Adding your own photos

Your own pictures make more difference to a site than anything else you can change. A photo of your actual room, your actual work, your actual face beats a stock photograph every time.

Sending a photo

Attach it to a chat message, the way you would attach a picture to a text message, and say what it is:

• "This is our logo."
• "This is the front of the shop — use it at the top."
• "These three are from the wedding last month, for the gallery."

The note matters more than you would think. "Here is a photo" gives Spanli nothing to work with; "this is the owner, Maria" tells it where the picture belongs. You can send several at once.

Photos can be sent from your phone as easily as from a computer, which is usually where your good photos are anyway.

Changing a photo that is already there

Point at it. Click the picture in the preview, and say what you want instead — either attach the replacement in the same message, or describe it ("this one but the wider shot of the counter"). See Pointing at something.

If you have no photos yet

You are not stuck. When Spanli builds your site it uses fitting free photography so the pages look finished rather than full of grey boxes.

Those pictures are a placeholder for yours. Send your own whenever you have them — this week, next month — and say what they are, and they take over.

Free photographs are generic by definition. They will make your site look complete; they will not make it look like you. If you only ever do one piece of homework for your website, take ten decent photos on your phone in good light and send them in.

Where photos live afterwards

Once a picture is on your site it is part of the site, so it is covered by the same history as everything else — if a change removed a photo you wanted, putting the site back brings it with it. See Putting things back.

Pictures attached to the things you keep lists of — a dish, a project, a product — are set on the item itself, as one of its fields. See Editing something in a list.