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Videos & Photos

Managing website photos is difficult and confusing at first. But if you update them regularly, it soon makes sense.

TIP If you need to change photos on your webpages, and you dread it: ask SuttonNet to load and position the photos for you. It's a cost effective solution that's far better than putting off the updates. We'll be much quicker and less stressed about it.

Your photos work for you

Online marketing experts stress how important it is to use genuine photos of our own businesses, instead of those ubiquitous stock photos.

In this world of chatbots, cybercrime and anonymous call centres, make it obvious that your enterprise is real and that your staff are friendly, helpful and human.

If you're not from the selfie generation, it might be painful to post photos of yourself online. But just do it once.

Relevant photos for your products and services are a must. They create new avenues to find your website and they carry SEO value via their title and alternate text: but only if you actually type this data into Bizazz. Be diligent about this, whenever you add photos to your webpages.

Right sizing

The Bizazz manual has a section on getting photo sizes right for your webpage (Section 6.3 at time of writing). Of course it depends on the width of your webpage content area (the area available for text and photos that you edit with Bizazz).

This page has a right hand menu, which makes the area available for photos and text much narrower. The content area is also narrow on a webpage that has a single central column, with plenty of negative space on each side. Our website's Home page is full width; it can accommodate much wider photos.

Website image size is specified in pixels (px): the no of pixels used when the image is displayed on a full PC screen. A pixel (picture element) is "the smallest unit in a graphic display or digital image" (Webopedia). You can read more on Webopedia about how photos are presented digitally on a screen.

As a guide:

Not every photo will fit these size ranges. Your website has a set of photo folders with default image proportions already set. When you upload a photo to a specific folder, Bizazz will adjust the image's size to best-fit the default proportions for that folder.

Brave the Bizazz photo processor

The Bizazz processor is surprisingly easy to use. You can process and load a photo to your website 'backend' in less than a minute. Your photo file will be compressed correctly, so that it can download fast yet retains visual quality.

It takes another minute or two to add the photo to a webpage, create its title and alt text, position the photo relative to surrounding text and even add a few flourishes: a border, caption or shadow effect.

It's worth investing half an hour (or less) to become familiar with the photo processor & photo layout steps. Find some maybe-useful photos and load them and add to webpages. Look at the results on mobile phone as well as your desktop. You'll do a lot for your website in that time.

Check the relevant chapter of the manual while you experiment. Ring or email us if you have any questions.

Getting started with Bizazz

  • Do I need to install extra software?
    +

    To use the Bizazz photo processor to process and load photos, svg's or other images, you need Java installed on your computer. This is a little tricky. We can help you through this process, often as part of initial Bizazz training or ongoing support.

    Your options are:

    1. To load photos yourself: either use OpenWebStart (free) or use Oracle Java (may require payment), checking carefully that you meet Oracle's licence conditions; or
    2. Ask SuttonNet to load all your photos for you; we have OpenwebStart installed. Usual hourly content rates apply; or use Webpages+ for discount rates.

    Formerly we helped clients to download Oracle Java, but due to licensing changes, OpenWebStart is now the better option for most of you. Change over to OpenWebStart if you don't want to pay for a commercial licence (see below).

    Never download 'Java' free from anywhere other than the real OpenWebStart or Oracle Java website. You'll risk infecting your computer with malware.

    To obtain a copy of OpenWebStart:

    1. Check if OpenWebStart software is already installed on your computer.
    2. If you do need to install it: make sure you only download genuine software from the official OpenWebStart website.
    3. Follow the prompts with the default choices to Download. Save, then open with the default program your computer offers. Execute the unzipped file. You now have a version of Java on your computer.
    4. Go to Bizazz - Photo Processor - Try New Version. The first time, it downloads a "JNLP" startup file. In some systems, it can be challenge to find where this file has been stored. We suggest you store the photo processor's JNLP file on your desktop.
    5. After the initial setup, you can click on the photo processor JNLP icon whenever you want to upload photos to your website.
    6. Ask us for help if you need it.
  • Do I need to pay for a Java licence?
    +

    It depends on whether you use Java for commercial or noncommercial use, and what version you download. There is a free commercial licence option at time of writing. Third party software ownership and licence conditions change from time to time.

    • OpenWebStart uses OpenJDK, a form of Java which is free to use.
    • Oracle Java software licence conditions changed in April 2019. Many of our clients would be liable for a small commercial licence fee (payable each month, if you use the photo processor regularly). This fee is per computer that uses Oracle Java for business purposes.

    Java's owner Oracle is entitled to protect their intellectual property. You need to abide by licence conditions for all third party software that your website uses.

Other ways to load photos

For one or two images: you can use your own photo processing software to adjust and compress the images, then upload these files to the website using the Insert Photo function in the Bizazz webpage editor. (See the manual.)

  • This is slower than the Bizazz processor.
  • You'll need to know the exact photo size that you want for the webpage.
  • It's trickier to create a thumbnail + large photo pair.

What about the old method of File Transfer Protocol (FTP)? FTP does not encrypt data in transit and it lacks features of the Bizazz processor, especially for managing bulk photos. You risk loading photos to the wrong folder of your website, or accidentally deleting essential website files. FTP is used by a very few of our clients nowadays. We provide these clients with simplified instructions for file transfer via Filezilla software.

There is a secure form of FTP called (wait for it) SFTP. We haven't found any SFTP software yet that works well for us and is straightforward for clients to use. We keep looking.

Layout

There are many, many ways to lay out text and photos. With responsive design re-arranging your page layout for different sized screens, there are even more possibilities. This is bad news for anyone inclined to fast, sloppy webpage editing.

The Bizazz manual includes examples with step by step instructions to help you (not to confuse you). There's no need to learn all the options; your webpages will look better in a fairly consistent style. Get used to creating your favourite layouts and it will be quick and easy for you.

Be patient, follow the instructions and most importantly: try your webpage on various sized screens before you decide that it is finished.

Some things are not feasible: eg dot or numbered points and photos don't go together in responsive design code.

Because your page re-arranges itself dynamically and is not a static unit, clever 'workarounds' to force things into place don't work. They will mess up the webpage layout on some type of screen. There are no shortcuts; follow the rulebook.

How to include video

Go to the Snippets section of the Bizazz manual - 'Insert Video'. Videos are often published on Youtube, Bitchute or similar sites, with a link to your site; and a link from your website to the video location.

Remember to set your link in Bizazz to open the video in 'new window': this keeps the current webpage open in its own browser tab while someone watches the video. You don't want your video link to take site visitors away from your website altogether, especially to the distractions of Youtube.

Product photos

Always load photos for ecommerce items via the Products photo processor tab. This has special fields needed for filing product photos.

Bizazz uses a general 'external files' function to connect photos, instruction leaflets, videos and other files to an ecommerce product in the website database. Just go to the product's own data page in Bizazz and click 'Add external file'. Follow the simple steps in the manual.

Product photo(s) appear on the right e-shop page automatically, without you needing to format or re-publish webpages.

Gallery or slider/slideshow

Photo galleries and ecommerce products behave in much the same way in Bizazz, behind the scenes. Odd but true. So go to the Products - External Files area of Bizazz to manage the photo gallery on your website. You can change the order or delete photos.

Load more photos ready for photo galleries and slideshows/sliders/rotating galleries via the Products photo processor tab, not the general Webpages Photo Processor. Make sure you choose the right target folder so that photos will fit into the gallery.

Use Snippets to insert a new slideshow (rotating gallery) or to add photos to the sequence.