Preparing your own-branded image frames for Pinterest

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So you want to use your own-design / branded image frames when you pin on Pinterest using the nIFTTTy Scheduler?

Great! This page tells you all you need to know to make that happen.

Get a refresher on using image frames for Pinterest (opens in a new tab)

Most people will want to use their own brand image frames when pinning from their own stores and something more general (but still their own design) when pinning other people’s work.

You’re totally free to do both, using theme names as the way of separating them out. Once you’ve finished, the nIFTTTy Scheduler screen will use your theme names instead of the available defaults.

Note that there’s no need to get your Gold Membership until you’ve got your first batch of image files ready. When you have, sign up for a subscription here (opens in a new tab).

screenshot of the nIFTTTy Scheduler Pinterest section showing where your theme names go — What the nIFTTTy Scheduler Pinterest section looks like

What do I need to do?

Here are the steps to creating your image frames and getting them used by the nIFTTTy scheduler:

Design them (must be of type png) using your favourite image editor
Optionally start with templates we provide
List their filenames and other details in a config file
Get your Gold Nifty Membership Subscription
Zip up all the image frames and your config file and email them to us
Give us a day to prepare everything – we’ll let you know when it’s done

Resources you’ll need

Image templates
Config file template

Image templates to get you started

Remember, your image frames have to be png format and have a transparent 300x300px ‘hole’ to take product images.

You can download various aspect ratio png format templates here as a starting point for yours. Just click and drag the ones you want to your desktop.

Config file to tell the nIFTTTy Scheduler about your image frames

The nIFTTTy Scheduler needs to know various things about your image frames:

their filenames
where the ‘hole’ is located in each for a product image to be inserted
the name of the theme under which each image frame falls.

You do all this in a config file – see below for what one looks like. Underneath you’ll find download links so you can get started on your own config file.

Use this link to download as a csv file
Use this link to download as an xlsx file

To edit your downloaded file you’ll need any spreadsheet program:

Google Sheets
Microsoft Excel
OpenOffice Calc
LibreOffice Calc

Once you’re done editing, save it as a csv file before adding it to your zip file with your image frames.

Be sure to keep a copy for when you want to add to or change your configured image frames.

Getting hole locations in Photoshop

In Photoshop CS3, this is how to get the hole locations needed for the config file. Your graphics editor will have something similar.

First, switch on rulers:

getting the rulers to show in Photoshop CS3

Next, double click one of them to set it to show pixels:

Now you can read off the left and top coordinates for your hole:

reading off the hole locations from the rulers

Make sure you get these right as they’re used by the nIFTTTy Scheduler to position the Zazzle product image.

More on Themes

Let’s say you want your own branded image frames for your seasonal wedding products and some unbranded ones for promoting wedding designs from other stores.

You might end up with these theme names to group them and allow them to be selected by your nIFTTTy schedule:

My Spring Wedding
My Summer Wedding
My Fall Wedding
My Winter Wedding
General Weddings

If you have more than one image frame per theme, then the nIFTTTy Scheduler will choose one of them at random (or not) for each pin – depending on your choice for the ‘chances’ setting.

All pins will include in its tracking code the theme name set up in the schedule, without spaces, and starting and ending with the digit 3. When nIFTTTy actually uses one in a pin (dependent on the chances setting and the roll of a computer dice) then _frameused will be added to the end of the tracking code.

This way, you’ll know what image frame actually worked when you see a referral appear in your Referral History Report on Zazzle.

Naming your themes

Theme names you decide on must be as you want them to appear in the nIFTTTy Scheduler screen. You can only use letters, digits and spaces. There can be no punctuation such as dashes, commas, quotes or non-english letters. For example, Valentines Day is good but not Valentine’s Day. Quinceanera is good but not Quinceañera

Your image frames are private to you

Well, sort of. What’s displayed in the nIFTTTy Scheduler screen is determined by the referral id used. This means that anyone using your referral id will be able to see and use them. Ok, if that’s what they want to do – you’ll still get the referral income. Bring it on!

If you let your Nifty subscription lapse, though, you’ll only see and be able to use the generally available ones for all new pins. All your old pins will be as they were when first pinned: referral id, tracking code, image frame and all.

Limits

You can have up to 60 image frames divided amongst the themes you come up with. Each image frame can fit under only one theme. If you really must have the same one under more than one theme, copy the image into a new file, giving it a different filename and then put it against the other theme in your config file.

If, for some reason, you need to go beyond 60 image frames, get in touch to discuss your needs.

You can add to or amend your image frames files as often as you like but each time you do there will be a charge to cover our time. See the Nifty Membership page for more on this (opens in a new tab).

Getting it all to us

Once you’ve made your image frames, prepared your config file and zipped them all up into one zip file, you need to get it to us using the email address we’ll give you shortly.

🕵🏼‍♀️

What you need to do is to highton put together the two unusual words in this paragraph ridley, separate them with a dot and add @gmail.com to the end.

What if I need to make changes later?

That’s cool, just send us the new / changed image frame files zipped up with an updated config file. The config file must have an entry for every one of your image frame files, even if you’re only adding new ones.

If you want to stop using an image frame file, just remove its entry from the config file and we’ll take care of the rest.

There is a small charge for this to cover our time. You do, though, get your first update for free – provided you donated two images for everyone to use when you first took out your Gold Nifty Membership. See the Nifty Membership page for more on this (opens in a new tab).

Got all that? Great! Any questions? Send them to the email address above or get in touch via our Facebook group or a Facebook private message. Either way, we’ll be in touch pdq!