Phanfare Blog - Latest Comments in Open public albums are back!

Re: Open public albums are back!

Mark — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:26:28 -0000

I have to say that I'm less than impressed with the security options, even post the changes.

I have a group of friends and relatives I originally sent a link and a password to, to give them access to my group of albumns - it was that simple. No registration (which even most technically savy people hate these days anyway!), no fuss, no mess!

I don't want to give my albumns acccess to 'public' to do this - thats not what I used to do at all either!!!

Please just fix this, renewal time is coming around,
and my family has just stopped using this site as 'too hard'...and given they are varying degrees of technical savy thats not a good sign..!

Why not just alow people to choose how they give security to their content?? I know that social network registration is a way of marketing as well, but thats what adding comments, etc is there to force people to do.

That password facility was why I payed the dosh, and its why I (hopefully!) will upon renewal..!

People just want a way of being able to grant a group of users access to a group of content....

Why not just change your existing system slightly...
allow the administrators to create a user called 'password1', 'password2', etc (which can be granted rights just the same way as real users with the current system!) - and have a slightly different front-end link for those type users??

many thanks!
Mark

Re: Open public albums are back!

Stephanie Anderson — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 11:43:33 -0000

Would love the see the Password Protected option come back. I'm so happy with Andrew and the team and that would definitely be the cherry on top. Getting that option back is a huge plus for me.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Techphobic Family/Friends — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:06:43 -0000

Love Phanfare 2.0!!!!!!!! With all the functionality AND open albums back in the picture, it's *great*!!!!

Re: Open public albums are back!

Josh — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:28:13 -0000

We just had our account converted to 2.0 (without notice...the site just went into maintenance mode). The result is not pretty.

I'm a .NET developer and understand wanting to move to a WPF application (the framework the new desktop client is written in), but comparing it to the 1.X client is embarrassing. There is fuzziness on nearly all text, the images are slow to load, and most importantly from a usability aspect there are buttons all over the place, non-standard menus, etc.

Desktop client aside it appears that images that are web-linked are served up at a lower quality than in the past. The images on our blogs (which we will have to update all the links to) are not as sharp and vibrant as they once were.

We left Phanfare once due to the looming 2.0 changes and moved to SmugMug. I enjoyed the ability to highly customize the albums, etc, but it lacked the central, well-designed client application that Phanfare 1.x had.

Once you guys relented on some of the more 'aggressive' changes to 2.0 we moved back. Now I'm looking for another good home because while I can live with a work in progress, I don't get the feeling you guys have the same goal as I do. A simple, clean, unobtrusive way for me to archive and link to my pictures.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Techphobic Family/Friends — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 08:35:05 -0000

Hi Bo, I've had very responsive service from Phanfare support (Support@phanfare.com). I was initially leary about email-only support (having experienced very good live phone help from Phanfare at one point), but I've had 24-hour (over weekends) or same-day responses over email, and really no complaints. I hope Andrew or others see your post and can address your questions soon.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Bo — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:21:45 -0000

I have tried contact Phanfare with many emails and no respond! I guess they don't want me as a customer for some reason. At least they could answer and say that or perhaps why.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Sheila — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:55:47 -0000

I would also like to see password protected albums return.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Marc — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:48:13 -0000

I would also like to see password protected albums return. I'm a Phanfare lifetime member and am glad to see the return of public albums but I also like some of the social networking features.

I manage the website for a swim club and the members would like have a place to view photos. I would like to recommend Phanfare, but albums would need to be password protected. I don't want to ask over 200 families to create Phanfare accounts or manage that many email addresses. Without this feature I would have to go with SmugMug or Zenfolio which I don't want to do. Is there any way to still sign up for a 1.0 account until this feature returns or the pro account is available?

Thanks,

Marc

Re: Open public albums are back!

Janet — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:24:35 -0000

Hi Andrew,

Thank god! I actually switched everything over to zenfolio, but after reading this, I am back in action. Your site is far more superior, and now with open albums, I am your customer once again.

Thanks!

Janet

Re: Open public albums are back!

Andrew Erlichson — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:37:04 -0000

Right now, your content will not be indexed by google even if left public because we have a directive in the pages to not index our public pages.

For people using open URLs because they are easier to navigate for grandma, and are hoping for security through obscurity, our current setup is probably best.

For people who are hoping to get a large amount of traffic from anonymous people, not allowing google is not good.

In 1.0, we had it as a setting.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Techphobic Family/Friends — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:13:07 -0000

Will, you have raised a very good question. Andrew, when you have a moment, can you please address the Google index question he raised. Thanks so much.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Will — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:53:27 -0000

Are albums marked as Public indexed by google in .2x?

Re: Open public albums are back!

Andrew Erlichson — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:28:41 -0000

Will,
flattening friends/family and turning it into full access control lists is not off the table. we just need to balance that request with other things people want us to do.

Stephen,
I hear you that it is easier for grandma to just type in a password. the integrated emailing of invites with isolated links should help a little bit. we are considering a pro version that might include passwords (and not include the social networking features). let us turn off 1.0 before we settle this. also, consider putting one of the screensavers on grandma's computer.

Brian,
Teddy Roosevelt was right. And 2.0 was a good swipe at attempting to make phanfare a media play - and I think the more network-oriented features we created will be an important differentiation and barrier to entry for competitors in the long run. But phanfare is no media play right now and we are going to return to our normally scheduled programming of focusing on people who will pay to keep their photos and videos in the cloud and expect/want better service and more control.

we are considering creating a pro version of phanfare and it would cost more - helping us and giving us a separate revenue stream against which to evaluate more pro-like requests (not just businesses, but people who buy the pro version of products, like me!)

the basic answer to 'how are you going to make money' is the old fashioned way, by increasing revenue and cutting costs. we already have margin on every account sold. we just need to sell more accounts. and one good way of doing that is by delighting customers, versus pissing them off by removing features they liked. so lesson learned there.

Phanfare is a bit of a collective. We DO have the best tools on the planet, period. and we all have our photos and videos here. we will do the hard work of getting the company profitable so Phanfare does not go away. We have lots of dry powder and amazing people. It is fully possible.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Brian — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:15:33 -0000

...that was supposed to be "...permanence...."

Re: Open public albums are back!

Brian — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:56:12 -0000

Andrew:

I can't help but ask, "What happened to Teddy Roosevelt?"

I was a fierce, angry critic of your elimination of public albums. So, let me say thank you for listening to your customers.

We had begun the process of transitioning to SmugMug. But, my wife and I will now remaing paying customers of Phanfare.

I hope that the move to restore public albums presages a different customer-facing posture for Phanfare moving forward -- that when making or contemplating changes to Phanfare that fundamentally alter the manner in which users interact with its services, you reach out to customers BEFORE deciding to embark on that change.

Your mention above of polling customers re: the pro pack hints at just that sort of change.

Let me ask this -- in your response to my original, angry posts about the death of Phanfare 1.0, you wrote that the business "was losing money and not growing fast enough". Now that you've restored the public album functionality, what are your plans to address this problem? Is it that you hope a large percentage of the 125,000 people who were exposed to Phanfare by being forced to create accounts will now become paying customers? Is it changing the pricing structure to get fees from "low storage" users, with a graduated fee schedule for "moderate" and "high" storage users? A mix of the two? Something else?

Those of us who pay for your service want it to succeed -- if for no other reason than we've invested time and energy in developing online photo albums that can be shared with loved ones, and we'd prefer not to have to duplicate our efforts by transitioning to another provider.

So, let me also offer this -- I think that many of us who pay for your service -- because we find it valuable and easy to use -- would pay more for it if such were necessary to secure Phanfare's financial viability.

Currently, we pay $54.95/yr for your service (unlimited storage). That's what -- $4.58/month? I pay more than 3 times that monthly for Netflix, and I don't get nearly as much enjoyment out of Netflix as I do out of Phanfare.

Also, you write in one of your blog posts of no mainstream business cracking "...the code of creating a mainstream service that preserves fullsize original media for the consumer and is free for all to use."

I think the assumption you make about the service needing to be "...free for all to use" doesn't apply to YOUR customer base. Those of us who put albums up are a special, niche customer base -- We're not teenage FLICKR customers throwing some random, small number of cell-phone photos up on the web for the hell of it.

We're families who are using Phanfare as an alternative to the age-old practice of pasting photos into large album binders to be shared with family members during holidays and other gatherings. Or we're professionals seeking a home for galleries that can easily be perused by potential customers. We're interested in something robust, easy to use, easy to access, but more permanent, too -- and not necessarily free. I think we're willing to pay for permance and ease of access for our viewers -- and I think we'd be willing to pay more. Just something to consider....

Re: Open public albums are back!

Stephen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:47:18 -0000

Here's my 2 cents for Passwords coming back. I use my phanfare account for storing, organizing , and sharing my family photos....with family. Now, I have plenty of family that are young and tech savvy who have no problem registering with phanfare and being a part of the "social networking" thing. However, there are many people in my family who (forgive the generalizations here) old and not very computer literate. They don't now how to do much except check emails and simple browsing. They aren't comfortable registering and using a system as interactive as a social networking platform. I liked how before I could just send them a link to go to with a simple password. I am weary of making my albums 'public' with no password protection (I don't need/want just anyone viewing them). My 'old' family member can handle a simple password. Anyway...it would be nice to bring them back....the more options the better; not all Phanfare users are created equal.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Will — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:08:21 -0000

Hi Andrew, can I try to give another quick poke to support the flattening of connections thing?

You said, "But you do get more control and the viewer gets more convenience if privileges to locked down albums are based on registered users accounts. For one thing, if you track multiple phanfare users, you can see all the albums with just one password, a password which you can reset if you forget it, since it is associated with your account."

I totally agree and that's why I'm not clamoring for passwords. But I am clamoring for the flattening of connections because of both the

(1) benefits of the registration (like you said, a lot more convenience: just one password rather than a dozen different site passwords--not to mention per-album passwords).

and

(2) the current system's limitation. There is no way to share an album with just one or just a handful of people from within the Phanfare network. Yes, you could email isolated album invites but this requires the invitee to keep track of the email messages which contain their album invitation links. Or perhaps they could bookmark them in their browser. Either way, it's not very convenient. If registered user A has shared ANY albums with registered user B, then B should see ALL of the albums that A has shared with him just by logging in with his one password. This is why you have had so many confused users who were trying to use Groups as a way of sharing albums with a specific subset of their connections (remember things like "Jack's college friends"?). The strict, uncustomizable, Friends & Family model has led to this. When one wants to share some albums (not necessarily related, or otherwise not suitable for a Group) with just a few people, the registration system is no better than the password system--the one that you know is clunky and inconvenient. Keeping track of passwords or keeping track of email invites... it's like six in one hand, half a dozen in the other.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Andrew Erlichson — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:21:37 -0000

Mr not-impressed,
The windows client uses a new style that Microsoft has encouraged. We appreciate the feedback on you feeling it is fuzzy. The web client has taken a huge step forward in this release. Try that too.

As for offering simple password protected albums, we may bring this back. But you do get more control and the viewer gets more convenience if privileges to locked down albums are based on registered users accounts. For one thing, if you track multiple phanfare users, you can see all the albums with just one password, a password which you can reset if you forget it, since it is associated with your account.

In terms of a refund, Phanfare offers pro-rated refunds and we will be happy to provide you one. We have only had 2 chargebacks since we started business in 2004. We don't charge people money who are unhappy.

Explain your need for password protected albums. Maybe there is a workaround that we can suggest.

Re: Open public albums are back!

not impressed — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:21:34 -0000

Phanfare still hasnt won me back. For one, I now don't feel comfortable building up a huge base of photos and work on a system that apparently can and will change all its good features in a heartbeat without asking anyone.

2) The new app/admin sucks. First thing I noticed is its bloaty, slow and the text is fuzzy. The old one was lean and mean- this is horrible.

3) Yeah you can make your albums public now.. 100% public that is. Where's the password option? Thats the main reason I paid you guys $70. I wanted publicly accessable galleries I could password protect. Now I've got pedos coming off of googles looking at my kids. Great- thanks.

4) Just because you're giving me back a half-assed version of what I paid for doesn't square things up with me. I'm going to ask for a full refund.. if I don't get it, the charge will be disputed. Then I will watch over time- as I remain a smugmug user (theyve got their problems- no userside app for one.. try rotating a photo sometime.) until I see that everything has been fixed. Then.. IF smugmug hasn't added all the features I needed by that time, I might switch back- but that of course, depends on how you handle my refund.

Bring back the password protection option in the next 3 days and I may reconsider- but we all know thats not going to happen.. seems it takes 3 months and a near riot to get these things done.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Andrew Erlichson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 23:44:37 -0000

You can email unregistered users today using wit an isolated link. Some time in June, we will release a new version of Phanfare that will allow you to email isolated links from the web client. The PC and Mac clients bring up the appropriate web page in the web client.

Re: Open public albums are back!

Don — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:16:44 -0000

Andrew,

Thank you for making this most recent change, I look forward to continuing the use of this service. Regarding email invitations to unregistered users, when and how might this be accomplished? An update to the mac/pc client?

Thank you again!

Re: Open public albums are back!

David — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:41:07 -0000

Answers from the CEO in 20 minutes, this is what I call support!

Re: Open public albums are back!

Andrew Erlichson — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:53:37 -0000

Login at www.phanfare.com
click on My photos and videos->edit albums
click on album sharing on top right
choose 'public' at the top to make all the albums public.

Re: Open public albums are back!

David — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:36:28 -0000

This is good news but how do I share all my albums (that I created in 1.0). Should I go to each of them?

Thanks!

Re: Open public albums are back!

Andrew Erlichson — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:05:59 -0000

Well, we estimate that about 20% of our customers are business users. We plan to poll our customers in a few weeks to figure out what a prod product would look like if we were to do it.