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Great question, Mike – you just enter
in the post title, where you want the line break to go. The post title field accepts HTML tags, and that’s a basic one.
Thanks Jeff, much appreciated.
Mike Cook Better yet, use the more-current
tag instead of the older
version…
Steve Post – what’s the difference between the two, in this instance? Curious.
Great question – it’s a plugin called SlideSharePro. It’s sweet huh?
What do you mean?
It’s a Plug-in called “Gravity Forms” and we LOVE it!
It’s the built-in ProPhoto slideshow. The whole image is the whole header – image, gift tags, wrapping, and all. That whole thing is changing. Does that make sense @[68603555:2048:Amy]?
Jeff, sorry, just one more question. When using the new grids in ProPhoto4 in the rollover mode, how do you control the text that appears? When I use them, I just get the title and the first few lines of the post appearing and I can’t see any way of controlling this. Thanks.
OOOOOO! That’s a good one, I’ll answer above soon but what we did is filled in the Excerpt of the post with what we wanted it to say. When you do that, it overrides what you’re currently seeing in your case (and auto-excerpt) with what you’d like (in our case, the location). Additionally the formatting is controlled via CSS.
Jeff, sorry, just one more question. When using the new grids in ProPhoto4 in the rollover mode, how do you control the text that appears? When I use them, I just get the title and the first few lines of the post appearing and I can’t see any way of controlling this. Thanks.
OOOOOO! That’s a good one, I’ll answer above soon but what we did is filled in the Excerpt of the post with what we wanted it to say. When you do that, it overrides what you’re currently seeing in your case (and auto-excerpt) with what you’d like (in our case, the location). Additionally the formatting is controlled via CSS.
@[64300092:2048:Jeff Youngren] yes – thank you… that’s what I ended up doing as well, switching my site to ProPhoto soon.
@[68603555:2048:Amy Lashelle Beckler] Sweetness. When are you going to come visit?
@[64300092:2048:Jeff Youngren] it needs to be soon. or … maybe I can convince all these slc photogs and have you guys come here
@[68603555:2048:Amy Lashelle Beckler] We’re in
Shoot us an e-mail & let’s chat!
Jeff Youngren you have on the investment section 3 links to categories on your blog..those links..are an option in the prophoto template or is custom css? i tried to make some in my blog..and well..did not work
)
Jeff Youngren Hey – I wonder where to find this Plugin? I can’t find it on the wordpress directory.
Now Facebook comments are integrated right in to ProPhoto 4! And ProPhoto is also archiving those comments like Jeff mentioned in his post, in case we need to revert back to WordPress or facebook goes down.
Hi Jeff. I would like to know how do you put the white border with logo in all of the images you post. Thanks.
Hi Jeff. We have just started using Prophoto, and are loving it. Thanks for all the tips. When you have images side by side have you dropped them onto a canvas? If not, how do you arrange your photos? Thanks
Hi Jeff, Ijust satrted my own blog using pro-photo and I wanted to set up a weekly newsletter (like you have) but I can’t quite figure it out. Currently I have an RSS with a feedburner account but that only seems to want to send every day. Can you send me in the direction of a tutorial?
Thank you tons!
Liz of seelizlove.com
Jeff – hey man. Your actual website – are the sections (weddings/engagements/investment) individual “pages” that you created? And how did you get each page to be a short size – by just having the background be a fixed image for each one? Hope you understand my question and THANKS!
@[64300092:2048:Jeff Youngren], I understand your answer to Amy’s question, but I’m curious how you get the links above the images to work if it’s part of a slideshow? Thank you!