Smugmug Displays

[rpcrowe]

Smugmug has unveiled a whole new look. I have been using smugmug for years and this is the way I have my homepage set-up...



There were several other versions that I could heve used but, I stuck with this one. Not greatly creative but, I was able to categorize my images in an ordered fashion.

This is one of the new formats for a home page...



I sort-of like the way the photos look on this page and but, are quite a few selections as to page format. Apparently this format displays the most recently uploaded images. I am not at all sure that this is the way I want my homepage to choose which images to display when smugmug.com is opened..

I am going to watch their tutorial video today and decide which of the new formats (if any) I will decide to use.

[Andrew76]

I'll be interested to hear your findings, Richard. I just 'Migrated' myself last night, and haven't had a chance to preview any of the new layouts.

[Donald]

I just started a new thread, but realise this one is up and running. I've now deleted it. This is what I posted:-

Have you looked at the new SmugMug yet?

What do you think?

I'm just starting to get to grips with it. It certainly seems a much more powerful and user-friendly (for the non-technical amongst us) tool.

My experience so far is that, although it imports all your past structures and content, you have to do a bit of work to customise it. For example, I'm finding I'm having to completely rebuild the home page, including the menu from where folk can link to my galleries etc. So there is a bit of work involved. But I'm starting to understand what I need to do.

Be interested to read how others are finding it.

[HaseebM]

Gonna check SmugMug.

[Donald]

Okay - First question (problem).

I've gone for broke and did a complete re-design on my site

I need some of you good folks to go to www.dmackimages.org and tell me what you see on the Menu Bar listed at the left hand side.

On my working version that I'm viewing using Firefox, i can see all the menu items I think I've included. But when I publish the site and view it on either IE or Chrome, I'm only seeing 'Home', 'Landscape etc' and 'Dogs, Dogds, Dogs' as menu options.

So:

1. What do you see?

2. If, as I suspect, it's only the three options, do you know the answer to my problem - Why can't I see the other menu options I've put in there?

[rpcrowe]

Donald...

There needs to be a whole lot of customization allowed before I can live with the new issue. Here's what I have to learn to do:

1. Select which images are to be on my home page as smugmug opens. Just selecting the most recent images certainly doesn't hack it as far as I am concerned!

2. Find out how (except by returning to the "legacy" format) I can have my images listed in galleries.

3. I have sampled several formats and, IMO, they look awful because they are cropping my images the way they were never meant to be cropped and/or trying to display images in a square format. This may just be operator error since I have not done much research on how to modify the individual images.

4. I have some images which I never intend to be displayed in any gallery. They are often images I use to link to when I want to post them on a website. Right now, these images appear on my opening page since the default places the most recent images on the opening page. An example of this are the two images I used to post on this thread. I place this type of image in a non-public gallery and don't really want them displayed anywhere. Here is what my smugmug page looks like now since I uploaded the two images to link here on CiC. These two images now show up on my home page!



What would happen if I were to upload an image of a nude (I occasionally dabble in that area)? I would normally have these in "hidden" galleries and certainly would not want my those images to show up on my homepage for the whole world to see!

I am sure that all my concerns are just because I haven't watch the tutorial video.

[rpcrowe]

Donald,

In answer to your query on your smugmug site...

Are all the images to be viewed in a square format? That is the way that they look to me.

I have always considered that your black and white images have considerable snap to them. Most of the images on smugmug seem a bit flat. I don't know if that is the way that my monitor is rendering them. They do look better when viewed as a slide show. I have found that is true with my images also.

Can you modify each gallery so that it is a bit different looking?

I kind of like the different color scheme for different galleries:





OTOH... Your site looks quite professional. I hope, though, that I would have the option to revert back to the "Legacy" style. I have a hunch, that this will not be an option after a while.

Can you move the images around within the gallery and arrange the galleries in the way you want them.

I do basically like this style homepage if I could select the images used on it. And, if I could move those images around. I would also like to be able to select the galleries and to navigate around my site from this home page.



I would also like to select the magnification at which this homepage is viewed when a visitor accesses it. I like a larger magnification which results in bigger but fewer images on the screen at any one time.

OTOH: these thumbnails seem to be more vibrant than the thumbnails on my old style page. There was a very big difference between the thumbnails and also the larger default view of the selected image and a larger viewed image. The slide show images and the larger viewed images always looked more vibrant and had more contrast...

Lets see how this thing works out for us... How about the rest of you CiC members who use smugmug.com?

BTW: I seldom visit other forums since I became a regular on CiC but, Digital grin might give us some help in the transition because they have forums directly dedicated to various smugmug topics...
http://www.dgrin.com/index.php

[Donald]

Are all the images to be viewed in a square format? That is the way that they look to me.

At this stage I've set it up to display all thumbnails in a square format. But when one clicks on the thumbnail of an image that's not square, you should see it in its 'published' format.

This very much 'try and see' time. I'm sure that what I'm doing just now will likely change in many ways.

I was intending to keep it in the background; i.e. not go live, until i had it a bit more ready. However, what I did find that was working on it in that background mode meant an awful lot of saving and editing. I'm finding you can do more, more quickly once its live and you go into 'Customize'.

By the way, I've found a 'work around' to that problem about things not appearing in the menu bar. It's because I have the galleries in question in the unlisted part of the site and not in my 'Galleries' folder.

[DanK]

I had been planning to customize my smugmug site for years but was put off by the difficulty. Some of these new options look very nice, and I just migrated. I'm with Richard: it's essential for me to be able to control which images show up on the home page. The old Smugmug interface made that extremely easy. I haven't found a general way to do that, but if you choose or design a home page that shows galleries, you can still go into the galleries and select which image will be displayed for it.

The template I choose (first one on the left) has one problem I have not been able to solve so far. It comes up with your image as a default in the header, if your old site had a photo of you. This is labeled just "Photo" in the customization menu. You can add a cover photo in the header, and in theory, you can remove the "photo." However, what I get is a white placeholder indicating where the photo would go. I'm waiting to see if they can tell me how to get rid of it. If not, I will have to start over with a different template.


Dan

[rpcrowe]

I guess that I need to watch the tutorial video and then formulate my questions. I have a feeling though, that these sites are done by computer types without a lot of input from photographers.

Instead of having a Beta type issue, I wish that they presented this to us as a fait accompli. I do hope that the option remains to use the old Legacy style formats? Probably not though!

I hope this isn't a Windows Vista or Windows 8 type of situation. My wife and I were lucky enough to still get a customized desktop computer straight from Lenovo with Windows 7 as the operating system. Hope that I have a "Windows 7" type of thing for smugmug to fall back upon!

[Andrew76]

Dan, and Richard, I don't know if this is the correct answer, but, I have all of my galleries visible on my home page. It 'appears' as though the only image that's showing, is the image that is in the #1 position of that gallery. It is NOT rotating the appearing images as the old site did. I have closed, reopened, opened on a different computer etc, etc, several times now, and it's always the same image that pops up as the icon for that gallery.

So, if you're concerned about which images will show when someone opens up your site, this may be of use.

EDIT - What I can't figure out, however, is how to do something simple, like change the font that my name displays in on the home screen!

[rpcrowe]

Almost all the sample gallery displays that I have seen all have the thumbnails in a square format. If I cannot get my thumbnails into a rectangular format like the original smugmug allowed, I am going to drop smugmug.

By the way, are the rumors true that smugmug.com is now owned by amazon.com?

I have not tried Zenfolio, but several disgruntled former users of smugmug appear to have dropped smugmug and migrated to Zenfolio.

Also some are doing their own website using a hosting service. That is more expensive and I am no sure that would be as safe...

Lots of folks on the smugmug website; dgrin.com seem perturbed like I am. Perturbed is one click short of angry...

[dubaiphil]

Richard

This is potentially going to sound horrible, but please don't take it that way as I am a fan of your work.

I wouldn't go down the line of getting your latest work viewed in this way. There is a lack of coherence with completely different subject material, colour vs. black and white, and picture ratios.

It sounds, like me, that you use Smugmug to store images online as well as present them (what I do with Zenfolio). Personally, I'd prefer a single image or small slideshow on the frontpage and allow the visitor to rummage wherever he/she wants and is allowed!

It was very much a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other when I joined up with Zenfolio over Smugmug, and Zenfolio at the time was slower with updates and new features, but both platforms would work well for many a new user. I will delve back into a custom site at some point when I get into marketing myself as both of these options are a bit too 'off the shelf' for my liking.

If anyone is thinking of transferring to Zenfolio, I do have a discount code!

[Donald]

EDIT - What I can't figure out, however, is how to do something simple, like change the font that my name displays in on the home screen!

I thought this was one I could easily answer, because after about an hour last night, I worked out how to do it. But, this morning, I now can't see how I did it. Have just spent another 30 minutes swearing at the screen trying to figure it out.

It's definitely something that pulls up a pop-up box into the middle of the screen and allows you to change Header font and Body Text font. But it's got a whole lot of font names that I'd never heard of and it was a case of having to go through them until I found one I liked. Nothing like Ariel, Times, Verdana, etc. I chose something called Mako.

[HaseebM]

I too am in alpha mode but appear to have some of the issues mentioned above. More annoying is I can't seem to make individual folders to arrange respective images. Any help here would be appreciated. Only the new folder I created seems to show but if I drag any photo, it does not go inside, rather the hint to drop in 'highlighted area' appears but that's for arranging within the squares and not directly into the folder.

Checked out Donald's link and its very well laid out. That's what I had in mind but just can't figure it out. Do I need to buy to open other options?

I agree with Richard's point to do with B/W pictures posted by Donald. They appear soft to the eyes.

[Polar01]

Richard just a quick thought are you viewing owners display or viewer's display as they are different.

Cheers:

Allan

[DanK]

Richard--at least with the template I chose, there are options for landscape and vertical presentation as well as square. I think the way to get to this is as follows: Go into customize mode, move the cursor to select that part of your page, and then select tools.

Andrew: thanks. If you pick a template that displays photos illustrating galleries (not all do), then you have the option of selecting which photo in a gallery is used. I changed two of mine last night with no difficulty. You do it from within a gallery, where the controls are not all that different from what they were before.

Haseeb: I haven't tried working with folders yet, and as far as I have gotten, I have not found instructions as to how to display them. Galleries seem relatively easy.

Andrew and Donald: I just found the place for changing the font and color of text. Pick "theme" in the customization box. Then highlight the active theme and click on the tool icon. It does not affect the header text, which was what I most wanted to change.

I wonder if there is a way to get to a much more complicated set of options than those few that show up from the customize menu. The one independent writeup of this that I read (NY Times) referred to a tremendous of customization. the Smugmug main pages show that full customization is not available for the Basic subscriptions but is available for all of the others.

My own take on this is that the new interface is on the whole a great deal better. It is far easier to create a big variety of formats, without learning code (which I was never willing to do with the old Smugmug). My main complaint is that they introduced this with glitzy videos (I watched all three, and they were basically nothing more than advertisements) but without taking the time to provide clear, step-by-step instructions for users. Unfortunately, that seems to be more and more common.

I have signed up for one of their webinars today, so I might get some answers.

[Donald]

Andrew and Donald: I just found the place for changing the font and color of text. Pick "theme" in the customization box. Then highlight the active theme and click on the tool icon. It does not affect the header text, which was what I most wanted to change.

Dan - You're a genius. I don't think I would have ever found that, especially as the tool icon doesn't show up unless you hover over or highlight the active theme.

[Andrew76]

Andrew and Donald: I just found the place for changing the font and color of text. Pick "theme" in the customization box. Then highlight the active theme and click on the tool icon. It does not affect the header text, which was what I most wanted to change.

I found it! And, you can change the font/colour of header text, background, etc.

Do exactly as you say, Dan, Click the "Theme" tab at the top of the editing palette, then click "Create Theme". Then you can pretty well change about anything you like!

It is unfortunate, as Donald has already pointed out, that there is no way to preview the font, without actually changing it, and seeing what it looks like. AND, as he also pointed out, none of the fonts are anything that I've heard of before. Although there are some cool ones, there are so many to choose from, and it's quite time consuming.

At the time of this writing, the more and more I continue to play with it, the more I like it - in fact, it's much more manageable and customizable than the old site. I also own a private domain for my own site, and it's built on a 'drag & drop' type template, because I refuse to learn html code myself. And this new Smugmug is as good as that, at a fraction of the price.

I'll keep you posted if I find any more tricks!

[Andrew76]

Apparently, if you click on "Browse available fonts", it opens a Google page in a new window, and you can scroll through the hundreds of fonts available - with examples of them all.