I would like to introduce you to a dedicated volunteer group of Shutterfly Share site owners. They are passionate about Shutterfly, and are here to help you make the most of your share sites. Come back to this page for Share Star tips on their favorite share site features, making your share sites look great, how to gain a bigger audience (if crowds are what you’re after), and more.
Here’s to sharing!
Rachel B
Community Curator
VALERIE - school team storyteller
Occupation: Editor of WhoWon.com, a Motorsports news web site
Family: Married, with two kids, a twenty-year-old daughter who is a junior in college and a 15-year-old son who is a sophomore in high school.
Hobbies: Photography, scrapbooking and other crafts. Also love to read Christian fiction. My summer time addiction is dirt track auto racing and I attend any Midget/Sprint Car races that I can.
Valerie’s Shutterfly connection: VaIerie came to know Shutterfly two years ago after taking lots of pictures of her son’s baseball team. Since then, she has gone on to set up Share sites for her high school boys’ varsity basketball team, and the marching band and drumline, as well as a family site. Valerie says “Share is a wonderful tool for allowing numerous photographers to show their photos to a large or small group of people. With our band site, we have several parents who follow our marching band, drumline and guard kids around at practice, car washes, football games and competitions. We put up hundreds of photos each season and everyone loves it. I constantly hear about how grateful everyone is to have access to lots of fun photos.”
CLAUDIA - travel storyteller
Occupation: Technology Integrator at seven schools.
Family: Married with four grown children and four grandchildren.
Hobbies: Traveling, gardening, writing, and breeding/driving/showing my horses (Welsh Cobs).
Claudia’s Shutterfly connection: I am new to Shutterfly. Recently, I was looking for a good Web 2.0 tool that had all the features I was looking for. I wanted to publish ten years worth of travel photos in one place, to be able to blog, and share comments on my pictures. I was tired of having my photo albums one place, my blog another and yet another location for my website. I wanted it to be easy to use, not time consuming to set up yet have a professional look about it. Shutterfly has done this and more for me.
Claudia's Share Site: http://travelnovak.shutterfly.com/
JENETTE - family storyteller
Family: Married and a mother of two girls ages 3 and 14 months who are my inspiration
Occupation: Accountant for telecommunications company working a flex time schedule to balance family and career life.
Hobbies: Riding sport bikes with my husband and catching every moment I can with my camera. I have also recently started to indulge in digital scrap booking.
Shutterfly Connection: After using several other sites to keep our families both near and far abreast our childrens' every moment, I came across Shutterfly and immediately jumped on the invitation to try out the Share site beta. Since then my husband teases that my public relations work on our Share site is my 2nd job as I love to keep it updated at least bi-weekly with pictures, videos and posts. It is rewarding knowing that through my site, all who visit our site feel as though they are by our sides at every step in our journey.
MEGAN - family storyteller
Occupation: Stay-at-home Mom
Family: Married, with a 16 month old daughter.
Hobbies: Avid reader when I get the time! Also enjoy sorting and organizing (a touch of OCD? :-) My guilty pleasure is reality TV
Shutterfly connection: I first came across the Shutterfly Share Sites when a former co-worker started her site after having a baby. I loved catching up with her and her new family member on the West Coast after we moved to the East Coast. I stole her idea and started my own site last summer because our family is all over the East Coast and we have friends all over the world!
MELINDA - classroom and community storyteller
Occupation: health care writer
Family: mother of twins
Hobbies: photography is part hobby, part preservation of moments, and part a gift to others.
Shutterfly Connection: I discovered digital photography soon after they were born in 2002 when my sister gave me a gift card to Shutterfly. Once I visited shutterfly.com, it was love at first sight. I quickly began to download photos, make photo gifts, create archival books, and share electronic photo albums. Shutterfly's new Share Sites are wonderfully easy to use. I've created Share Sites for my church, the twins' flag football team, their school classes, a family album, Daisy Scouts, our community organization, and other groups.
ROGER - community storyteller
Occupation: Web Site constructor living in Australia. Retired British IT professional. CEO of a large Australian software house till 2000.
Family: (b1946). Married, to Tessa (b1948) with two kids, Adam (b1977) who is a Merchant Banker and Kate (b1991) who is studying to be a Veterinary.
Hobbies: Wine & Food (in that order), Choral Singing. Technology (early adopter), Investment, Web development, Motor Cars.
Roger’s Shutterfly connection: I moved 4 active sites from MSN Groups recently. My old school site (established 2001), My choir site, My personal site and My business reunion site.
I feel that Shutterfly has a great deal to offer to Groups. It is far more powerful than MSN Groups but with it comes a responsibility to sensibly use these features. I believe in design/planning before implementation of web sites.
Shutterfly Share Star member Melinda Y., tells us how her shutterfly site makes it easy to share priceless classroom moments with parents and teachers. Her classroom photo advice? - always have your camera ready.
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Hi. My name is Melinda Young, and I'm a constant photographer and historian of my twin kindergarteners' many activities.
Since I’m a better photographer than cupcake baker, I've created a niche as the picture taker for their class activities. So when they had their annual fall Red Ribbon anti-drug parade, I was on hand to capture their excited faces as they stood on the float they'd made themselves. I was there on the 100th day of school when the classes featured their special 100-day sculptures and other projects, and I photographed the Beatrix Potter Tea Party costumes my son's classmates wore at their recent spring/Easter celebration and school march.
My son and daughter are in separate K-5 classrooms, so I often run back and forth between them to take pictures at their holiday parties. My habit before this past fall was to take pictures and upload them to Shutterfly to be sent to friends and other parents via email. Then I discovered Shutterfly's share sites and was immediately smitten!
Since I work for my own business, I figured I didn't have enough time to create photo Web sites. But with Shutterfly's share sites, it was easy: I just downloaded the photos, same as I always did. Then I sent them to be shared, same as usual. But instead of pressing the single share link, I pressed the share site link and Voila! - Now I could select a very colorful and eye-engaging Web page. A few more clicks to select photos to feature at the top, and then a quick note about what the site is all about, and I'm done. The attractive share sites were created in about 15 minutes more time than it usually takes me to send out photos.
There are multiple advantages to the share sites: One, all of the parents can access these, even if they don't have an email address; two, updating them is even easier than sending out single photo-sharing emails, and three, people love them. Many parents have told me that they love that I keep up with the classroom activities since they aren't able to, and they say they plan to order photos at the end of the year.
For me, the benefit is that I am able to do something meaningful for my children's classrooms and teachers. And my children see me at most of their events. Although, when I can't make it because of a work appointment, the teachers will give me copies of their photos. So I have access to extra pictures, and I can upload their photos to the same share sites. Plus, if I decide to create an end-of-the-year photo book for each of my children, then I will have all of their classroom photos readily available at one site.
For other moms who'd like to create share sites for their children's classrooms, my biggest piece of advice is this: Be sure to take pictures of each child when there's a costume event or when they are wearing silly hats or holding up their artwork during holiday parties. It doesn't take that long, and it means a lot to the other parents and children.
Additional advice:
* If you take a group picture during a special event, then you can feature these in the main display photo spot on the top left side of the share site.
* Save yourself time by keeping your share site comments brief. The pictures speak for themselves. These comments could be updated every couple of months or so.
* Have the teacher send out the share site's Web address to all students, so everyone has a chance to see them.
* Sometimes take candid photos of the students with their arms around one another or acting silly.
* Keep your camera with you whenever you visit the classroom. One of my favorite photo moments was when one little girl jumped into her dad's arms when he arrived to surprise her with a birthday cake. I didn't know he was going to be there, but was just leaving the classroom with my camera when I saw the father carrying a cake and walking toward the room. So I stayed. Later, I printed out some copies and gave them to the girl.
Shutterfly Share Star member Megan T., tells us how her share site keeps far-away friends and family up to date day-to-day activities and important milestones. She also lets us in on her favorite share site feature - the video section.
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My name is Megan and I am the mother to a 18 month old little girl, Lily. My husband, Nick, and I have moved all over the country with his education and job opportunities and unfortunately our friends and family can’t follow us! With our most recently move to Rhode Island, I was able to stay home with Lily and I have a lot more time to document her life and adventures. As any new mom knows, the amount of photos begins to grow as your belly does and they don’t stop until the kids go off to college!
A former co-worker turned me on to the Shutterfly share sites when she had her first child. I thought it was a great way to show friends and family what was going on with their new bundle of joy, through pictures and journal entries. I quickly started my own site, Never A Dull Moment, and never looked back.
I have family in NY, my husband’s family is in NC, and we have lived in VA, CA and now RI. I felt like I was always typing emails to people trying to keep them updated on Lily’s latest milestones and I was repeating myself over and over. Shutterfly gives me the opportunity to post pictures and journal whenever I want. All of our friends and family have bookmarked our site and can check in on us in their free time. I am not bothering anyone with emails to see pictures once a week.
I also periodically print out the journal entries and add it to Lily’s baby book, so she will be able to look back and see her life adventures! Another great way I can remember Lily’s moments is by creating a Shutterfly photo book, which I can post on my share site, too.
I love the feature that allows me to share videos. I upload my videos to YouTube.com and with a quick click of the mouse, I can put them on my own share site. My best friend told me that she watches the videos over and over and “knows” Lily through the videos because she only gets to see her in person every few months. With Lily’s new verbal skills, the share site will be instrumental in letting her fans watch her try out her new words!
Shutterfly Share Star member Jenette K., tells us how share sites make communicating with family and friends easier, and more meaningful.
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My name is Jenette; I am a wife and a mother of two girls ages 3 and 1. My husband and I split our time working from home and in the office to give us more quality time with our girls. This wonderful arrangement allows me to experience and capture milestones and quirky moments to share with the world. We have always relied on online resources to share our family’s endeavors and it is a personal goal to post a new album each week because it seems like they change with every day that passes.
I discovered Shutterfly after my previous online photo storage host decided to shut down. I explored the list of suggested sites and fell in love instantly with the options, flexibility and editing software Shutterfly had to offer. A few months later, I received an invitation to try out the new Share Site Beta and I set up my site that same day. Prior to Share Sites creation, I was spending my evenings maintaining 3 different sites to share videos, pictures and stories. The creation of Share Site allowed me to consolidate our family’s moments onto one page and make staying connected a snap.
Whether we had a big event or just a funny moment, everyone who visits our site feels as though they are by our sides watching the girls grow. One thing my guests and myself particularly enjoys is the filmstrip feature that I have positioned under my featured pictures banner. I utilize this section to give a quick view of my most recent albums. Even if my guests are short on time, in just a few seconds they can get a look at what is happening in our lives.
With the options and features Share Site offers, I can update the layout, color and add a playlist in just a few minutes. Our family and friends always compliment me on how much they enjoy my work on the site and that they truly value having this resource to share in even the smallest moments.
I hope you enjoy your experience with Share Site as much as I have.
Jenette
The Shutterfly Share team needs your help. We’re working on a share site project, and are looking for your ideas, success stories, and permission! Click here for more information