Updating your website photos

All TourVista apartment websites are built using WordPress which is a great CMS (content management system) but has a bit of a learning curve. We realize many of our clients want to manage their websites in-house and we’ve done a ton of customizations to WordPress to make this as easy & intuitive as possible.

So if you’re wanting to change the photos on your website, you have two options:

Option #1: do it in-house

The website is pretty easy to update in-house but there is some work you’ll need to do. Here’s how:

First you’ll want to optimize the photos before you upload them to your website:

1. Name the files appropriately. This helps with SEO (search engine optimization). e.g. instead of CIMG8089.JPG name the file bedroom.jpg or pool.jpg – use a short, descriptive filename. If there’s already a pool.jpg then use pool2.jpg or pool3.jpg, etc.
2. Crop the photos. Use photo editing software like Photoshop or Befunky.com to crop out extraneous items on the photo, e.g. yellow lawn, ugly parking lot, telephone wires, utility boxes, etc. We recommend cropping to 1200 x 800 pixels. A little cropping adds a professional touch!
3. Resize the files. Super important to not upload huge files as this can slow down your website. Try to keep each photo to less than 250 KB in file size.
4. Save as .jpg. Once named, cropped & resized, be sure to save each file in a folder on your computer as .jpg (not .png)

Now that your photos are ready for the web, here’s how to upload them:

1. Click “Manager Login” in the footer of your website. If you don’t know your password you can reset it by clicking “Lost your password?” and instructions will be emailed to you.
2. Once logged in, click Pages and edit the Home page
3. Here you’ll see the different tabs that make up the sections of the Home page. For tabs that contain images, you’ll see thumbnails for each gallery. Click the “Select Images” button to manage the images in the gallery.
4. To upload new photos, click “Add to Gallery” then “Upload Files”. Upload the optimized photos from your computer. This takes a bit while the files upload and the website crunches them into various sizes (thumbnail, medium, large, etc)
5. The uploaded files will show as thumbnails, each with a checkmark. Click the “Add to gallery” button to add them to your selected gallery. You’ll be returned to the tab and the new photos will show as thumbnails. (note: the uploaded files will automatically be added to the Media Library so you can use them elsewhere, too.)
6. Important: don’t add too many photos to the Home page! Doing so will really slow down your website and hurt its SEO and the user experience. No one likes a slow website, especially Google. Recommended photos per Home page gallery:
   1. Showcase: 4-6 photos
   2. Floor Plans: 4-6 photos
   3. Photos: 12-16 photos
   4. For the leftover photos, it’s best to setup a new page “Photo Gallery” and add all of the photos there, like this
7. Sort the photos. You can change the order of the photos by clicking “Select Images” again and dragging the photos into your desired order. When done, click the “Update gallery” button.
8. Add hover text. This is a nice touch and allows you to show descriptive text when the user hovers their mouse over each photo. It also provides an SEO boost so we recommend it. Here’s how:
   1. Click the “Select Images” button for each gallery.
   2. Click on each image and you’ll see “Attachment Details” on the right.
   3. Enter your text in the “Alt Text” field (ignore the caption field, we know, not intuitive… but the Alt Text helps your SEO, that’s why we’re using it)
   4. Do the same for all images in the gallery.
   5. Click the “Update gallery” button when done.
9. Be sure to save! When you’re all done, don’t forget to click the blue “Update” button to save your edits to the Home page.

Finally:

1. Always review the website after making edits to ensure everything looks perfect.
2. Remember, very important to not add too many photos to the Home page.

Option #2: hire TourVista

We do all of the above for you. We’ve built over 500 websites and have the process dialed-in tight. We’ll setup a shared Dropbox folder so you can upload the photos and we’ll take it from there!

Please note: this is a billable update, our rate is $75/hr and adding 20-30 photos usually takes us around 1 – 1.5 hours.

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