Date Launched | 1-Aug-24

1/Aug/24 | Initial New Website Launch

The New Website & Where we are going

This is going to be directly written from point of view of Haydn and where we currently are.

No need to read this section, more just if you’re curious.

I am sure a lot of you know that Ive been promising a new website for a long long time now. Its quite embarrassing how long this has taken me/us, but we are finally at the stage I am comfortable moving forward with.

You are finally seeing a new website, after a few years of me/us trying to do this. There was over 6 different attempts to do this that will never see the light of day, because when I started Image Edits, I was hopeful on how this would go, but I never expected how it turned out, and I am extremely grateful for to all of you who have entrusted us with your editing.

Previous Website on No Code

When things started going well, i really wanted to push the scope of Image Edits, however the previous website was extremely limiting, and sadly took up a significant amount of our work time each week, just to keep it running. That was built on no code tools, those no code tools were awesome to get something started for someone like me who knew nothing about web development/code. However even I could find the limitations of no code fairly quickly. Thats when we decided to redevelop the website from ground up. I did not expect this to take so long, but it did. It was a lot and a lot more difficult than i expected it to be, but I am now in a position that I am very happy with the result and the foundation there to build atop of.

There will likely be errors/bugs, if you encounter any, please let us know, those will always be our priority to fix right away.

Why So long?

It did take way too long, however that was solely down to a skill issue on my part, i didnt even know enough to effectively higher, so when i tried to get help/contract out, i essentially was throwing money out the window because i couldn’t evaluate on a technical level what was going on.

The longest part was by far me learning everything. I do want to make clear, new features and bug fixes will not take long from now on. The new website has been 12 months from initial start of it, and the majority of the work was done to make sure migration of data is all correct, and also learning the new tech.

We also have the foundations of new features started and ready to start building off.

New Website Starting Point

This new website, you wont see too much that will seem to drastically new. Its mainly taking the core of the previous website and building it from the ground up so its more performant, easier to maintain, and much easier to add new features to.

Currently as of 13-7-24, the focus has been on below.

• Ordering system

  • Uploader
    • Large focus was the uploader and storage of content, you will be able to notice significantly better uploading speeds and handling of large files.
    • No more freezing or unsure states of what the page is doing, you’ll be able to see of progress of the uploader instead of just guessing where its at.
    • Uploader will now maintain the original file quality and size, there will no longer be any unforeseen quality loss or dpi reduction.
    • You can now upload files directly from dropbox, the uploader will allow you to login to your dropbox account and select files from your dropbox account, this will download content from dropbox to our storage server
      • You can still use the cloud link method if that is still your preference.
      • We can also add other providers like google drive, box, and so on, which we plan on doing in the future.
  • **Files | Images **
    • Images / finished content / actually all content on each order will now be a lot easier to see, and compare, you’ll have access to all content, when it was upload, and preview images, what version, and light boxes to flick through the images directly on the website.
  • Adjustments
    • You can now request adjustments directly from your order. Instead of requiring to go through the live chat or email. This will allow for better tracking and communication on all sides, and you’ll be able to clearly see when its done and how its progressing.
    • Adjustments will need to be approved via Image Edits, but I am sure most of you we have basically never declined an adjustment.
  • Service Selection
    • You can now filter by services a lot easier, actually that is a theme overall, filtering of all data will be a lot easier and very flexible. You can also favourite your services for easier access.
    • Service portfolio for comparison, this wasn’t intentional, but on previous website it was quite hard to tell the differences from the services. We needed to change that, you can view each service and you’ll see a large catalog of example images of the finished service.
      • (First week or so of the new website release we will be updating all content, it will take time.)
    • Services has been rework to be more flexible, mainly allowing for sub-services within a main service. Example you’ll be able to place a Photo Editing Order, and have option on same order to order extras like Day To Dusk editing on the same order.
    • We will be adding more services when the website is confirm to be all set and no major issues for seen, the first few weeks of website will be mainly making sure its all going well, then we will start to add the other services we have planned.
    • Payments
      • Payments will be mostly the same as before, except for one large change, we will finally being using wallets for per order payment users, so they don’t have to keep making a payment per order slowing down their workflow and making accounting more difficult. More on this in the invoice section.
    • Preference
      • Preferences instead of being applied on account level and place on ever order, instead can be pickable from the order, that way you can have multiple difference preferences and select the ones that suit the order you are creating, you can also adjust the preference on the order itself.
      • Styling & Images, preferences can now have images and styling to more easily get across what you want interms of style or specific notes for the order.

• Projects

  • Projects were existing feature in the previous website, but weren’t used as much as i intended them to be used, but that is more due to them not being as functional as i want.
  • They will server the same purpose in the new website, however will be easier to use, and more intuitive.
  • Projects will be the building the blocks for adding more features and keeping it all organise on a per property basis.

• Deliveries

  • On the new website, these are currently not available, but i dont expect that to affect anyone, as they were a broken mess. But they will be coming back, most of the develop is done for deliveries. I we are just working on the testing section of it, and also getting a stripe integration perfect to allow for deliveries to require payment to be made before your clients to download the content.

• Invoices

  • As stated before the biggest change where was the involvement of a wallet on the business. Each client business that is on payment type of per order will now have access to wallet balance, you’ll be able to select amount you want to add to your wallet (min of $20)
  • This wallet balance is shared between all of your team members, so if you have photographers that want to use Image Edits but dont want team members to deal with payments, they can just use the wallet balance on your photography business.
  • Invoices the major thing here is just the styling change, overall the invoices will be more detailed, with quick navigation to orders.
  • Invoice Sharing, invoices can now be shared with via links. This is to allow for anyone to make payment, example if you have someone outside of your business/organisation wanting/needing to pay for the invoice. We had that come up a lot.
  • Monthly Invoicing, will still existing, however it will be a goal to move most clients to the new wallet system, but ill be talking to clients directly about this change if they are currently on monthly invoicing.

• Dashboard

  • This wont be visible to majority of users, however we have a fully functioning advance graphs ready and working well, this is mainly used for internal staff of Image Edits to track how things are progressing and any issues/over due orders or adjustments.
  • This will be coming to all users, and will specifically be more useful for clients in future when we have more management features for their business coming out.

• Logs

  • Majority of the entities in Image Edits will now have logs, example orders, projects, users, invoices and so on. To provide clarity and transpacency on what is happening to each entity.
  • This will also be useful for security from our internal point of view and also from your point of view seeing what business team members are doing.

• Teams

  • All users are now associated with a business, 99% of users from old website didnt have a business setup, we have automatically created a business for each user without a business. You can change this information on business settings. These accounts will now be the owner of that business entity.
  • Why did we do this? Because one of the biggest issues with previous website was the lack lust support for teams, where majority of the time users were sharing the same account, which is not ideal. This should now fix it, this was the most time consuming part of the website, allowing for multiple users to be associated with a business while maintaining correct controls without the business (roles and rules). Its still not perfect but its a good foundation.
  • Quick overview of how the management will work within a business.
    • Busines Owner can access all team members content
    • Team members can not access any other team members content, unless they have been made a manager of that user. This can only be changed by the business owner.
    • If a team members is a manager of another team member, they will be able to access that team member content. (orders/projects/invoices and so on) (except profile/user details)

• Styling

  • You’ll notice in the top right of the dashboard app a dropdown to change the colour theme and light/dark mode, at the moment we have a lot of unique themes in there, just to show case how vastly different the style of website can be to suit your preference/business style.
  • In future we will allow this to be configured on a business level and adjust the colours yourself, but for now this is the starting point.

• Fully Mobile Friendly

  • Hopefully this will be a big thing for you all too. The website is also fully mobile responsive.
  • The previous website was partial mobile responsive, but those missing responsive areas made it unusable on mobile devices.

• Techy Stuff

  • This is the stuff i am most excited about, because my life has been just code for past few years, and ive actually really enjoyed it. No need to read below.
  • We are moving off bubble.io, that is how the initial website was created, we are moving to react/next.js. Using:
    • s3 for storage with cloudfront for image delivery and cdn for content delivery
    • database is using postgres instance adjusted for serverless environment
    • stripe for payments
    • All will be hosted in aws and also oracle cloud, we are expecting significantly better uptime and performance than the previous website. Due to us having direct control, instead of relying on a third party for management of the website.
    • Generally I expect our costs to be few x cheaper than the previous website. We will be keeping the old website up in background as a backup for awhile, but once that is all shut down, those savings will be going directly into customer support and adjustments team.
  • Side note on attempts, we have tried a many time. and i thought it would be interesting for me to calculate how many changes have been made. Currently this new website, we are at 200k lines of code, with 900k lines added, and 700k lines removed. Also supporting code bases for tasks on management of infrastructure and migration scripts, is at about 80k lines of code.
    • the previous attempt of new website, the one no one will ever see, was at 200k before we restarted on the current website. There is a lot a few other attempts even before that, but i dont have the specific data on lines of code for those.