livebooks blog

The liveBooks8 website editor allows you to create a custom navigation bar that fits your website’s specific needs. Whether this includes a drop-down menu that organizes your portfolio galleries, the use of social media icons, or the use of links and buttons, you’ll be able to customize every aspect of the navigation bar. Check out the video tutorial below to get started!

Is there a new liveBooks8 feature that you are excited to learn more about? Let us know at social@livebooks.com!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be one of the most important features that your website can have. This feature encompassed the technical requirements needed to improve your website’s rankings, drive organic traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. liveBooks is proud to boast that our built-in SEO tool offers our clients the ability to customize their SEO settings on a photo, page, and site-wide level.  Additionally, all liveBooks8 sites automatically include micro date that search engines, web crawlers, and browsers can extract and process to provide a richer browsing experience for users.

Learn how to start utilizing our SEO Everything™ tools with our quick tutorial below.

Video galleries are here! Now you will be able to add multiple videos on one page in a grid format. With the change in size of the video preview, your viewers will be able to easily choose which video they want to see. Adding a Video Gallery block to your page is simple – here’s how you can start creating yours:

1. Select Content from the Dashboard navigation bar.
2. From the Content tool, select the Page you’d like your Video Gallery on, from your list of pages.

Note: In this scenario, we will be working in a Generic page type.

3. From your page, select the green (+) button between content blocks, you will see all of your available block options.

4. Select the Video Gallery option:

5. The block will immediately show up on the page. Select the green Add Video button to input your first YouTube or Vimeo video:

6. Now, go to YouTube or Vimeo‘s website in a new tab or window. Navigate to the video of your choice, then simply copy the video’s URL to your clipboard.

• Vimeo: Select Share on the video player, then copy the URL (Right-click and Copy or CMD+C for Mac | CTRL+C for PC)

• YouTube: Select Share under the video player, then “Copy the URL” (Right-click and Copy or CMD+C for Mac | CTRL+C for PC)

7. Head back to the liveBooks Dashboard on the Page you have been working on in Content.

8. Now paste the video’s URL into the item you added earlier.
(Right-click and Paste or CMD+V for Mac | CTRL+V for PC)
Note: You may also paste the video embed code into the item, but we find pasting the URL easier.

9. Repeat steps 5-8 for as many videos you’d like to have in your Video Gallery.

You will notice that after you paste the URL, the platform grabs the video’s Title and Description from the Video source (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo)

10. When done, select the green Publish button to make it live to your website.

Lou Bopp is a talented photographer, director, and producer that is currently based in New York City and St. Louis. Recently, Lou has worked to craft a new director’s reel. With years of experience in the field and wonderful insight, Lou details the struggles and successes of creating a great production below. 

To see more of Lou Bopp’s fantastic portfolio, visit his site at www.loubopp.com.

It’s all about the croissant.

My new director’s reel is long overdue. Creating fresh work and sharing it with prospective clients is vital. Curating said work is not the easiest – I would much rather be shooting. However, I work with awesome people and having others to bat around ideas with, from the perspective of great editors, makes a world of a difference. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best, The field cannot be seen from within the field. 

When it comes to my directorial approach, whether I’m working off a creative brief, a board or run & gun, I’m always on the lookout for serendipitous moments. As I am often hired to shoot both motions & stills, I direct in a manner that compliments one another. The train of thought and overall conceptual vision are about the same. However, the implementation is a whole other ballgame. Screw it up, and you risk losing the brand message and the project becomes discombobulated. Finding the right DP is paramount and pivotal. Same with producers, location managers etceteras even the catering. Because at the end of the day, no matter how great the final piece is, the client may only remember a stale croissant. Great producers are key.

In this reel, you’ll see projects from Hershey Chocolate, The Aalsmeer Flower Auction in Holland, which is the busiest floral market in the world, Mississippi tourism, a disaster mitigation firm, CSpire, a telecommunications firm, a company called USG that probably made the ceiling tile that you’re sitting under, Traders Point Creamery, FM Global, a huge solar farm on the Mexico border and more.

I’d like to thank the awesome folks at rukus post who were instrumental in making this cut. I hope that you enjoy!