Hi! Thanks for the all feedback, which is all taken into consideration. Up front, I would like to just emphasize that X3 wasn't specifically created to compete with Koken, which was probably initially made more for "photographers". X3's target was to be the best gallery-oriented presentation website, from the visitors perspective. We definitely do have a lot of photography-customers, and will definitely be listening to their requirements for future releases. Some quick comments:
Searchlight wrote:When using the "use as intro" feature, I cannot size the picture(s) to stay below the navigation bar
You mean "below" as in "starts from below the menu", as opposed to goes "under" the menu? And then fills the "rest of page"? X3 can definitely size pictures to stay under the menu, and cover the "rest" of screen (or however many % you want it to cover). If you mean something else, perhaps you have a link?
Searchlight wrote:Using the "use as intro" feature, I cannot use a whole subfolder structure as a source to display pictures
You mean you want to display images from MULTIPLE folders inside a single slideshow?
Searchlight wrote:No Lightroom plugin (but I'm using Jeffrey Friedls collection publisher and metadata wrangler which gives me almost the comfort of the LR plugin with much more control over the metadata
Has been requested by many :thumbsup:
Searchlight wrote:Due to license restrictions I'm not able to use my purchased license with full functionality on my local test environment (VM)
X3 licenses are domain based. You can send email or PM (to me) if you want additional local domains licensed at no further charge.
Searchlight wrote:There is some sort of lacking features in presenting the GDPR dialog - it's only informative but the user cannot decide which cookies he agrees to allow and which ones he denies to use
GDPR is a big black hole which is largely misunderstood in many website integrations, causing more harm to visitors than it should. X3 will not come with extensive native plugins for cookies which mostly 99% of users don't care about or don't understand ... not to mention the fact that X3 doesn't even use any cookies (except for login, but that's not for visitors). If you want in-depth cookie warning and management, you might consider the below link as a 3rd party service, which can easily be loaded into X3. Personally, I would avoid it if possible.
https://www.osano.com/cookieconsent
Searchlight wrote:What I'm deeply missing is the possibility to rate / like my pictures - with the payed plugin in Koken my audience hat the chance to express themselves which pictures they liked - and I got a feedback, what they liked or did not liked as much. There is no such feature in X3
It's been asked before, and something we will consider. What I don't like, is that it means anyone can rate, and you don't know who rated. Also, for most websites, you would have zero or 1 rating per image. How to avoid spam ratings? Is the rating only for you to see or also visitors? I have problems envisioning this used productively. If you had a link to a Koken website using this, I'd be interested to check it out.
On a related note, we do have a "lightbox" plugin scheduled, where visitors would be able to STAR images. Images are then added to a "cart" (similar to e-commerce), and the visitors can then "send" to owner. This is not really rating, but it's a flexible system for visitors to send a list of pictures they like, to the photograhper/owner.
Searchlight wrote:I cannot combine any view with a slideshow. With Koken (or Phoca running on Joomla) the user can click a picture in the grid and to open it in a "Lightbox" and start running a slideshow from this picture. In X3 I have to decide if I would present the pictures in grid view or as a slideshow - there seems no possibility to combine those two views - that's odd!
I'm not quite sure what you mean. When you go to any X3 page (for example
this), you are presented with a layout (in this case rows-GRID), and when visitor clicks the image, it will open in a visitor-optimized popup (what you are referring to as "lightbox"). From your perspective, this is not a "slideshow", just because it doesn't have an actual "autoplay" button?
I have tested koken's lightbox from a human visitors perspective, and I don't find it very functional.
FYI, if you are referring to "autoplay" feature, which allows the visitor to click a "PLAY" button so that the slideshow will navigate through images at a set interval, that will be available in a soon-to-come X3 release.
Searchlight wrote:I've also evaluated TTG but declined it because there is no way to check it out before purchase
TTG? Got a link?
Searchlight wrote:So much from my end - what do you think about my page?
Looks good. Great photos! In my opinion, the blue color is a bit dark/vague and could be replaced with something lighter and better contrast with the dark background. Also, your intro images don't seem optimized for all screens? I am checking from macbook pro 13" screen, and the intro images don't even cover the height of the logo, and look somewhat incomplete.
Searchlight wrote:Is there anything I should change or optimize? I know that my photos are quite large and take a bit of time to load - my intention is to present them at a proper resolution for 4K displays - I have greatly decreased the resolution in the last upload but I'm unaware if the resolution is still sufficent for high resolution displays.
I personally didn't notice, and it's likely 95% (or more) of your visitors are viewing from high-speed internet connections. I would consider higher compression on high-res images (3000+ px images) for several reasons: for 95% of your visitors, the images will scale down to fit smaller screens, and the compression becomes near-invisible. Also, for retina (high density screens), for example 3840 (which would typically display at size 1920), compression is also much less visible because of the high-density. There are lots of articles about this on the internet, but you would have to compare yourself.
Searchlight wrote:Sorry for the long first post and @Karl keep on the great work!
Nothing better than reading posts from users that are passionate about their work and their website. Thanks!