The following chart shows the complete setup:
1. Prepare the original images
The first step is to prepare the images for the online web gallery. Basically that means to download them from your camera or card reader to your local computer. (If you are a professional you may check out DownloaderPro from BreezeSys.) What follows is usually renaming, keywording, converting, selecting, sorting and editing the photos but that highly depends on your personal workflow and is not relevant for the EOS gallery. The only important step is the addition of keywords in the IPTC data of the images. They can be used to define special items, sections and captions in the EOS gallery.
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2. Generate the gallery
Using one of the image applications which work with the EOS template (BreezeBrowser, JAlbum or iView MediaPro) you can now create the web gallery. In this step you usually define the gallery's title, the output folder, the image size and JPG quality and whatever other settings the application offers. You select "EOS" as the template to be used and let the application create the gallery.
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3. Upload the gallery to your web server
Currently only JAlbum and iView MediaPro offer an ftp utility to upload the generated gallery to a web server. For all other applications you need an extra tool for that step. CuteFTP or SmartFTP are just two of the many programs available.
Alternatively you can also burn the created gallery to a CD and send it out to your clients.
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4. Browse the gallery
Once the gallery is online you either need to notify the client of the gallery's address or you place a link on your website which points to the new gallery (or both).
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5. Print an order
After the client has finished the selection process he is ready to submit the order. If he is not connected to the internet he can print it out and send/fax it to the photographer. A print-out is also useful as personal reference even if he submits the order online because it includes all thumbnails of the ordered photos. If you have burned the gallery on a CD it is recommended to offer more offline checkout options, like 'local e-mail' or 'save to file'.
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6. Submit an order online
If the client submits an order online it will always sent to the PHP script "eosmail". You can either install it on your own web server or you can use it via our server. It is not necessary that this script resides on the same web server as the gallery! However if you use our server please note that it comes without guarantee as this is a free service.
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7. The order gets saved on the server
Each order that has been sent to the PHP script "eosmail" will be saved on the web server. Note that no credit card data will be saved. The order data can be accessed via a web browser or downloaded as a spreadsheet (export to Excel format).
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8. An e-mail notification is sent out
After the order got saved on the server it will be automatically e-mailed to the photographer and the client as well. The mail to the photographer contains various helpful attachments: a tag file (for BreezeBrowser), the client data in a csv-file (for database import) and a item/photo matrix file.
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9. Make an online payment
If you have enabled a checkout button that is connected to an online payment system and the customer clicked on it the eosmail program will automatically forward him to the secure website of the 3rd party merchant (e.g. Paypal). All important data will be transferred to the payment site: order ID, total amount, client name and address, e.t.c. He only needs to enter his credit card details and finalize the payment. Note that steps 7 and 8 are not visible to the client! He clicks on the (e.g.) Paypal checkout button and gets directly to the Paypal website.
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10. A payment notification is sent out
If an online payment was done another confirmation e-mail will be sent out to the photographer and the customer. Since that depends on the merchant we have no control over this step.
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