Themer v2 Launched

Today marks the launch of the FolioDriver Themer v2. When Themer was first released the original idea behind it was to allow users to customize the color selection of their portfolios. Now with v2 this is finally possible. The v1 release laid the ground work and provided the ability to select from pre-built color schemes, but now all the colors on a portfolio can be customized.

To access Themer you simply have to select the 'Remember Me' option when logging into FolioDriver and then visit your portfolio. At the top of the page will be a 'Show Themer' button you can use to reveal Themer.

Customizing a color scheme can be done in one of two ways. The first is to select one of the pre-built color schemes and then select the Custom option on the far left of Themer. This will release a series of text boxes, one for each color on the portfolio. Select a text box will cause a color picker to appear that you can then use to select a new color for that area. Select 'Save Color Selection' will then save the currently selected colors.

The second way is to open Themer and go straight to Custom. At this point all the text boxes will be blank, allowing you to customize only the specific colors you want.

Tell Us What You Think

Today a new link was added to the footer on FolioDriver that links to a feedback page powered by the User Voice service. The page can be found here as well as in the footer on all FolioDriver pages. Any feedback you have can be entered here and every item will be reviewed. One of the nice things about this service is that it also allows you to vote on existing items so more popular requests can be done before all the others.

You can also contact us through the Contact form on the site and through the comments section of this blog. All ideas and feedback is welcomed and will be read and considered.

New Design

Over the past few weeks FolioDriver has gone through several design changes in an effort to come up a design that is both easy on the eyes and easy to use. We feel that the latest design, the one currently on the site, meets both of these rather basic requirements. However, in addition to matching both these requirements it is also flexible enough to meet the continuously changing feature set of FolioDriver. Any feed back on this new design is welcomed and appreciated.

Testimonials

Joining the the themer on the list of new features this week is portfolio testimonials. When adding or editing portfolios users will now find an option labeled 'Enable Testimonials Page'. Turning this on will open a new screen in the Portfolio Manager, as well as create a new link labeled 'Testimonials' on the portfolio. The screen on the Portfolio Manager will allow users to manually enter testimonials they would like to have show up as well as re-order them using simple drag-and-drop functionality.

Testimonials are automatically styled before being displayed so users do not need to worry about adding quotes to the testimonials. Proper, typographically correct, "smart quotes" are used instead of regular "dumb quotes" as well.

Plans are already under way for a full feature set for this new setting to enable users to edit every aspect of this page to make it more customizable. Any updates to this feature, or any other feature on the site, will be provided on this blog. As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome in both the comments section or through the contact form on the site.

FolioDriver Themer

One of the most requested things from people so far has been to be able to change the colors of the portfolio templates, or to at least have more colors available. It is because of those requests that the FolioDriver Themer has been released today. The themer is here to help solve this problem, and is just one of the many parts of FolioDriver designed just for you that will be constantly evolving to become easier to use and better.

How Do I Use The Themer?
Unlike other features the themer is not available in the back-end with the other settings. Instead the themer shows up on your portfolio, but only when you're logged into your FolioDriver account. First login, then go to your portfolio, and a 'Show Themer' button will appear at the top of the page, on every page. Clicking this will expand the themer, allowing you to change the color selection of your portfolio.

How Does The Themer Work?
When you expand the themer you will have a set of pre-built color schemes available. If you hover of them you can preview how they look on the current page. You can also click one to lock it on, allowing you to close the themer and see how the current page looks. This also allows you to see things like the hover state of links and navigation items. Once a color set is locked the only way to preview others is to lock them as well.

Simply locking or hovering over a color set will not save that color set to your portfolio, it is only a preview. Next to the pre-built color sets is a 'Save' button, once a color set is locked this button will become active and can be used to save the selected color set.

So Where Do We Go From Here?
Like all other parts of FolioDriver, the themer is just one piece of the big picture. Many other features are being worked on, with updates to be provided on this blog. But, like all the other existing features, the themer will also be getting continuous updates as well. The first set of updates is simply going to be more and more pre-built color sets. With plans to allow users to build their own pre-built color sets as well.

The idea of real-time edits being made to portfolios is one that will be explored further into other areas, besides just colors. Such as entire portfolio templates, updating/editing content, re-ordering home page blocks, re-ordering folders, updating/editing folders and home page blocks and more. This is just the first set of many many features to be put into the themer and have big plans for it.

Feedback on such features is always welcome in the form of both comments and emails.

Portfolio Templates

The most important part of FolioDriver is the portfolios, obviously. And the most important part of the portfolios is how they look to the people who will be seeing them. To this end, the most important part of FolioDriver is the portfolio templates. The templates control how the portfolios look, so care needs to be taken when building them. Currently there are only a handful of templates to choose from, but but more are being worked on and more will always be worked on. One of the things about FolioDriver is that it will never be done. It will also be getting new features, updated to existing features, and new templates for portfolios.

The purpose of this post is just to explain some of the things that go into designing the templates.

• Color scheme. The color scheme used needs to be both pleasing, but also different if possible. All the templates can't have the same color scheme, so any time possible the colors need to be mixed up.
• General layout. Just like the same color scheme can't be used for every template, neither can the same layout be used for every template of a different color scheme.
• Feature Set. Every portfolio, though displayed differently needs to contain the same set of features. This means when new features are added, they have to be added to every template set currently in the system.

While new templates are being worked on constantly, these three points are what dictate the templates that get added and the difficulty of adding them. The third point is the most important one and the one that needs to be handled the most carefully. When there are only a handful of templates, like there are now, adding new features is easy. But when the time comes that there are dozens in the system, adding new features becomes time consuming, slow and difficult.

Portfolio templates are important to FolioDriver and you, it's users. But they also must be done carefully and properly. Not just added, in bulk, to the site, or things down the road will get messy. If you don't see any you like, or would like one(s) you don't see, feel free to let us know. We are always working on new ones.

FolioDriver Soft Launched Part 2

In this second part of the FolioDriver Soft Launch post I want to take some time to explain FolioDriver's planned future. The reason for this is because new sites are popping up all the time, and in order to show the dedication of the FolioDriver team I want to share our ideas with you. Coming up with an idea for a site is the easy part, implementing it and mainting it are very different. While evolving that idea and building on it is not just very different but also very difficult.

So what are some of our ideas?

• Portfolio blogs, managed through the Portfolio Manager.
• Additional portfolio content types. New types could include a pre-built about page and different pre-built pages. As well as video, audio and text based portfolio entries.
• Portfolio comments.
• FolioDriver Connect Forums
• FolioDriver Connect Contact Manager

Some of these may seem a little straight forward for a community site, and that's why they're first on the list. This is just the tip of the iceburg. As I write this I have a Microsoft Word document open with twenty ideas listed out as "To Be Implemented" and several times more then that that are marked as "Proposed".

The next few weeks are going to be dedicated to the official launch of the site, and any road bumps encountered along the way. But as soon as that is all smoothed out, work will immediately begin on these features. Readers of this blog will get updated commentary as development begins and these, and all other, features of the site.

The purpose of this blog is to allow us to tell you, our users, what it is we're working on so you know that we're here, endlessly toiling, to continue to make FolioDriver the best service is possibly can be. Feel free to comment on anything posted here, we'll try to answer any questions asked. You can also contact us using the contact form on the live site. Again, we'll try to answer any questions asked in a timely manner.

FolioDriver Soft Launched Part 1

After many months of work FolioDriver has officially been soft launched! What is a soft launch? In short a soft launch means the site is up, working and available for anyone to use, but is not being advertised or announced yet while the final kinks get worked out. Being the first post I'm going to take some time to explain exactly what FolioDriver is and what it does.

The short answer to this question is that FolioDriver is a portfolio manager. Anyone can easily sign up for free and create a portfolio to display any images they like. These images could be photographers, snapshots of web site designs, advertisements they've made, scans of paintings or drawings, etc. What medium your art is does not matter to FolioDriver so long as you have an image of it you can upload. FolioDriver allows you to create folders to organize the content in on your portfolio to keep things organized the way you like. You can also create sub-folders and sub-folders of folders and so on, as deep as you like.

Once you upload your initial content to your portfolio you can go in and select a template to determine how your portfolio is displayed. Currently, being a soft launch, there are only a few options available, but more are currently being worked on and will be released over the coming weeks. Templates can be changed at any time without any detriment to the portfolio. No content will be lost and no settings will be changed, only the design will change.

In addition to allowing you to upload the images you want to display on the portfolio you can also enable a 'Contact' form. This allows visitors to your portfolio to send you messages. Messages get logged in FolioDriver and can be accessed at any time.

FolioDriver allows you to control how you want the home page of your portfolio to look as this is the most important page. Using a system of 'Blocks' you are able to select what you want to show up, either using content in your portfolio or manually entering content using a build-in text editor. This gives you control over how you want the home page to look and what information you want to display on it.

That's enough for right now. Will make another post later on detailing some information about the FolioDriver Connect portion of the site and some plans I have for the site as well.