• About
• Features
• Tech Specs
• Demo Website
• Requirements
• Get Web Hosting
• Get Design Services
• Sell Photos Online

• Further Info
• About Pixaria
• Privacy
• Send E-mail

• Feeds
• Pixaria News
• Documentation
• Twitter

• Works With

Offline Between June 5th and 12th

From Saturday June 5th until Saturday June 12th, I will be on vacation in Turkey for a friend's wedding (no, I'm not the photographer!).

During this time, I may not be able to respond to e-mails or purchase notifications for up to 48 hours. If you buy Pixaria Gallery during this time, please note that I may not be able to provide you with your software immediately so please be patient.

Pixaria 2.8.7 Now Available

I'm delighted to announce the immediate availability of Pixaria Gallery version 2.8.7 which is primarily a maintenance release rather than a 'new features' release and which will be the last update for a few weeks owing to personal commitments.

With this update, I've taken a bit of time off my main development roadmap to respond to feedback on a range of smaller requests for enhancements.

The first area where I've made improvements is in the gallery admin tools. The last update made a number of changes to how nested galleries are handled in Pixaria's database which are designed to improve the performance of the front end of the site. In this release, I've implemented further changes that speed up many gallery related operations in the admin area too and which will pave the way for much improved gallery organisation tools for administering gallery ordering and display.

For users with certain types of digital cameras, the image import and upload system in the admin area now supports automatic image rotation for images containing embedded EXIF orientation metadata and I've added some other fixes for issues with the Flash uploader when mod_security is enabled and for image resizing when files contain large volumes of IPTC or XMP metadata.

I've also implemented a new slideshow system in the front end which I feel offers better performance and design than the previous system based on 'Lightbox2'.

To get this update, please drop me an e-mail at upgrade@pixaria.com and I'll send the new version to you. As always, please take a moment to check out the release notes and change log before upgrading as these contain full details of all the modifications in this version.

New Technical Support and Upgrade Policy

Following on from my recent discussion about pricing changes, I've been conducting a thorough review of many aspects of how I run the Pixaria Gallery project. As of July 1st, I will be changing the technical support and upgrade policy for Pixaria Gallery in a way that I believe will enable me to provide a better support service that strikes a more realistic balance between the needs of Pixaria's many users and my availablility as a freelance software developer.

From July 1st, the Pixaria upgrade and support policy will be to provide free technical support and upgrades for one year from the date of purchase of a Pixaria Gallery license.

After the free upgrade and support period ends, it will be possible to purchase a technical support and upgrade maintenance licence that will extend the coverage period by an additional year. If you decide you don't wish to purchase an extension, your existing licence will (of course) continue to be valid and you can continue to use your software as you wish.

Should you need to, you will be able to purchase a support and upgrade licence extension for $99 (US) at any time you choose.

I hope that by making this change in policy, I will be able to offer an even better service that enables Pixaria to continue to grow with the support of its users!

Existing users please note!

1. Users who purchased over a year ago from July 1st will need to purchase a licence extension in order to continue to obtain technical support.
2. All existing users of Pixaria 2.0 or above will be entitled to free upgrades up to but not including version 3.0 which will be out later this year.
3. Pixaria users who purchased the software during 2010 will be entitled to a free upgrade to version 3.0 later this year and then one year's upgrades from the date of purchase.

Addendum

I've been contacted by a few users who have asked to know if it will be possible to buy an upgrade extension that does not include technical support. The answer to this is no because I don't think it's fair to ask people to pay for updates and then not provide support the end user if they need assistance or something goes wrong.

Aperture 3 - The Ars Technica Review

For any fan of technology and science, Ars Technica is a must visit website and their software reviews are legendary. In true style, Dave Girard tackles Apple's recent release of Aperture 3 with an in-depth review that probes the software in glorious detail from the perspective of someone who really knows his stuff.

I won't spoil the review by telling you Dave's conclusions but it's looking like a must have upgrade from my perspective..! Read the complete review here.

Pixaria 2.8.5 Released

I'm pleased to report that Pixaria Gallery version 2.8.5 is now available for all registered users of Pixaria 2. This is a major new release which includes a lot of new features and improvements that have been requested by users over the last few months.

Probably the biggest change is the inclusion of new tools that make it possible to create groups of products that can be linked to galleries. In this way Pixaria now offers a much greater level of control over how administrators sell and price image products for different galleries.

Still on the theme of e-commerce capabilities, the admin area now includes significantly improved sales management tools which have been completely re-designed to make them easier to use. A frequent request from users has been to have an additional status setting for sales between 'paid' and 'complete' that will make it easier to manage transactions where physical products have not yet been shipped. I'm happy to say that this new status option is now included alongside a new sales filter tool to make finding sales by customer name and status quick and easy.

Other enhancements to the admin area include improved image download reporting tools, CSV export of lightbox contents and image download reports, an improved Pixie (plug-in) manager, options for random avatar images on galleries and easier to use transaction admin tools.

Away from the admin area, there are a number of other big changes in version 2.8.5 including a new batch download feature available from users' lightboxes. This makes it easy for users to download images in one convenient zip file rather than having to manually download images one at a time. Note that this feature requires PHP 5 and the Zlib library which shouldn't be a problem if you're using a decent hosting company.

For users with larger libraries of images, this update also features performance enhancements in the front-end that will dramatically speed up page load times while simultaneously reducing load on the server where Pixaria is installed. The graph below shows the page load time for a Pixaria homepage with a library containing 180,000 images and 4,000 libraries. The difference in page load times when using version 2.8.4 and the new version 2.8.5 is dramatic - 2.8.5 clocks in at only two seconds compared to 15 seconds with the older version of Pixaria.

As usual there are plenty of minor bugs fixes and improvements in this update and I'm pleased to report that, there is now a Russian translation included. My thanks go to Konstantin Filimonov for the translation.

Finally, big thanks again go to Matthias Zehnder who has contributed a large number of bug fixes and improvements to the geo-coding, mapping and blogging tools (among others) in this update.

To get this update, please drop me an e-mail at upgrade@pixaria.com and I'll send the new version to you. As always, please take a moment to check out the release notes and change log before upgrading as these contain full details of all the modifications in this version.

Exciting Features Coming Soon

It's coming up to one month since the last update to Pixaria and in that time I've been hard at work on some long requested and exciting new features which will be making their debut in the next update!

My main focus in this release has been on improving the sales and e-commerce features and functions and the big news is going to be the introduction of product groups that will make it possible to assign selections of products to different galleries. This will make it much easier to offer different prices and product types for different galleries and will be a big bonus to event photographers.

As part of this work, I've also taken the opportunity to revamp the sales admin interface with new 'quick filter' for finding sales by status and client name and improved sorting or sales lists by date, number of items and client name. I've also overhauled the transaction detail views to bring them more into line with the rest of the Pixaria admin user interface and make them clearer and simpler to use.

Other new developments include copyright and title information options for PDF contact sheets, configurable batch downloads from customer lightboxes, new and improved download reporting tools with Excel/CSV export and configurable gallery announcement messages.

All this will be arriving in the next update which I hope to be able to make available within the next week.

HostPost Spring Web Hosting Offer

As part of a spring promotion HostPost Web Services have a hosting offer which has been put together especially for Pixaria users. The discount coupon code is Pixaria_Host and is valid until the 31st May 2010.

This discount code offers a 20% off all Yearly and Bi-Yearly Unlimited Plans and 1GB Service hosting packages. This represents up to a £28 saving on hosting. The discount also covers domain products giving savings on registrations and transfers.

Don't forget to look out for a 'Enter Discount Code' box when you reach the checkout stage.

Amazing photos of Eyjafjallajökull

Unless you've been living as a hermit in Tibet, you've probably noticed that most of Europe has ground to a halt over the last week thanks to the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland. This eruption is interesting in many ways but not least because of the amount of lightning it's produced. Check out some of the beautifully captured lightning shots in the short time lapse stills on the Boston.com website.

View the photo gallery here

Pixaria 2.8.4 Released

I'm happy to announce the immediate availability of Pixaria Gallery version 2.8.4. This update includes a couple of new features including support for sending Twitter status updates from the admin area, user-definable gallery metadata for search engine optimisation and a major speed boost to the search engine.

The search engine optimisation in particular is worth highlighting as for large image libraries of over 15,000 images, it can result in speed improvements of up to 94% over the previous version. In a test on a library of 150,000 images, the search time was, on average, 20 times faster than the same search with version 2.8.3.

As usual there are a number of minor bugs fixes and improvements in this update and of interest to users in Spain and France, there is now a Basque (Euskara) translation included. My thanks go to Antton Alberdi for the translation!

To get this update, please drop me an e-mail at upgrade@pixaria.com and I'll send the new version to you. As always, please take a moment to check out the release notes and change log before upgrading as these contain full details of all the modifications in this version.

The Only Photoshop CS5 Review You Need

No doubt you're aware that Photoshop CS5 was released to great fanfare last week as part of the new and improved Create Suite package from Adobe. Putting aside the row with Apple over Flash on iPad and iPhone, the Mac version of Adobe's flagship software looks like a solid upgrade for anyone who works with digital images with the additionl (finally) of 64 bit support.

As usual, Dave Girard at Ars Technica has done a cracking job on an in-depth review that is definitely recommended reading if you're thinking about upgrading:

Read the full review at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/04/photoshop-cs5-extended---the-ars-technica-review.ars