# Client Areas - who else is looking for something more than what's available?



## matsmithphotog (Jan 3, 2014)

Dear all


I have been using the excellent Client Response Gallery from TTG to present my clients' work for them to select images for editing, and send me the image numbers.


Combined with TTG's Publisher module, this would seem to be a great idea for simplifying my workflow; in reality, however, it has just made life far more complicated and long-winded, not least because it doesn't quite do what I need it to do.


I won't critique it here, but suffice to say I spend longer trying to make it work and keep the multiple web gallery templates up to date with one another than I would creating individual galleries for individual clients manually.


My main two problems with CRG and Publisher are:


1/ I can spend literally hours searching for an option in the web gallery panel. Sometimes, only to find the option doesn't exist.


2/ CRG and Publisher don't support password protected top-level galleries - just individual galleries. Similarly - multiple users are not supported.

The former I could get over, once it's all set up and running how I want (this hasn't happened yet - even after many months of using it!)

The latter is a deal-breaker for me. It's such a regular thing to need to create clients and galleries, I simply can't do this manually on my web server as well as publishing the images.

In my research I came across the Website Publisher Pro Series. This gets over the above two problems beautifully - the first one by hiding entire sections of settings when they are not relevant as well as segmenting settings far more nicely and keeping settings to a minimum without losing functionality, and the second problem by supporting password protection for an entire client area (one setting for the client area and all child galleries - easy to manage), not to mention multiple user accounts per area or gallery.


Basically the architecture of WSPP is based around a single template rather than multiple templates. Also the publisher side of WSPP doesn't depend on a web service which (in TTG's case) breaks so often - at least for me it does! There are other benefits - the web module in LR is far more responsive for WSPP, and more I won't list here. Don't get me wrong - support on the TTG forum is good but I just had too many issues over time, and still don't have a working client area.


Problem is that the only thing WSPP doesn't do is allow for photo selection feedback (i.e. client logs on to select photos and send the selections by email). That's a pretty major thing for me.


So my question is: does anyone else struggle with this?


Can I drum-up enough interest here to co-invest in commissioning the developer of WSPP to add some major functionality?


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## johnbeardy (Jan 3, 2014)

You might want to look at something I've done in that area, Matt. How familiar are you with WordPress?

John


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## Jens_Hauser (Jan 3, 2014)

*Wordpress sites*



johnbeardy said:


> You might want to look at something I've done in that area, Matt. How familiar are you with WordPress?
> 
> John



I have been looking into WP to find templates that I can use for my site and also that I can use for clients. Do you have any that you can suggest?


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## matsmithphotog (Jan 3, 2014)

Hello John

I'm very familiar with WP. I checked the "Lightroom etc" page on your website but couldn't see anything to get me started.

Very interested to hear more!


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## johnbeardy (Jan 4, 2014)

Roughly, I've created a pair of connected LR and WP plugins to handle this workflow and am actually running my own and a few clients' site on it. It handles both the public portfolio pages and the private client pages, which can be password-protected (eg you don't know all the people who should access the pics) or locked down to the visitor requiring an account. Clients make choices and I can then automatically selected the images they've chosen in LR and exchange comments. It's all built on WP so if you know how to create a test WP site, and how to install the two plugins, then I'd hope you would like what I've created.

Yeye, at this point in the project I prefer to discuss this with people who don't hide their identity from me. If you don't want to "unmask" yourself in the forum, send me a PM or email.

John


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## Jens_Hauser (Jan 5, 2014)

Hi John,
I am trying to change my name to my proper name but I can´t find out how. I will send you an email instead.

Regards
Jens


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 6, 2014)

Let me know what username you'd like and I'll update it for you, or you can stick with this one if John's happy talking direct.


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## Jens_Hauser (Jan 7, 2014)

I would like to have Jens_Hauser or something thereof, thank you


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 8, 2014)

Jens_Hauser said:


> I would like to have Jens_Hauser or something thereof, thank you



All done.


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## rodbarbee (Jan 10, 2014)

matsmithphotog said:


> 2/ CRG and Publisher don't support password protected top-level galleries - just individual galleries.


You can password protect whole groups of galleries in an Album Set using Publisher. You will need to create a new Album Set template with TTG Autoindex for each client Album Set (index page) you want to password protect though.


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## Pastingal (Feb 1, 2015)

*What future for WSPP*

Hi,

I've been using WSPP for several years for sustaining my web site and I think this is a fantastic product. In principle at least and in regard of my needs. It's simple, efficient, easy to use (not more complicated than publishing a gallery). Fantastic concept and architecture!

Nevertheless I have 2 concerns.

The first one regards stability. The solution is very unstable and Lightroom aborts almost every time I publish. But it restarts and the job is done at the end. This is a real problem, as much as if I understand it takes time to publish images starting from the raw images, I don't understand why WSPP needs so much time to publish / republish indexes. To day I have about 1.000 photos on line and I wonder if it's reasonnable to go any further with the solution.

This leads me to my second concern: I've emailed Tim several times and never had any answer. Fortunately, the product being easy to use as I said, I've never needed any kind of help-line. But I'm stuck with my basic unresponded questions: is there any road map for that product? Will the performances problem be solved one day? same and more dramatic question for stability? Will the product be compliant with LR6 due to come soon?

Has some one in the forum more or less the same situation? And do you know a better solution?

JP
http://photospot.free.fr


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