Timers


Timers


Timers can save time by doing regular tasks within your collections automatically or remind you to do specific tasks. They can be set up as a default on all new collections (see Default Timers) or created for individual collections from the Edit Collection page (My Images > then click on the collection name).

Timers can:

  • Email yourself a collection activity report
  • Change price plan being used
  • Hide a collection
  • Delete a collection
  • Send email to registered visitors (GDPR)



  How?


To set up a default Timer.

  1. Go to My Images > Collection and File Defaults and click Manage Default Timers
  2. Select to Schedule a new TImer and click Create New
  3. Set up the actions you want to happen and the number of days after the collection creation time and Save All


To set up a one-off collection Timer

  1. Go to the edit collection page (My Images > then click on the collection name)
  2. Select Manage TImers
  3. Set up the actions you want to happen and the Trigger Time and Save All
  4. Note: You can also delete any timers from a collection on this page too


  Click if you want to know more?

Hide

Only top-level collections can be hidden. To hide a collection, we:

  • Change the Events and Galleries password on the collection (and any subcollections which have custom passwords)
  • Email the old and new passwords to you the photographer in the summary email (so you can restore the old password if desired)
  • Toggle the "Allow Bots" setting to OFF (if we end up changing this setting, we mention it in the summary email)
  • Set "DO NOT DISPLAY" in every Client Area page
  • Remove the collection from any other web page reference, i.e. Image of Day or Mosaic Portfolio
  • This should fully remove access to the collection, thereby "hiding" it.
  • The "Hide" option is meant as a sales tool to encourage buyers to buy before an artificial deadline — without actually deleting the files. Note that "Delete" remains a viable option, and in any case it only soft-deletes the collection.


Delete

This action will:

  • soft-delete a collection, including all sub-collections and all files.
  • Although the Timer sets up the initial future-deletion, we actually store the to-be-deleted time in the collection record itself, which allows precise to-the-second deletion of the collection. (Otherwise Timers run on an hourly schedule, and won't actually take effect until several minutes after their official scheduled time.)
    Because we store the to-be-deleted time in the collection itself, there are two extra useful things we can do:
    • Visitors viewing the collection can see "Goes offline DATE" (see Scheduled deletion of a collection)
    • Price Plan discounts can be configured to take effect for a number days before collection deletion
  • You will see a reminder of upcoming deletion a top the Edit Collection page
  • If a parent collection is configured to be deleted at a future time, then subcollections can have their own Timers to delete earlier than the parent, but cannot have Timers set to delete later than the parent.


Message

You can:

  • configure the system to email visitors (those who have purchased and/or those who have listed their emails).
  • Messages can be sent using "Untrusted Full Auto" which uses theimagefile SMTP servers. It means things just happen automatically but the messages might be flagged as spam as theimagefile is sending on your behalf.
  • Alternately, they can be sent with "Secure Direct Send" in which we send a ping to you, the photographer, and you follow a mailto link to let and email all users from your own mail client. This allows you to customise and is far less likely to be flagged as spam.
  • All emails sent using "Untrusted Full Auto" will include an unsubscribe link. Any recipient following that link will be placed into a private blacklist, and so their email will no longer be output from the Email Export Tool, and thus will no longer receive further emails using "Untrusted Full Auto". A notification email will go to you advising that this user has unsubscribed, so you can update any separate mailing lists you have.