Category: 1000 Little Things

#3: Craigslist copy/paste templates improved

Update: as of November 2013 Craigslist is no longer allowing fancy templates or externally-hosted images (you can still show images on your posts but they must be uploaded directly to Craigslist). More info and a great solution provided free from TourVista here.

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Our free Craigslist templates have been improved to save you even more time. In addition to the main description HTML code that you can copy and paste into your Craigslist post, your property title, price and address are also shown. Just click to highlight them, copy and paste into Craigslist.

craiglist-copy-paste-template

There is also a link to your virtual tour photos on TourVista. While our Craigslist templates include your first 7 photos, it’s also a good idea to upload at least one other photo using the “Add Images” form that Craigslist provides. This photo will show at the bottom of your post. We recommend using a photo that is not already included in the template code TourVista provides.

We are working on some new Craigslist templates and look forward to offering these in the near future!

(Update: 08-16-09) – Video tutorial for posting your virtual tour onto Craigslist in only 3 minutes.

#2: Now accepting huge photos

Some of TourVista’s users were uploading really large photos (3000 x 2500 pixels) for their virtual tours and these photos were too large for TourVista.com to process, resize and display.  We’ve fixed this issue and the website now accepts very large photos.  Yay!

Photography tip: if your photos are meant just for the Internet, there’s no need to make them so large. Really large photos are bad because they:

  1. use up your camera’s memory card quicker
  2. take longer to transfer from your camera to your computer
  3. take up more space on your computer
  4. take longer to upload to TourVista.com

If your photos are meant for print (fliers, magazines, etc.) then you should take them at a large size (a.k.a. large resolution).  But if just for the web, 1600 x 1200 pixels is plenty large.  TourVista will resize your photos to 800 x 600 pixels anyways.  This is the largest photo size the website currently allows, as shown on the virtual tour slideshow.

#1: Video processing message

Now when you upload a video to your virtual tour, a “Processing…” message shows until your video has been transcoded and is ready to be displayed. Unlike some sites that make you wait an hour (or more!) for your video to show, TourVista displays your video in just a few minutes.

1,000 Little Things: Inspiration from Sonny Kobe Cook

I saw a keynote by Sonny Kobe Cook (the founder of Sleep Country USA) in 2007 and of the many great ideas she shared, one in particular stands out to this day. Actually, it was a quote on a plaque that she saw in a restaurant years ago:

It’s impossible to be 1,000% better than every other restaurant. Let’s try to be 1% better in 1,000 little ways.

This is good stuff.  And is the inspiration for this new category in TourVista’s Blog: 1,000 Little Things.  While we are constantly working on large improvements to the TourVista website and user experience, it’s rare that a week goes by without a few small tweaks and adjustments as well.  These minor adjustments might not be noticed by most of our users, but they are little nudges forward, continuing to push TourVista and our user experience in the best direction possible.

We already have a category devoted to TourVista’s major improvements, but I thought it would be useful to show you the small improvements we are making as well.

Please let us know what you think and if you have ideas for improvements to TourVista (small or large) we’d love to hear ’em.