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Fotomoto

Fotomoto is a print-on-demand e-commerce widget that integrates seamlessly into Backlight. Fotomoto prints, packs, and ships orders to your customers, so you can relax and focus on your art.

On Fotomoto.com​

To use Fotomoto's services, you will need to signup for an account at Fotomoto.com.

After creating or logging into your Fotomoto account, visit the Settings page in your account dashboard. On the Settings page, set the following options.

  • Publish Settings

    • Publishing Platform: None, I have a custom-made website.
    • Script Library: None, I'm not using any script or template.
    • Do not click the "Get Script" button; it is unnecessary.

  • Site Addresses

    • Add your website's domain to the list; add both "www" and non-"www" versions of the domain, i.e. both yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com.

  • Store Information

    • Copy your Store ID.

In Backlight​

In Backlight's admin, go to menu Backlight => Settings.

Click "Edit Settings", then scroll down to find Website Settings => Fotomoto Store ID. Paste your Store ID into this field, then save.

When this field is filled, the Fotomoto script will be loaded on all client-facing Backlight pages. This may incur a slight delay in loading pages, as the script is fetched from a remote location, but it also allows the Fotomoto checkout widget to appear on all pages when the cart contains items.

Next, go to Designer => Templates. Either "Design" an existing album template, or create a new one.

Under the Add-ons section, set the Enable Add-on option as "Fotomoto".

Fotomoto in Practice​

Backlight's prerequisites for Fotomoto support can be summarized as follows:

  • Your Fotomoto account much be properly configured.
  • Your Store ID must be set in Backlight's settings.

Having met these two requirements, every Backlight-powered page of your website will be Fotomoto "aware", meaning that Fotomoto's script is loading on the page and that the Fotomoto shopping cart will be accessible on the page when it contains products.

An empty shopping cart will not be visible on the page.

To enable purchasing, a third prerequisite should be met:

  • At least one album should be published using a Fotomoto-enabled album template.

In Fotomoto-enabled albums, purchasing may be performed in the following ways:

  • Add-to-Cart buttons will appear on thumbnail cells in the grid.
  • Add-to-Cart buttons will appear on single-image HTML pages.
  • Add-to-Cart buttons will appear in the slideshow presentation of large-image renditions.

On clicking any Add-to-Cart button in your album, or the View Cart button on any page, the Fotomoto purchasing widget will be launched as an overlay on the page. Cart content management and checkout occurs entirely in this overlay.

Image Check-in​

Fotomoto uses a "check-in" process for salable images appearing in Fotomoto-enabled albums. When the add-to-cart button is clicked for an image, that one image is checked-in. On being checked in for the first time, the image will be added to and will become visible in Fotomoto's dashboard; Fotomoto is wholly unaware of images that have not been checked in.

For images already checked in, subsequent check-ins will increment the number of views for that image, tracked for each image in the Fotomoto dashboard.

Within your Fotomoto account, checked-in images may be organized into collections with various product configurations.

Initially, images will belong to your default collection and will use its product configuration. If you have need to organize an album's images into different collections, you can use the album's Register Images button to check-in all images at once. This button is located at the bottom of the album's thumbnail grid, and only appears when logged into Backlight's admin, so will not be visible to your visitors.

Note that Fotomoto tracks images by URL. Therefore, an image appearing in two albums will appear twice in Fotomoto, with each rendition sourced from a discreet URL and therefore treated as a separate item.

To enabled Fotomoto for Backlight's search results, in Backlight's admin menu, go Designer => Templates => Assign Templates. For Search, assign a Fotomoto-enabled album template.

In such a case, be aware that all images appearing in search results will be available for purchase via Fotomoto. This can be a problem if, for example, your search displays mixed results from a Fotomoto-enabled album and an album with images not for sale.

For sites on which this is not desirable, you should ensure that Search is not using a Fotomoto-enabled template.