At BIG Folio we are rolling out the red carpet and sounding the trumpets to announce the release of our new admin panel, Admin4! With tons of tweaks, upgrades, redesigns, and enhancements you’re not going to believe how easy we have made it to customize your site, organize your photos, manage your content and wow your customers!

Best of all? This huge update is FREE for all Admin3 users. FREE! It’s like when you rent a car and they give you the upgrade from the economical sedan to the performance sports car free-of-charge!

Seriously, you’re going to love what Admin4 has under the hood:

· Vastly improved user interface: it’s easier and faster than ever to build a site
o Modern browser compatible – makes everything faster, more fluid, and more intuitive
o Template specific control – makes it easier to take full control of all the options each site has to offer
o Streamlined gallery creation – makes creating, updating, editing and combining galleries possible in one step

· A whole new entry page builder
o Create as many different sections as you want
o Choose from a wider variety of layouts for each section
o Drag and drop sections
o Update current or previous layouts by simply selecting versions from a list of compatible archived pages

· The new BIG Show (coming soon)
o Instantly create elegant slideshows right from within the admin
o Preserve branding by automatically importing color and logo settings
o Free with any BIG Folio site

So… you ready to take it for a drive? Just login to your go.bigfolio.com account and go for it. After you take it for a spin drop us a line and let us know about your new favorite feature!

Enjoy!

What is your idea of a perfect day? Sitting on the beach? Winning the lottery? Watching your team win the pennant? Spending the day with family and friends? At BIG Folio we love all of those things, but our perfect day starts when we hear from happy customers like Carolyn Ann Ryan.

When we met Carolyn last February at WPPI she was excited to upgrade her website. As a former software designer of eleven years she knew she needed a beautiful site with an easy to navigate interface. As we talked through the options and discussed her various needs, we decided it was best for Carolyn to launch The Artist Series. After she utilized the custom design features, integrated her WordPress blog and added her professional images her site went live! A few weeks later we received this note:

“In just the last few weeks the number of requests I’m receiving from people who found me via the internet is hitting almost one per day. For someone that only received two or three requests in 2010, it’s making me very happy! And these are real, valid potential clients. They are finding my work and my blog and more important, they are contacting me because they are coming to a web site that looks great!

Thank you BIG Folio for building the tools to make launching my website easy and cost effective. It was absolutely one of the best investments I made in 2011 for my business and I just wanted your staff to know how thankful I am!”

Thanks for making our day Carolyn Ann Ryan, and congratulations on your success!

Want to see Carolyn’s site in action? Follow this link and enjoy!

Cook up the Jambalaya, wind up Big Ben and light up The Strip because BIG Folio is on the move! With tradeshows in New Orleans, London and Las Vegas coming up quick it’s the perfect chance to hang out with our world-class clients and meet new friends like you!

You can find us Jan 15-17 at the Imaging USA tradeshow in New Orleans at booth 131 and on Jan 13,14 we will be hanging out at the SWPP tradeshow in London. As always, the WPPI tradeshow in Las Vegas promises to be a ton of fun so be sure to come see us Feb 20-22 at booth 734.

We would hate to miss you, so check your calendar and pencil in the dates! In the meantime, keep your eyes on our blog and Facebook page because tradeshows always inspire us to make killer deals! Who knows, this could your chance to get the website you’ve always dreamed of!

See you soon!

Sometimes the hardest thing about being creative is being creative. With no buttons to push, levers to yank or formulas to follow for on-demand creative brilliance we are left to practice the subtle, unpredictable art of inspiration.

We all have our tricks to summon the muses in our lives. Stay up late. Drink copious amounts of Red Bull. Listen to Sigur Ros in the dark. Walk around the lake. Sketch. Play guitar. Doodle. Brainstorm. Win fifteen races on Mario Kart. Mind map. Scratch it all out and start over again. And again.

There is nothing easy about it, but the hard is what makes the creative process so great. If you’re looking for a spark today check out these links to some of our friends at BIG Folio. Their work is brilliant, inspiring and contagious.

Stitch Design Co

Snap + Tumble

Benjamin Edwards Photography

On Blue Pool Road

So you’re creative. That’s no secret. You have a lifestyle, hobbies and a business that reflect your creative passion and you want a website that does the same.

At BIG Folio we pre-design our websites to give you creative control. If you don’t like the colors that come in your design, change them! While you’re at it, add your logo, put up your images, create unique pages, upload PDF’s and customize your contact forms.

Still need more room to flex your creative muscle? Now you’re talking.

Our BIG Folio team is ready, waiting and excited to help design and build a one-of-a-kind website that expresses your unique creative talent. Take a couple minutes and check out these sites we hand-made for BIG Folio clients.

customized York Street: http://ginaleighphotography.com/
customized Burlington: http://wedding.jgarnerphoto.com/
customized Burlington: http://ryanrayweddings.com/
customized Burlington: http://72.32.198.216/~michellce/
customized Burlington: http://tinywaterseniors.com/
customized Greer: http://robgreerweddings.com/
customized Nakoma: http://ranortner.com/
customized Nakoma: http://dominiquebader.com/
customized Aurora: http://http://jenniferkhanson.com/
customized Aurora: http://www.tinywaterwedding.com/
customized Sage: http://janejohnsondesign.com/
customized Bond: http://joshgruetzmacher.com/

If you can dream it, we can build it. Give us a call or drop us a line and let’s talk about any customizations you’d like to see made to your website design.

No… that’s a shame, because there is a new camera on the market equipped with a built in phone so you and Mom never miss a chance to talk. It even has WIFI so you can check your email and SMS so you can message your friends. And believe it or not, it has GPS and a search function so you can find the closest Vietnamese restaurant when you’re hungry for some PHO.

That’s right, it’s no DSLR, but the iPhone 4 comes equipped with a pretty decent camera package. With a 5mp sensor, LED Flash and 5x digital zoom you can capture just about any moment, but its greatest (and probably most overlooked) feature is this… it’s the camera you always have with you!

Check out this side-by-side-by-side comparison of images captured with the iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4 and a DSLR.

What is your take? Is it iPhone’s VS. DSLR? Or is there room for both in your camera arsenal?

For all of our clients who have asked for an HTML only solution, Desperado Trail has arrived… our new HTML5 site. With the same amazing admin panel we’ve always used, your customization potential is still at your very own fingertips. Add texture files, music, change slideshow speed, incorporate page linking, change your fonts, add your social media links, change colors, offer a Featured category … it’s all there for you.

Take a look at the intro video option that our other templates don’t offer. Because Desperado is an HTML site, you can also embed youtube, vimeo, and other third party video players throughout the site.

If your not a fan of flash sites, Desperado Trail offers you the freedom and look of a custom site, allowing more extensive HTML formatting abilities, without the limitations of Flash.

We hope you love it as much as we do…  check out Desperado Trail here.

Congratulations to one of our amazing clients, Erika Powell, who we featured a few months ago as her new interior design site went live with us. If you haven’t discovered Erika yet, she’s a much loved and talented interior designer in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Erika’s blog is a bit of a well oiled machine with followers from all over the world as she offers snippits of her personal life and endless inspiration for designers everywhere. Knowing her in person, makes her all that more delicious.

Check out her latest article in Better Home in Gardens, I stumbled across it while flipping through my subscription this month and let out a little squeal for my friend in the panhandle.

I thought this was a brilliant way to document the growing stages of a pregnancy… and while most mom’s do some sort of monthly capture to mark their increasing waistlines, it made me think about how the rest of us document every day life. What are we doing as photographers to snag those random, everyday moments that seem insignificant but have so much power years later?

I know, this is something I am constantly working on as a mom, as a friend, as an informal and common,  every day life liver.

Just a little jab in the ribs… what are YOU doing to document everyday life?

inspirational image found on Pinterest, of course.

We just love our kiwis…. we have some amazing clients in New Zealand and Kelvin is one of them. I fell in love with their studio name immediately.

Love Photo.

Ahhhh, Love. Photos. Of course!

Kelvin specializes in wedding photography and wanted a simple and clean mark that portrayed the simplicity of being in love. His old logo was too bulky and masculine, often a problem we see with male clients servicing a female dominant market. Kelvin saw this too and wanted to change it. After a few rounds of concepts, we mixed and matched a few elements he loved from a few of them and came up with his perfect new stamp.