Support FAQ

From Phanfare Support

This is a collection of the most frequent questions we hear from customers. Although a small percentage of customers hit these issues, every one of them represents an area where we are actively improving Phanfare.

One of the benefits of real support from real people is that we know where our customers are getting stuck. Our goal is that this list gets shorter and shorter over time, and that it will eventually contain only arcane issues.

1. I forgot my username and/or password, can you help?
Remember that the URL for your Phanfare Photo website is formatted as: http://yourusername.phanfare.com. So if you remember your URL or bookmarked it, you have your username. If you don’t know your site URL, just email us from the email address on record, and we will be happy to provide it to you.

If you forgot your password, just follow the instructions on this page: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Forgotten_password/username. The password will be emailed to the email address of record on the account.

2. How do I log into my website to upload pictures?
Phanfare Photo is a software application that you download and install on your computer. To upload pictures and add albums, you need to download, install, and then launch the application (double-click the icon on your desktop or go to Start-->All Programs-->Phanfare-->Phanfare Photo). Log in to Phanfare with the username and password you choose when you signed up for your account. For more information see: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Launching_Phanfare/Logging_In Once logged in, you can import your pictures and create albums. For more information, see: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Creating_your_first_album

Phanfare also offers a beta web-browser based way of accessing your account and using our basic functionality. Just go to http://my.phanfare.com. Remember, this is only meant to be used while travelling, at work, or somewhere else you can't access the full program since the functionality is limited.

Customers can also email images to their albums from a computer or mobile phone. For more information, see: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Emailing_images_to_your_albums

3. I received an email or got a message upon trying to login that says my Phanfare site has been disabled because I failed to confirm my email address. What does this mean, and how do I reactivate my account?
Phanfare requires that every user provide a valid email address to open an account. To verify this, we send a welcome email to every user upon signup. There is a link in that email that users must click within 24 hours after signup to activate their trial. If the link is not clicked, the account is disabled. Note that in some email browsers, the link breaks onto two lines. You need to cut and paste both lines of the link into your web browser in order to access the page and confirm you email address.

If your account has been disabled, you can reactivate it yourself by clicking on the link in the welcome message you received from Phanfare. If you do not see a welcome message from Phanfare, you may want to check your junk/spam folders to make sure your email system did not filter it incorrectly. If this happened, you will want to add support@phanfare.com to you address book to ensure that you will receive important emails from us regarding your account.

If you deleted the welcome email or can not locate it, email support@phanfare.com.

4. I uploaded a video to my account, but when I go to my website all I see is the first frame, and it says the video is “unavailable.”
When you import a video into Phanfare, the first frame is immediately extracted and shown in the thumbnail on your website. However, the video will not be available for viewing on your site until the fullsize video uploads. So you will need to keep Phanfare Photo running until the “Website Updating” indicator (bottom of application screen), reads: "Website UptoDate."

For more detailed information about how video sharing works with Phanfare, see: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Supported_video_formats

5. What are the limits on uploading video?

We accept videos up to 10 minutes in length. Overall file size for videos 10 minutes or less can not exceed 2GB. For more information on video, go to: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Supported_video_formats

6. When I try to install Phanfare, I get a 1603. NET installation error. What does this mean, and what do I need to do?
Phanfare requires the Microsoft .NET framework to run. Many new computers come with the framework installed (Dell, HP, IBM). If you do not have the framework, or if you have an out-of-date version of the framework, the Phanfare installer will install the framework for you.

From time to time, the installation of the framework fails. If you get an error installing the Microsoft .NET framework, such as error 1603, there are instructions for fixing the error on this page: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/The_Phanfare_installation_fails_with_a_code_1603

7. When I try to launch Phanfare, I get an "Unable to detect updates" message or nothing happens at all. What could be the problem?
The inability to detect updates or the failure of Phanfare Photo to launch is nearly always a networking problem related to a software network firewall program or web accelerator (such as Venturi) that is blocking or interfering with Phanfare's access to the network.

Have you installed any such software lately? Can you disable it to see if that solves the problem? Once you isolate which software is blocking Phanfare, the next step is to configure it to allow Phanfare access to the network. You need to reconfigure your Internet security software to allow "c:\Program Files\Phanfare\Phanfare Photo\phanstart.exe" and "c:\Program Files\Phanfare\Phanfare Photo\1.XX.X.X\phanphoto.exe" (look for the highest number in the directory). If this process is not clear to you, you can email support@phanfare.com, and we will set up a shared desktop session with you to help you get Phanfare running again.

If you cannot launch Phanfare or detect updates and are connecting to the internet via a router (Linksys or Netgear or equivalent), we suggest trying to remove the router and connect the computer directly to the DSL modem or Cable modem. Does that solve the problem? If so, it is probably the router and you may need to do a firmware upgrade. There is more information on troubleshooting this problem at: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Launch_Troubleshooting

8. I want to send a link out to an album on my website, but do not want viewers to be able to see any of the other albums on my site. Is this possible?
Yes, it is possible. Here are detailed instructions on how to do it: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Inviting_friends_to_view_a_single_Phanfare_album_in_isolation

It is important to note, however, that in order to use this feature, you must have a site password set for your main Phanfare site. This is simply because if we sent someone to a URL that started with your site name (ex. http://smith.phanfare.com/album/xxxx), a clever person could determine the main URL to your site is http://smith.phanfare.com and go to your table of contents and see all your albums and images. Thus, having a site password is required, logically, if you only want visitors to view a single album in your collection.

9. I would like to create categories of albums, such as “sports,” “travel,” etc. without dates associated with them? Can I do this?
Currently, Phanfare takes a chronological approach to organizing your photos. Each album is assigned a date or range of dates. We chose this style of presentation because we believe it is the only scalable way to index a large collection with minimal effort on the part of the manager. It is likely that eventually a “travel” album, for example, would have too many photos in it for a viewer to reasonably enjoy.

But we realize that chronology is not enough for large collections. We plan to introduce the ability for users to create timeless albums that do not have a date associated with them. These albums will likely sit above the chronological index of albums. We will also be introducing the ability for users to tag photos with certain keywords (such as sports, travel, family, etc.). Visitors and site managers could then just search the site for certain keywords to view photos and videos in certain categories, and the manager of the collection will be able to create virtual albums that include the result of stored queries.

We do currently offer the ability to search a Phanfare site by keyword. For more on this, see: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Search

10. Can I create albums within albums?
Phanfare does allow for one level of hierarchy. For example, a wedding album, can have a subsection for the shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding ceremony, and reception.

We do not have any short term plans to allow folders of folders (arbitrary hierarchy). Tagging should provide a good alternative way to index your photos and videos by topic, and unlike hierarchy, tagging does not restrict you to one schema. We expect to start developing tagging this Fall for release within the next six months.

For example, pictures of your children on vacation can be tagged “children”, “vacation.” If you had a high level folder for “children” and a high level folder for “vacation,” where would the most recent vacation photos of your children go? Not clear. Hierachy is also tedious to maintain. Whenever you create a new album, you need to figure out where in your hierarchy it goes. With our approach,you just create an album name and go. With tagging, you can return latter and tag the album or images.

We believe hierarchy is not an appropriate or useful way to manage a large collection of consumer photos and videos that span many years.

11. Can I download an entire album or several photos at once?
Yes, within the Phanfare client you can export images one by one or an entire album at a time. Also, if you don't have the download original function disabled on your Phanfare site, you and visitors can also downlaod the pics on a per album basis there. More information on this feature is available here: http://support.phanfare.com/doc/Retrieving_full-size_images_and_videos_from_Phanfare

12. Can I download the slideshow and/or burn it to a CD/DVD?
You can download a slideshow to play on your PC. Click here for instructions. At this point, you can burn the slideshow to a CD or DVD to play on a PC, but not one that would play on a DVD player connected to a TV. We are working towards implementing that feature in an upcoming release.