Hosting/publishing tours

[TommyH]

Hosting/publishing tours

by TommyH » Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:06 pm

Hi all, new to the forum. I did a search on hosting and found a little info but it is not working out.

I am wanting to start doing more with virtual tours. The website I currently have is at zenfolio and unfortunately I cannot upload files for tours their, whether it be .swf or folders. So I know I have to host my folders/files elsewhere. The other problem I am running into is it does not seem that zenfolio will support iframe.

I can do a customer HTML page with my site, so maybe I can do this and host the files else where? Then point the html code back to the hosted files? Does anyone know if this is possible? If so is there a good place to host our files, I would prefer free but if not too costly I will pay.

Another thought I had is to host and have the tours on another site. I can point a url on my site to this external site. By doing this they will leave my website but if I can have the tour open in full screen then it wont be so bad to start. Can I do this free with like a wordpress blog and using panotour pro 2?

I can also embed code such as youtube and sites like that. So if there is a place that we can host our files for the tours that provides embed code that would be a great solution as well.

I know the best option and more flexibility would be to build a conventional site. Then I can upload the files myself. There are features I would like to keep though from the Zenfolio and for the unlimited space I have hosting my photos the cost is worth it vs a conventional site with unlimited space, plus cost of a web designer.

Any insight would be great.

[AlanS]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by AlanS » Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:36 pm

Sounds like if you can embed youtube and whatnot that iframe embedding is supported. But yes, you will need to have the pano files on a web server somewhere. There are free options...
http://www.prchecker.info/web-hosting/top-10-free-web-hosting-sites/
I think I actually tried this one out...
http://www.freehostia.com/

Uploading is simple, just drag entire folder that Panotour creates to a new folder on your host. It will take a bit of doing to figure out the file path once it's up, but you can then embed it as an iframe using code like this:

<iframe src="http://yourdomain.com/folder/yourpanotour.html" style="border:0px #FFFFFF none;" name="myiFrame" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" marginheight="0px" marginwidth="0px" height="700px" width="950px" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

HTH,

Alan

[Bmachine]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by Bmachine » Sat Feb 08, 2014 9:35 pm

Thank you AlanS for this good info.

I was about to post a similar question but then I found this so let me thank you in the name of the OP... ;-)

I also found some related info on the Kolor site, including coding examples, here:
http://www.autopano.net/wiki-en/action/ ... publishing

I will be testing this out in the next few days.

Bo

[mediavets]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by mediavets » Sat Feb 08, 2014 9:39 pm

Thank you AlanS for this good info.

I was about to post a similar question but then I found this so let me thank you in the name of the OP... ;-)

I also found some related info on the Kolor site, including coding examples, here:
http://www.autopano.net/wiki-en/action/ ... publishing

I will be testing this out in the next few days.

Bo

I think that relates to v1.8 not v2.0.

The iframe approach is the way to go with v2.0.

[Bmachine]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by Bmachine » Sat Feb 08, 2014 10:19 pm

Ooooh, great catch! Thanks Mediavets!

As I mentioned on another post, I wish all doc pages and videos would clearly label which version was applicable for that particular post.

Bo

[Bmachine]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by Bmachine » Sat Feb 08, 2014 11:17 pm

BTW, based on the list posted above, I signed up for a free Wix.com site... only to find out they do not support ftp. Therefore, I don't think there is a way to upload Panotour files there...

Bummer. Apart from that, they seemed pretty darn good.

[Bmachine]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by Bmachine » Sun Feb 09, 2014 1:14 am

OK, I got some hosting space on go daddy.com and used the iFrame code above... and it worked perfectly!

Thank you AlanS and Mediavets

[Andrew Lyons]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by Andrew Lyons » Sun Feb 09, 2014 12:07 pm

The OP stated that his site is with Zenfolio. Mine is also with them and they block Iframes so that approach doesn't work.
I'm trying to find a way around, but my coding skills aren't very good I'm afraid.

I can embed the SWF file in a Zenfolio page as per these examples http://www.andrewlyonsphotography.com/v ... hotography

This obviously works OK on a device that supports flash, but not so good for other platforms. I need to find out how to code the page so that the HTML version loads. any help would be appreciated. Other than that I'll have to put a link below to the site where the tours are hosted, so that it loads the HTML page created by PTP, in a new window.

There is also an issue with the bottom tour (of the show home), which was created in PTP V2 (the others are 1.8). The full screen and floorplan icons don't work? any ideas.

[mediavets]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by mediavets » Sun Feb 09, 2014 1:25 pm

The OP stated that his site is with Zenfolio. Mine is also with them and they block Iframes so that approach doesn't work.
I'm trying to find a way around, but my coding skills aren't very good I'm afraid.

I can embed the SWF file in a Zenfolio page as per these examples http://www.andrewlyonsphotography.com/v ... hotography

This obviously works OK on a device that supports flash, but not so good for other platforms. I need to find out how to code the page so that the HTML version loads. any help would be appreciated. Other than that I'll have to put a link below to the site where the tours are hosted, so that it loads the HTML page created by PTP, in a new window.

There is also an issue with the bottom tour (of the show home), which was created in PTP V2 (the others are 1.8). The full screen and floorplan icons don't work? any ideas.

Because just embedding the SWF is not enough to get those functions to work with V2.x.

[Andrew Lyons]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by Andrew Lyons » Mon Feb 10, 2014 10:50 am

Because just embedding the SWF is not enough to get those functions to work with V2.x.

Can you advise then, what I need to embed to allow them to work please? And/or what I need to do to be able to load the HTML5 version. if the platform doesn't support flash?

If Zenfolio allowed Iframes then it would be pretty simple, but they don't I'm afraid and until I'm in a position to build a new website, I'm stuck with it.....Doh...

I'm not a coder, which is why I chose PTP over other options.

[edgar_ali]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by edgar_ali » Fri Feb 21, 2014 6:35 am

Does this code: <iframe src="http://yourdomain.com/folder/yourpanotour.html" style="border:0px #FFFFFF none;" name="myiFrame" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" marginheight="0px" marginwidth="0px" height="700px" width="950px" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

work with the SWF files?

[mediavets]

Re: Hosting/publishing tours

by mediavets » Fri Feb 21, 2014 10:16 am

Does this code: <iframe src="http://yourdomain.com/folder/yourpanotour.html" style="border:0px #FFFFFF none;" name="myiFrame" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" marginheight="0px" marginwidth="0px" height="700px" width="950px" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true"></iframe>

work with the SWF files?

With PTP 2.x you cannot crate self-contained SWF tour files as you could with PTP 1.8.