Most Common Questions

Images Not Working?

• First check your account status and usage on your account page--make sure you haven't exceeded your daily transfer limit.
• Try clearing your browser's temporary internet files. To learn how to do that, consult the Help section for your web browser.
• Make sure you are using the correct URL for the image we provide on the "Image Tools and Resources" page.
• Test the URL in your browser by pasting it into the address bar and pressing enter. You will either see the image, or a message explaining why the image isn't loading.
• Make sure the album and the image is set to "Public. " Sometimes it helps to make the album "Private", then back to "Public" to reset the privacy settings. Image level privacy settings are on the "Image URL and Tools" page.
• Make sure you don't have a "Valid URL" setting applied to the image. You set this on the "Image Tools and Resources" page.
• Don't use non-alphanumeric characters in your filenames--image filenames with spaces, apostrophes, question marks, or other characters may not be compatible with other systems. Try renaming the image on your PC and re-uploading it.

Other Common Issues

• Cancelling an Upgraded Membership
• Change Your Password or Email
• If you are writing about broken images on an external website (a site other than ours), please include a URL to the page so we can investigate the problem.
• If you are inquiring about a refund because you've upgraded to a higher plan, please include both subscription ID's from PayPal.
• If you have exceeded your bandwidth usage for the day please view the Help/FAQ page to learn about optimizing bandwidth usage and image filesizes.
• If you have upgraded your account through PayPal, but your account isn't yet reflecting the upgrade, first try logging off then back on. If that doesn't help, contact us, and please include the subscription ID from PayPal.

Signing Up

What are Account Limits

There are also various file size limits depending on your account type.

Daily usage is calculated by multiplying the size of each image times the number of times it is viewed, or the "Hits" to the image. If you have a 100KB image showing on an auction page, and that image is seen by 10 people, that equals 1,000KB of transfer. Each 1,024KB of transfer is one megabyte, and the default transfer limit for free accounts is 1000.

When your total daily transfer exceeds your account limit, images will temporarily stop being served from your account.

Keep this in mind when you're uploading large images--big images with little or no JPG compression will increase your transfer total very quickly. Try to use image or photo editing software which will allow you to save images with a specified amount of JPEG compression. The higher the compression level, the smaller the file size will be. The highest levels of compression will introduce a loss in image quality, so you'll have to find a balance between image quality and file size, usually by trial and error.

An important factor is to make sure your images aren't oversized (in pixel width and height), or that the file size isn't too big. See the Image Utilities or Optimizing Bandwidth Usage sections below for help with image manipulation and optimization. We also have a resize feature on the image viewing page.

Remember, you can monitor your current daily transfer total on your account page. The current usage chart there can be a valuable tool to help you determine the correct plan type for your needs.
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How Do I Prevent Other People from Using My Images?

We have a feature that will allow you to enter a URL to a page on which an image is authorized to be shown. This is called the "Valid URL" setting. Enter a portion or all of the URL to a webpage (or auction) where you plan to insert an image, and only that page will show the image.
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Auctions and Daily Transfer Limits

Our free service, and lower level plans of our paid service, may not be appropriate for sellers who run multiple auctions simultaneously, or who need to have many images shown on an auction.

Our recommendation is to use an auction counter to find out how many hits your auctions are getting--determine how much bandwidth you need by multiplying the number of hits times the size of the image. If that result is larger than 1000, our free service will probably not provide enough transfer for your images, and you should look into upgrading to our paid service.

Users with a Plan B or higher upgrade get unlimited transfer for images used on qualified auction websites that are under 100K.
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Why Do You Have Bandwidth Limits?

The biggest cost factor for any image hosting or web site hosting service is "Bandwidth" or "Data Transfer". Data transfer is measure by the size of a file, and how many times it is delivered to people viewing your images on other websites. That is the single biggest cost involved with internet hosting.

Companies that aren't setting bandwidth usage limits according to the pricing plan, normally 1) place strict limitations on image sizes, and 2) assume most people won't use that very much bandwidth, or 3) are hiding a data transfer limitation in the fine print. Feel free to look around and compare plans from other image hosting service providers. You'll see that most limit transfer in some way. If it's not stated up front, you'll usually find non-specific usage limits specified in the Terms of Service.

Several very large image hosting services have gone out of business in the last year because they weren't matching their costs to their prices. Because we buy our bandwidth in bulk, we are able to structure pricing plans that are affordable, and do cover our costs, which helps ensure that we'll be in business for years to come.
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Upgrading Your Account

Updating Your Account Preferences

How do I enable tracking?

Cancelling an Upgraded Membership Subscription

Cancelling a VillagePhotos Account

Using Microsoft's Web Publishing Wizard

To use this wizard, you must first install a small file that adds our site as a "service provider". Right-click on the hyperlink below and select "Save As". Save the file to your desktop, or someplace you'll be able to find it later. After its saved, find and double-click the file to install the wizard settings into your registry.

After this step is complete, you'll be able to use XP's Web Publishing Wizard to publish files to your account here. When viewing your images in Window Explorer, look for the "Publish this folder to the web" icon, or "Publish this file to the web", on the left side of Explorer.

Until we're able to write a comprehensive tutorial on using Web Publishing Wizard, here is a GeekGirls tutorial to get you started.
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How do I Get Pictures Into My Computer?

There are two main types of cameras, digital and film. The best solution, although the most expensive, is a digital camera.

Digital cameras typically come with all the cables and software you need to move the stored images from the camera to the computer. See the documentation that accompanied your digital camera for information on storing images on your computer. Once those images are stored on your computer's hard drive, you can view them, manipulate them with image editing software, and upload them to the web.

Look for digital cameras with removable memory sticks or cards, inexpensive memory upgrades, optical zoom, a built-in flash with red-eye control, and a good software bundle. Personally we reccommend avoiding cameras that use rechargable AA or AAA batteries. These batteries don't seem to last as long.

Pictures taken with a film camera require a little more effect to get on your computer or online. A very convenient method, that requires no investment in equipment or software, is using an image scanning service at the time you have your pictures developed. This service is offered by most photo developer services, even those at your local supermarket. For a fee, the processing service will place selected images onto a floppy disk, when can then be loaded into your computer.

An inexpensive option if you already have prints of your picture is scanning services. Most photo developers also offer scanning services. Just drop off your photo and indicate that you'd like it scanned for use on the web, and they should be able to help you out.

While not costly in small quantities, the services above will become expensive for larger numbers of images, and there is also typically a several day processing time. The faster, and ultimately less expensive method, is to get your own flatbed color scanner. These scanners are similar to a copy machine, in that you lift the lid, place the image face-down on a pane of glass, close the lid and press a start button. These scanners be purchased for under $70 typically, and come with all the software you'll need to get the images loaded onto your computer.

Image quality of flatbed scanners is highly dependant on price, so be sure to shop around.

It's important to note that most scanners are capable of creating much, much higher resolution scans of images than you'll ever need for online use. A typical image used in an auction might be 480x320 pixels which would look approximately like an 4x3 photograph on a 15" monitor.

A typical flatbed scanner can scan images at 1200 pixels per inch or higher, resulting in images that may be thousands of pixels across or high. Pixel resolution that high results in image file size that is much too large for using online. Make sure the scanner comes with good image editing software that will let you reduce the size to one appropriate for online use.
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Managing Albums

You can delete an album if there are no images in it, by clicking "Delete Album" at the bottom of the left menu.

The Delete link will not appear if there are images in the album, and you have to select the album to delete first.
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Uploading Images

If you don't know the exact location of the image file(s), you can use the Browse button next to each input field to locate the file. You can select one file per input field. The image to the right is an example of a file browse dialogue box, which may look different depending on Your computer and operating system.

After you've picked all the files you want to upload (up to 6 per submission), hit the "Upload" button to send the images to our server. Please be patient, and don't press the upload button more than once.
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Can I use my WebTV to upload and manage images? (added 11/22/2003)

Note that you can only upload one image at a time from WebTV.

If you want to upload more images, you'll need to select the "Add random string to filename" checkbox--this makes each image you upload have a unique name, so you don't overwrite previous images.

After you have images uploaded from your WebTV unit, managing and using your images is no different working from a PC.
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How do I use FTP to upload images?

First you need an FTP program. You can download free FTP client software from IPSwitch or CuteFTP.

After downloading and installing your FTP client, before connecting to our server to upload images, you'll have to specify some connection details. The first thing you'll need to set is the "Host Name" or "Address", which is ftp.villagephotos.com. Then, specify the username and password using your Village Photos login information. That should be all you need to specify.

Click the connect button, and you should be connected to our FTP service in a few seconds.

Most FTP clients have two separate "panes". One shows you the files on your computer (typically on the left), the other shows you files on the server (typically on the right).

Browse the files on your computer until you locate the image or images you wish to upload to your account. Select them, and find the "Upload" button, and click it. (Many FTP clients let you double-click the file you wish to upload to begin the transfer process).

The files will be transferred to your Village Photos account, and should be available immediately after they're finished uploading.

Close your FTP client software when you've finished uploading your images.

Drag and Drop Image Management with FTP!
In Windows 2000 and XP, once you've connected to ftp://members.villagephotos.com in your web browser, you will find it listed under "My Network Places". Look for the "members.villagephotos.com" entry towards the bottom of the list. By opening that album, you'll be able to browser the images in your account, and even drag/drop files to and from your account!
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Viewing Images You've Uploaded

Titles and Captions

To enter a title and/or caption, just click on a thumbnail to get to the Image URL and Tools page.

Loook fo rthe title and caption section. Enter up to 50 characters for a title, and up to 500 for your caption. Click the "Save Caption" button to store the information you've entered.
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Deleting Images

Be careful! Images selected to be deleted are removed permanently from the system, and cannot be retrieved!
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Moving Images

At the bottom of the page is a drop-down list of all the album albums you've created. Select the album you wish to move the images to, and select "Move Images."
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Resizing Images

We offer a built-in resizing feature to help you scale down your images. Click on the image thumbnail from an album page. Look for the Resize/Compress form. The numbers shown in the width and height fields are the current size of the image. To resize the image, simply enter smaller numbers into either the width or height fields, and click "Resize". Our system will automatically calculate the correct width if you enter the height, and the height if you enter the width. This prevents images from between distorted from disproportionate stretching or squeezing in one direction.

If you wish to intentionally resize the image without maintaining the original aspect ration, you can de-select the "Maintain Aspect Ratio" checkbox.
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Rotating Images

Image URL and Tools

Sharing All of Your Images Images or Entire Albums

Each account has a URL, known as the "Album List" URL that you can share that will give access to all albums. You'll find that URL on the "Photos" page.

Each album also has a URL you can give others to let them view images in a particular photo album. That URL is provided on each album page.

The pages that individual images are displayed on can also be shared, so people can see the title and caption that goes along with the image. The URL for a page with an individual image and title/caption information is the line titled "The public URL of this page..." and is found on the "Image Tools" page.

Note that these public URL's we provide for sharing do not contain the same details about your account or the images that you'll see when logged in to your account.
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Image Quality

1. If you use the "optimize" checkbox on the upload form, some image quality may be lost due to JPEG compression. Turn off this checkbox to retain the exact image quality when uploading new images.
2. We do not alter image quality once an image is uploaded.
3. Image quality may be altered when you resize or compress an image.
4. Some ISP's and browsers have their own image compression or "image quality" settings, such as AOL's browser. Make sure you don't have a lower image quality setting selected.
5. Make sure, when inserting images onto web pages, that you specify the correct width and height of the image in the HTML tag. Incorrect width and height tags will distort the image, possibly causing loss of quality.

My images are locked and I haven't uploaded anything today Added 11/21/2003

How do I get images from my computer to an eBay auction? Added 11/21/2003

To get an image from your computer to an eBay auction:

1. You need to log in, then click on the Photos tab, and select an album from the list by clicking on the its link. This is the album you'll upload images into.
2. Using the "upload new images to this album" link to get to the upload form.
3. Use the "browse" buttons to locate the image files on your computer you want to upload.
4. Hit the Upload button to send them to your account here.
5. Return to the Photos tab, select the album again, then you'll see thumbnails of the images you uploaded.
6. Click on a thumbnail on the album page to get to the "image URLs and tools" page that contains all the URL's and codes you'll need to use the image.
7. In the top sectdion of the Image URL and Tools page is the "public image URL" you can use for eBay listings!
8. Copy that from URL our site by highlighting it and choosing Edit / Copy on your browser's menu.
9. Paste it to the "Picture URL" field on eBay to include your image on the auction.
10. You can also use the "HTML IMG Tag" line we give on the "image URL and tools" page to add additional images in your auction's description. Make sure if you're adding HTML codes to your description, you're using the "Enter your own HTML" description entry box!
11. Always preview your auction to make sure images are added correctly!

Inserting Images on Auctions, Bulletin Boards, or other Web Pages

There are three methods we provide:

• The first is the direct URL to the image. Use this when asked for an image URL, or when using tags around the URL to create an image (like [img] on message boards).
• The second is HTML to display an image on a page. Used for auction descriptions, your own web pages, diaries/journals, etc.
• The third item is a link to a page, not an image, on our website, that will display the image, and any titles or captions you have specified for the image. This URL will NOT work for the "Picture URL" field on auction forms or message boards, because it is a hyperlink to a complete web page.

How Do I Make Images Smaller or a Different Format?

We also have an image compression for JPG images on the full-size image viewing page. Use the "Resize" feature, but leave the original width and height values. You can specifiy various compression levels, from 1 (no compression) to 10 (maximum compression). When you click "submit" a copy of your image will be made using the new compression level.

There is a trade-off between image quality and file size with compression--use trial and error, and eventually you'll find a setting that works for you.

If you don't have any software that can do this, try this search result at Download.com. While we don't officially reccommend any specific sofware, IrfanView is a free product that can handle most basic needs. You find it on Download.com.
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Reducing Bandwidth Usage

• Keep images small. Some users have very large images. Images used on busy auctions that are over 400x300 will use your daily bandwidth very quickly, and will be slow for potential buyers to load, especially if they use a dial-up ISP.
• Use JPEG images for photos, and use JPEG compression as much as possible. Most photo editing software will let you specifiy the amount of JPEG compression when saving an image. You can compress your images an awful lot without sacrificing too much image quality. If your software uses a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the lowest compression/highest quality setting, try values around 3, 4, or 5. See the section above on making images smaller for details.
• Avoid posting images on pages that get very heavy traffic, such as popular message boards, web logs, etc.. if you do, do so sparingly, and use optimized images.
• Avoid posting too many images on a single auction or web page. Post the one or two best images, and then add a link to an Album on VillagePhotos that contain the rest of the images. Bandwidth usage does not apply to images displayed on this site.

What are Gallery Pages, and how do I create one?

If you have added titles to your image, those titles will be used for the Gallery Page links. Otherwise, they'll be given a sequentially numbered label. Check out a sample right here.

To create a gallery page, move all the images you wish to include into a single album. Select the images you want included by clicking the appropriate checkboxes. When you've selected the images you want, hit the "Create Gallery Page" link at the bottom of each album page.

The next page you'll see contains a sample of the Gallery Page, and the HTML you can cut and paste into other web pages, like auctions, bulletin boards, etc. You can use them anywhere that allows you to insert JavaScript tags along with HTML.
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Auction Designer Pages

Is My Email Address Going to be Sold?

We have no plans to ever sell any of our user's information.
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I keep getting logged out, or it says my "Session Expired." Updated 10/13/2004

Fig 1. Click on Tools/Internet Options/Security, then select Trusted Sites Fig 2. Uncheck the Require Server Verification box, then type in www.villagephotos.com and click Add.

Cookies are required to use the member features on our site. They should be enabled by default.

If they aren't enabled, or you suspect they are disabled because you keep getting logged off, first try closing your browser and opening it again.

If that doesn't help, make sure cookies are enabled by going the following menu dialog: Tools / Options / Security

Then select Trusted Sites, then click the "Sites" button. You should be able to add our site. Type in our URL, www.villagephotos.com, and click the "allow" button. Hit okay, and close your browser down and try logging in again. You might need to turn OFF the "Require Secure Connection" checkbox.

Note - these instructions are for recent versions of Internet Explorer. If your browser has different menus that those above, let us know!

If you have enabled cookies, and still cannot log in, or maintain a login session, several things may be responsible. You might have "ad blocking" software, which has historically caused problems with dynamic websites. You may have a virus on your computer that has affected your browser's ability to correctly store cookies. Or, you could have corrupted or missing browser files. In this case, try re-installing the browser, or updating it with the latest released version.
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Uploading Errors Added 11/21/2003

If possible, try another web browser, or try updating your current browser with the latest patch or version. For an alternate web browser, we reccommend http://www.mozilla.org/. The latest version can be grabbed right from the front page of their site (look for the version for your operating system on the upper left hand side). We do reccommend Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher for best compatibilty.
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Pages on Village Photos keep refeshing automatically, and I see error messages Added 9/20/2003

Seller Tools

Once you've entered your user information, you can start setting up your Templates. Templates are all the information needed to create a listing on eBay.

Since templates can be copied, renamed, and edited later, you can enter all of the basic information the first time, and use that as a platform to create new templates later. This saves data entry time!

When you've created a templated, and filled out all the neccessary details, which vary depending on the type of listing you are creating, you'll need to "Test" the template. Until a template is successfully tested there will be a "Test" link on the right side of the Template List. Click that link to validate the template. When the testing is complete you'll be shown a detailed break-down of the fees for that particular listing.

You will be required to re-test a template if you edit or change it in any way later.

After a template is tested, you may submit it. This step creates the listing on eBay. Note that you are responsible for all eBay fees associated with the listing even though you are using our service.

Templates
A template contains all the information needed to list an item. Once a template is created, it can be edited, previewed, tested and submitted. You can also copy and edit a template to create a collection of templates you can use to quickly submit new listings.

Before you can submit or verify a listing, or check listing status, you must fill out your eBay user information profile. Use the link above to 'eBay Account' or click here.

Categories
If you wish, you can create template categories to organize your templates. Create a new category simply by entering it's name and clicking submit. You will then be able to select that template category from the "General Details" template page.

My Items
Active: Active items are those listings which are still open. On this page you can view details about the item, number of bids and high bidder information.

Past: Item information for closed items is provided on this page. To view the details of an item, click on it's title. If all the requirements are met, and the item did not sell, you may be able to relist the item with the "Relist" link.

Ebay Account
Use the eBay account page to authorize your account, and to authorize our website to help you with your l istings.

You must enter a valid eBay username and password into our system before you can test or submit listings. This information is not stored in any way by our system.

Template Name
Each template can be assigned a name, which does not become part of the listing. It's only for your use to organize your templates.

Template Category
You can create as many categories as you need to organize your listing templates. Your list of templates will be sorted and grouped according to the category they belong to. When created or editing a template you can choose a category to associate with this item. Selecting a category is not required.
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Your Email Address and SPAM Added 6/1/2004

Still Need Help?