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Darryl Anderson is a 26-year-old fashion and product stylist from New Orleans, LA. He started out at the age of 16 and has been fortunate enough to consistently work in his field. Darryl originally started off styling local fashion shows, but then moved away and started marketing himself as a stylist. Like any journey, he is constantly looking to grow and level up!

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

DA: My website is 3 words. Precise, Chic,Timeless.

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

DA: I update my website often, usually as new work is released. You never know who is looking so I like to keep it fresh and inspiring!

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

DA: For my homepage I tried to choose a few images that represent the overall feel of my work taking some of my best images from each genre of my styling is usually the route I take. Showcasing all races is very important to me. I am stylist for the people!

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks?

DA: My favorite features would be just the overall customization the new font options and layouts are super nice definitely has a more professional feel!

Q5: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

DA: Keep it clean. I’ve had a website for about 7 years now and I’ve tried a ton of different varieties from music to loud colors. I would say based it around your business look at other sites that provide the same service you do just to get ideas. Over the years I have found simple is the best, keep it about the work with clear communication for your viewers on how to get in contact with you!

See more of Darryl Anderson’s work here: www.styledbydarryl.com

Despite how easy it is to add new galleries or new photographs to existing ones, some websites carry old content and updates get postponed. The major culprit is having no spare time to add new work online. While time may not be on your side, the liveBooks platform is – enter the multi user tool.

The multiple user feature is an excellent tool that enables you to give access to admins and contributors who can make changes to your website as per your requests. They will sign in with their own credentials and you choose what role they will have – some can have full access, while some can only make changes to your website without the ability to publish. This way you can have the last word and choose whether or not to publish those changes.

You can find this feature in your site settings, under Users & Roles. To add a new user, simply click Add User, fill in their email address and set a role for them. Here’s the break-down of the 5 types of users that can be linked to your website.

1. Owner: This is you – the one who pays for the site subscription and the first user who can establish other user roles. It has full access to the dashboard and has the ability to publish.
2. Admin: User has full access to the dashboard and the ability to publish.
3. Content Only: User can access and make changes to the content, but they cannot publish.
4. Design Only: User can access and make changes to the design, but they cannot publish.
5. Contributor – Content and Design: User can access and make changes both in content and design, but they cannot publish.

As you can see, there’s a wide array of roles you can entrust people with to ensure that while your business is prolific, it also shows on your website. Whether you need to keep your portfolios organized, or just need a little spring cleaning now and then, this tool allows you to delegate an assistant while you are out creating new stunning work.

One of the best feelings in the world as a photographer is capturing memories and emotions for your clients that they’ll be able to look back on for years to come.

And as the artist who created it, you’re bound to feel personally invested in every single image you’ve provided to your clients.

However, this doesn’t mean all of the photos are website-worthy.

When it comes to showcasing yourself and your work online, there are a few key things you should remember, including quality, efficiency and branding. If you aren’t sure how these factors play into choosing the right photos for your photography website, we have some tips to help you:

1. Place Yourself in a Client’s Shoes

When someone browses the web for the ideal photographer for their needs — whether it be wedding photography, newborn images, or their annual family photos — they should see photos that speak to your brand and niche.

This requires you to know your photography business well enough to know who your ideal customers are and what you want your company to be remembered by.

If your ideal customers are expecting mothers looking for a maternity and/or newborn photographer, and you aren’t all that interested in weddings, high school senior portraits or commercial photography, focus primarily (or only!) on the photography areas you want to do more of! Cut back or avoid placing photos on your website altogether that are from projects you aren’t interested in doing more of in the future.

2. Choose the best images out of your entire portfolio.

Just because you have thousands of images on file from dozens of sessions doesn’t mean they all belong on the web. Take some time to look through your past photography sessions to find the absolute best 2-3 images from each session.

You may love all the images you’ve ever taken, but challenge yourself to hone in on the ones that are sharp in focus, have great composition, beautiful colors, emotion, and/or the right amount of lighting — no matter how “long” it took to capture or edit them. Focus on quality of work, not amount of time spent to create the image.

Why? First, your potential clients want to see your best work and there’s no need to overwhelm them with hundreds of photos. Second, the more photos you have on your website, the more your site load speed will be slow. This ultimately hinders the user experience and will hurt your website’s search engine optimization as well.

3. Ask for a second opinion.

If you really struggle with attempting to be unbiased in your photograph selection for your portfolio, narrow down as much as you can and then ask a friend or family member to give you their thoughts. You may be surprised to see which ones they love most!

Optimizing Your Images

Have your top choices for your website portfolio, but want to make sure they don’t take up too much space and slow your site down? Head on over to our other post, SEO Best Practices for Website Images to learn how!

Showcase Your Work on a Beautiful Website

liveBooks offers stunning, customizable website templates for wedding industry professionals and creatives.

Impress your potential clients with a visually stunning website that is ready for search engines and looks great on any mobile device!

We’ve also got a top-notch support team who’s here to help you every step of the way. Start for free today!

Happy National Password Day!

Today we’re celebrating National Password Day, a salute to our most important online data and the crypto-keys that guard it. The average business user has at least 191 Open Sesames for their online accounts and hidden treasures, a true testament of how much of our activity takes place online. This contemporary status quo is the medium in which we’ve added a new and exciting feature to our websites: the Password Protection feature for private galleries, pages and items.

Password Protection 101

As photographers, we understand that some of your commissioned work is not for the general public, but for your clients’ eyes only, and we respect that. We also feel that your brand should accompany all of your work, and since your liveBooks site is the extension of your business, we figured it should also be the place to host your private collections. The Password Protection feature allows you to share galleries, pages or items only with those whom you’ve given the password to. It’s meant to ease the access to your private work while ditching the third image upload parties for your own personal cyberspace.

How to enable Password Protection

Go to your content editor and click on any page, item or gallery you want to make private. On the right side of the page you’ll see the Password dropdown field. Tick the “Require password” module and set your preferred password. Remember, this is a key you will share with your clients, so use something generic and simple. And don’t worry if you forget it: every time you access the protected page in your content editor, your password will be visible to you. Now your gallery, while still on your website, can only be accessed with the right key.

• When the password protection feature is enabled on a page, a lock icon will appear next to its title in the content editor.
• Using Password Protection on your home page will lock the entire website.

Just private, not hidden

Any page or item can be protected by a password on your liveBooks site. They will appear on your menu, in your dropdowns, on your pages, keeping your website’s style and feel. When you try to access them, a pop-up will notify you that until you type what you’re supposed to type, you shall not pass!

Once your clients enter the protected area, they can roam around the portfolio for as long as they want. For security reasons, we’ve added an extra layer of idle and off-site security: if you refresh the page or navigate to another one, the session will automatically close after five minutes. Don’t worry, you can login again with the same password.

Your pop-up style

When you first enable your password protection feature, the pop-up you’ll get will be set in plain neutral colors. Of course, you can leave it as it is, but you can use your brand palette to give it your look. To do this, go to your design editor, in Sitewide choose Style and the Password Protection setting will be the bottom one.

Take some time to play around with the style settings, colors, sizes and backgrounds. When you’re happy with the result, save, publish and you’re done!

Password Protection is available on all packages, so no one is left out of this wonderful and useful feature. Don’t have an account to test this on yet?

Go ahead and sign up for a free trial today!

We wish you all a happy and safe National Password Day!