I am relieved because all galleries on both KLC ƒotos and Kelley L Cox, have been restored.

I’m so grateful to Phil Ritti who really advocated for me and helped set up a meeting with me the CEO, John, to make this happen. The trouble is, even though the galleries have been restored, neither site has really been recovered, as any folder that had a thumbnail populated from a gallery that got archived, now shows up as just a blank folder - which might make someone visiting my site think that my MLB gallery is empty... when in reality it has well over 400 games (whoa - have I really covered over 400 games?!)

I suppose I could make a pun that it hasn't be re-COVERED, as all my select covered photos are missing.

So how do I feel about zenfolio now?

It’s complicated. I have so much appreciation for how I was able to grow my career and my company on zenfolio, but I'm also disheartened with the direction the current decision-makers have taken it. Yes, zenfolio wasn't perfect, but it was generally functional and I invested a lot of time and effort into customizing it and making it work for me and my business.

Will I be using zenfolio in the future?

I will continue to use zenfolio for this site. The archiving isn’t really an issue for me for that use since I’m not actively selling on the platform and I can set my portfolio and other galleries to not archive moving forward. Perhaps I will even make a "cover" gallery set to not archive and my cover photos will pull from that as opposed to the gallery of the event. Full disclosure, I pay only $200 for it, and that is well worth the price.

However, I am acknowledging and accepting that I can no longer consider zenfolio an archive. To me, an archive is accessible and searchable. The zenfolio "archive" is neither of those. Zenfolio can be a great website builder, CRM tool, one-time delivery tool... and a decent basic blog (if you don't need spellcheck).

For my archive, I'm using PhotoShelter and SmugMug. PhotoShelter is housing all of my WORK, while SmugMug is housing both work and my personal archive. This choice is mostly because SmugMug allows auto-upload and videos, both of which are not features of PhotoShelter.

For KLC ƒotos, I'm using PhotoShelter for Brands. I even participated in a webinar about how KLC ƒotos uses the platform.

Check It

I know I am in a rare position to have the pull to get my archive restored without having to manually restore every gallery. I, along with many others, was initially doing this. I can't believe the time I spent clicking to restore galleries. The number of people manually restoring their galleries actually clogged up the servers. Take that as a hint that we all can't run a business with archived galleries!

How About You?

Are your galleries restored? Have you started moving them? Will you stay on zenfolio? If not, where are you moving to?