Is there a way to bulk delete all of my keywords?

beardedgit · August 27, 2013

All of my keywords are dross, left over from when I had the Legacy auto-keyword thing set to "on" by mistake/ignorance. I'd like to get rid of them all and I don't want to take all day/night doing it one-lot-at-a-time.

I've sussed that there's no magic button in the current GUI. Is a site-wide keyword deletion something that a Hero could do by tinkering in my database or whatever the tech-speak is?

Allen · August 27, 2013

I would email the help desk, they are the only ones that can do this.

beardedgit · August 27, 2013

Allen wrote: »

I would email the help desk, they are the only ones that can do this.

Thanks, Allen, I'll do that.

beardedgit · August 27, 2013

Allen wrote: »

I would email the help desk, they are the only ones that can do this.

Done. Automated reply - wait 24 hrs - Case #: 518989

Andy · August 27, 2013

I don't even think they can do such a thing.

pilotdave · August 27, 2013

Andy wrote: »

I don't even think they can do such a thing.

With legacy it would have been easy (in theory, might never finish loading though). Just use /date to get all your photos displaying in one gallery, then bulk edit the captions/keywords and clear all. You could do it in smaller date ranges if needed. Impossible with new smug. Hope they realize how much functionality they removed... and what effect that will have on quality keywords.

EDIT: As expected, this functionality has been removed from legacy smug since the introduction of new smug.

Dave

macromeister · August 28, 2013

pilotdave wrote: »

With legacy it would have been easy (in theory, might never finish loading though). Just use /date to get all your photos displaying in one gallery, then bulk edit the captions/keywords and clear all. You could do it in smaller date ranges if needed. Impossible with new smug. Hope they realize how much functionality they removed... and what effect that will have on quality keywords.

EDIT: As expected, this functionality has been removed from legacy smug since the introduction of new smug.

Dave

I just went to organize site and selected my smug site files. I added some keywords and saved them. Then went back in and selected EMPTY under quick entry and selected PREVIEW then SAVE. It removed all the keywords completely. Is that not what is required here? Have I missed something?

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

macromeister wrote: »

I just went to organize site and selected my smug site files. I added some keywords and saved them. Then went back in and selected EMPTY under quick entry and selected PREVIEW then SAVE. It removed all the keywords completely. Is that not what is required here? Have I missed something?

That works on a per-gallery basis. My keywords are scattered far and wide so I was looking for a site-wide one-hit solution.
I'll wager that your method would work if I could synthesise a single gallery containing all of my keyworded images, but I've yet to suss how to do that.

EntropicTendencies · August 28, 2013

Unfortunately we don't have a way to do that now (legacy or new).

As was mentioned, the old trick in legacy SmugMug was to create a virtual gallery using the date selector and use the Caption/ Keyword tool on the selected images. This approach made it possible to select all the images from a site (though in practice it generally needed to be split into smaller bite size chunks to prevent timeouts).

The Caption and Keyword tool is still available in the organiser - unfortunately it's scope is limited to the current gallery.

Barrie
Smugmug Support Hero

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

EntropicTendencies wrote: »

Unfortunately we don't have a way to do that now (legacy or new).
Barrie
Smugmug Support Hero

Got your email - thanks for that

So are you saying that someone with direct admin access to the database can't go in and do the deed at the SM end? Surely there's got to be at least one Ultra-Super-Mega-Hero at your end with such access-privileges

AperturePlus · August 28, 2013

I presume that you have loads of galleries?

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

AperturePlus wrote: »

I presume that you have loads of galleries?

Enough to make a per-gallery manual keyword delete operation a time-wasting PITA.
The New SM's supposed to be more user-friendly than Legacy, no?

pilotdave · August 28, 2013

EntropicTendencies wrote: »

Unfortunately we don't have a way to do that now (legacy or new).

As was mentioned, the old trick in legacy SmugMug was to create a virtual gallery using the date selector and use the Caption/ Keyword tool on the selected images. This approach made it possible to select all the images from a site (though in practice it generally needed to be split into smaller bite size chunks to prevent timeouts).

The Caption and Keyword tool is still available in the organiser - unfortunately it's scope is limited to the current gallery.

Barrie
Smugmug Support Hero

Can you confirm that smugmug considers this a bug? There has been no acknowledgement of this issue in any of the multiple threads where this has been reported.

Dave

Allen · August 28, 2013

EntropicTendencies wrote: »

...
The Caption and Keyword tool is still available in the organiser - unfortunately it's scope is limited to the current gallery.

Barrie
Smugmug Support Hero

Unfortunately it does not work for the system galleries /keyword and /date.

By moving it to organize Smugmug broke it. This is a huge problem for anyone working with keywords.
They even broke it on the legacy site.

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

EntropicTendencies wrote: »

Unfortunately we don't have a way to do that now (legacy or new).

Barrie
Smugmug Support Hero

So, at the risk of repeating myself, I'll restructure the question...

Is there anyone at SmugMug who has sufficiently-high access privileges to gain direct admin access to the database to sort this out?

I can't believe that this matter can't be sorted with a simple SQL (or equivalent) delete operation. It's something that I do regularly to maintain my blog's database, and I'm a Luddite!

If this is a "won't" thing rather than a "can't" thing I'd much rather know now. I don't want to trust my data to anyone that doesn't have the ability to administer it on my behalf.

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

Interesting reply by email:

We're simply not going to edit the database. This isn't *your* database - it's a database for all our hosted images. We're not going to make any manual change without significant risk assessments. This will never warrant that sort of change - that's us looking after everyone's data.

Yep, I agree and I understand, as you say it's *your* database.

But it's *our* data in there. We pay you to look after it and to give us the GUI to manipulate it. Now, if the GUI ain't working properly because SM broke it, and therefore we can't do our admin in the usual manner, surely SM are culpable?

macromeister · August 28, 2013

How many galleries do you have that preventd you from doing it on amanusl basis?

Even with 30 it would only taken 30 mins.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

macromeister wrote: »

How many galleries do you have that preventd you from doing it on amanusl basis?

Even with 30 it would only taken 30 mins.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4

110 galleries.

So far today I've spent about 7 hours doing it manually and I'm nowhere finished yet. The "return to gallery" stage is taking yonks - sometimes it takes up to 30 minutes and several Gateway Timeouts* to get the gallery back in the screen.

Moreover, the orphaned keywords are still showing on my /keyword page, and they still bring up the "de-keyworded" images when clicked.

*Example: Gateway Timeout - The proxy server did not receive a timely response from the upstream server. Reference #1.4e24fe3e.1377729587.3062d090

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

Also getting this message quite often:

Uh oh! Something went wrong while loading this page. Please reload the page and try again while we fire up the Bat signal and start hunting down the bugs.

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

Still on the same gallery as previous Gateway Timeout, just had another: Reference #1.4e24fe3e.1377731273.3075b637

mbonocore · August 28, 2013

Allen wrote: »

Unfortunately it does not work for the system galleries /keyword and /date.

By moving it to organize Smugmug broke it. This is a huge problem for anyone working with keywords.
They even broke it on the legacy site.

Allen, why not just set up a Smart Gallery with the keyword and then use the caption/keyword tool in the organizer on that smart gallery?

mbonocore · August 28, 2013

beardedgit wrote: »

Still on the same gallery as previous Gateway Timeout, just had another: Reference #1.4e24fe3e.1377731273.3075b637

I think you are overheating your site Beardedgit

We are not seeing anything on our end....can you maybe restart your computer....give it a couple minute breather?

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

mbonocore wrote: »

We are not seeing anything on our end...

Really? No errors reported all day? Have you looked in the right places?
Look out of the window, maybe you'll see that fabled "Bat signal".

mbonocore wrote: »

can you maybe restart your computer....give it a couple minute breather?

Since starting the festrous job I've cleared the cache over 30 times and I've done over a dozen reboots.

mbonocore wrote: »

I think you are overheating your site...

Overheating? It's me that's incandescent :pissed

mbonocore · August 28, 2013

beardedgit wrote: »

Really? No errors reported all day? Have you looked in the right places?
Look out of the window, maybe you'll see that fabled "Bat signal".

Which errors/outages are you referring to? I just did this operation on 4 different galleries, and they all worked for me.

You can always keep up to date with SmugMug status on our new Status page

http://status.smugmug.com/

beardedgit · August 28, 2013

I've had enough of this crap, I need some sleep. I'll restart the process after catching some shuteye.

Allen · August 28, 2013

mbonocore wrote: »

Allen, why not just set up a Smart Gallery with the keyword and then use the caption/keyword tool in the organizer on that smart gallery?

You're kidding, right? Who the heck designed this was probably one of those new code monkeys that
had no idea how the legacy site worked and broke the crap out the keyword functions. And you want
me go out of my way to work around all this just because of someones incompetence?

This needs fixing.

The smart gallery has a limit of 1000 so that leaves out a bunch of my keywords.
The worst part is if you try to select a keyword from the list it gives you in the drop, it's the 255 limited list
not all of them.

mbonocore · August 29, 2013

Allen wrote: »

You're kidding, right? Who the heck designed this was probably one of those new code monkeys that
had no idea how the legacy site worked and broke the crap out the keyword functions. And you want
me go out of my way to work around all this just because of someones incompetence?

This needs fixing.

The smart gallery has a limit of 1000 so that leaves out a bunch of my keywords.
The worst part is if you try to select a keyword from the list it gives you in the drop, it's the 255 limited list
not all of them.

I was just suggesting a work around while I investigate this. This would help accomplish what you are trying to, immediately.

EntropicTendencies · August 29, 2013

beardedgit wrote: »

Interesting reply by email:

Yep, I agree and I understand, as you say it's *your* database.

But it's *our* data in there. We pay you to look after it and to give us the GUI to manipulate it. Now, if the GUI ain't working properly because SM broke it, and therefore we can't do our admin in the usual manner, surely SM are culpable?

It's fairer if you actually quote my full reply:

We're simply not going to edit the database.

This isn't *your* database - it's a database for all our hosted images.

We're not going to make any manual change without significant risk assessments. This will never warrant that sort of change - that's us looking after everyone's data.

To which you replied:

Understood.

beardedgit · August 29, 2013

EntropicTendencies wrote: »

It's fairer if you actually quote my full reply:

Go back and read my post again, I DID quote your reply in full.
Which bits of your reply do you think I missed out?

Screenshot:

Is there a way to bulk delete all of my keywords?

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