SmugMug Feature Requests

Thando

Got an idea? Give it to us here. All of the SmugMug crew read this thread so feel free to share your ideas. Go ahead, give us the requests.

Summary of FRs implemented from the prior thread:
* automatic resize of too-large and too-many mb files
* holiday cards!
* RSS Feeds for unlisted galleries, for logged in users
* Don't count owner hits in stats
* Give owners easy way to download files (Owner Save)
* Give an easy way to see Visitor View
* Store Raw, DNG and other non-jpg files
* Paypal (alright, it's a lame option, but it's there)
* Give Pros the name & address of buyers
* Improve news to customers
* Outage notifications (http://smugmug.wordpress.com)
* Captions in slideshow
* Detect if flash needed for slideshow
* Square thumbs
* Flash Slideshow
* Lower prices (we did, on 5x7s, 8x10s, 8x12s)
* Speed up the shopping cart
* Power Accounts get Custom Domain Names
* Power Accounts get Right Click Protection
* Make the photo tools easier to use
* Make SmuggLr work with Phanfare & PicasaWeb
* Allow individual photos to be hidden
* Let power and pros decide about stretchy variables
* Increase the video limits (Pros can go to 10 mins)
* Improved video quality

Summary of "hot requests" (NOT implemented yet!


Virtual Galleies
Backup Customizing!
Customizing widgets
more levels of categories
Coupons packagages
Pro 'lightbox' or 'favorites'
Better organizing!
Self Fulfilmnet
More Pro Lab Options
Metallic Prints
Improve Bulk Setttings in many ways
PWD protect a category
EXIF in display copies
Better control over true/auto
Improve the Search- vastly improve it!



Prior Threads here:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=79593
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=71342
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=57396
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47572
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=40139
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=29858
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=23482
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=1349

When this thread is closed, you can be sure that all of the feature requests have been shared with everyone at SmugMug.

pancamo

Virtual Gallery??
I've seen the past posts on how to setup a virtual gallery based on a keywork, but it looks like that feature no longer exists..

I want to create a dynamic "virtual" gallery based on keyword...

Is there a way to do this still?

What does the keyword entry in the gallery customize screen do? It would be nice if I added my keywords here, and the gallery would populate based on this search criteria...

Thando wrote:

Got an idea? Give it to us here. All of the SmugMug crew read this thread so feel free to share your ideas. Go ahead, give us the requests.

Prior Threads here:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=79593
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=71342
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=57396
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47572
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=40139
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=29858
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=23482
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=1349

When this thread is closed, you can be sure that all of the feature requests have been shared with everyone at SmugMug.

Matt S

I hope this is the right place for this. How about the ability to order proof books via smugmug. This would be a great feature IMO.

Also what kind of mess would it cause to be able to have people pay for the sitting fee via my smugmug site? I know I could price a 4x6 titled sitting fee and have them do that but that seems a little out of line and working the system.

And last but not least, is it possible or would it be possible to set print package options in galleries.

Wow three requests and my first post. Don't burn me too bad!!:D

scopar

Printing Lab Options
Hi,

I was hoping that it would be possible to get some overseas print labs involved. It looks as though this is already on the to-do list, so just wanted to add my vote ... especially one for Australia

Not sure how this would work, but to outsource that kind of work, would SM contact print labs they've dealt with; wait for a print lab to offer their services; perhaps act on a recommendation from someone who has had good service from a particular print lab?

I'm happy to test out various print labs to provide one opinion on quality and service.

Thanks,
Scott

Thando

pancamo wrote:

I've seen the past posts on how to setup a virtual gallery based on a keywork, but it looks like that feature no longer exists..

I want to create a dynamic "virtual" gallery based on keyword...

Is there a way to do this still?

What does the keyword entry in the gallery customize screen do? It would be nice if I added my keywords here, and the gallery would populate based on this search criteria...

Keywords are still in use so the "virtual" gallery work-around that you read about should still work. I'm not sure what that was, but we haven't changed the functionality of keywords so everything should behave the same. We don't have Virtual Galleries yet. It's a popular request and we won't forget about it.

The keywords in the Customize Gallery page is for the gallery. Just as keywords on photos will bring up the photos in a search, the keywords that you enter there for the gallery will bring up the gallery when you search for that keyword. So sorry, but it has nothing to do with a virtual gallery.

Thando

Matt S wrote:

I hope this is the right place for this. How about the ability to order proof books via smugmug. This would be a great feature IMO.

Also what kind of mess would it cause to be able to have people pay for the sitting fee via my smugmug site? I know I could price a 4x6 titled sitting fee and have them do that but that seems a little out of line and working the system.

And last but not least, is it possible or would it be possible to set print package options in galleries.

Wow three requests and my first post. Don't burn me too bad!!:D

No burning here glad you replied.

Sorry, no proof books. There are books that you can get from Blurb.
http://www.blurb.com/partner/smugmug
But probably not what you are looking for.

I don't know what kind of mess that would create to collect the sitting fee. I'll share with the rest of the crew.

No print package options yet. However, we recently released our new shopping cart. That is going to open the door to many wonderful options that Photographers have been begging for.

We appreciate the suggestion.

Thando

scopar wrote:

Hi,

I was hoping that it would be possible to get some overseas print labs involved. It looks as though this is already on the to-do list, so just wanted to add my vote ... especially one for Australia

Not sure how this would work, but to outsource that kind of work, would SM contact print labs they've dealt with; wait for a print lab to offer their services; perhaps act on a recommendation from someone who has had good service from a particular print lab?

I'm happy to test out various print labs to provide one opinion on quality and service.

Thanks,
Scott

Thanks for your vote. Lots involved here with this one. We definitely hear you on this one.

dennismullen

Random as choice with slideshows
The slideshow gets old always starting in the same order. Random is a choice in most software slideshows and would be a big improvement in SmugMug.

cheers,

tgelston

Geo View Style
I have another feature to suggest/request in the theme of working with geotagged images

I would love to see a viewing style - similar to journal that displayed mapping in place of the description.

here is a example I stitched together. ideally would be more zoomed out and not sure if I would like other pinpoints to show too (other nearby images)



Thanks for listening!

rdudley

calendars and greeting cards
Two of the most common photo items purchased are calendars, and greeting cards. It would be very nice if smugmug could allow customers (and "owners") to create calendars and folding greeting cards from members' photos. Perhaps that could be a partnered arrangement (as with blurb for books).

Ideally I would like to see several sizes of calendar with customizable starting month and layout. Ideally cards should allow custom message and back printing.

Currently I have to resort to winkflash or other sites for these products... and their products are pretty good.

It would be so nice to have the excellent smugmug interface include these options! :soapbox

Thanks!

pancamo

Thando wrote:

We don't have Virtual Galleries yet. It's a popular request and we won't forget about it.
quote]

Any idea on when virtual galleries will appear? this year? next?


Maybe there is different way to acomplish what im trying to do: I want a gallery with all my photos for the month, and another gallery with specific photos that match keywords or some other criteria (like date range or location)...

It looks like the only way to do this is upload duplicate photos (which is a real pain)

Thanks for the info!

Opps

Support for non-ascii characters everywhere
What I would like to see is the ability to use non-ascii characters everywhere (keywords, categories, sub-categories).

jmenard

Hide Photos in bulk
I would love to be able to hide photos in bulk, instead of one at a time. Simliar to the bulk delete photos feature.

Thanks!!

JKLionheart

E-mail Subscriptions
I know there are RSS feeds already implemented, but for some more casual users that don't use RSS feeds, being able to subscribe using their e-mail address for (daily, weekly, monthly) updated to a gallery or "most popular" photos (just like the current frontpage RSS feeds) would be great.

I am not a casual user by any means (addicted?) and I still prefer simply visiting all my individual sites vs. RSS feeds. What can I say? I'm old fashioned

This may have been suggested before (hopefully not already implemented, if so, sorry!) but I just wanted to toss this out there before lunch

Thando

dennismullen wrote:

The slideshow gets old always starting in the same order. Random is a choice in most software slideshows and would be a big improvement in SmugMug.

cheers,

Cool thanks. Would be a good addition.

Thando

tgelston wrote:

I have another feature to suggest/request in the theme of working with geotagged images

I would love to see a viewing style - similar to journal that displayed mapping in place of the description.

here is a example I stitched together. ideally would be more zoomed out and not sure if I would like other pinpoints to show too (other nearby images)



Thanks for listening!

Very cool. Looks pretty handy.

Thando

rdudley wrote:

Two of the most common photo items purchased are calendars, and greeting cards. It would be very nice if smugmug could allow customers (and "owners") to create calendars and folding greeting cards from members' photos. Perhaps that could be a partnered arrangement (as with blurb for books).

Ideally I would like to see several sizes of calendar with customizable starting month and layout. Ideally cards should allow custom message and back printing.

Currently I have to resort to winkflash or other sites for these products... and their products are pretty good.

It would be so nice to have the excellent smugmug interface include these options! :soapbox

Thanks!

Two of the most requested products available. We realize how much they are wanted. Thanks for gently nudging us again.

Thando

pancamo wrote:

Thando wrote:

We don't have Virtual Galleries yet. It's a popular request and we won't forget about it.
quote]

Any idea on when virtual galleries will appear? this year? next?


Maybe there is different way to acomplish what im trying to do: I want a gallery with all my photos for the month, and another gallery with specific photos that match keywords or some other criteria (like date range or location)...

It looks like the only way to do this is upload duplicate photos (which is a real pain)

Thanks for the info!

I said "yet" because we might make this available in the future. But that is not to say that we Will. The possibility is there. But no, there isn't a time frame on this.

No way to do what you have described. The closest you can come is by using out timeline feature and keywords. But then that doesn't get you what you want. Sorry.

Thando

Opps wrote:

What I would like to see is the ability to use non-ascii characters everywhere (keywords, categories, sub-categories).

Thanks for the Feature Request

Thando

jmenard wrote:

I would love to be able to hide photos in bulk, instead of one at a time. Simliar to the bulk delete photos feature.

Thanks!!

Another popular and useful request. Thanks for reminding us!

Thando

JKLionheart wrote:

I know there are RSS feeds already implemented, but for some more casual users that don't use RSS feeds, being able to subscribe using their e-mail address for (daily, weekly, monthly) updated to a gallery or "most popular" photos (just like the current frontpage RSS feeds) would be great.

I am not a casual user by any means (addicted?) and I still prefer simply visiting all my individual sites vs. RSS feeds. What can I say? I'm old fashioned

This may have been suggested before (hopefully not already implemented, if so, sorry!) but I just wanted to toss this out there before lunch

Nope we don't have it. It's been noted, thanks. Hope lunch was good!

papajay

re: bulk-hiding images

Thando wrote:

Another popular and useful request. Thanks for reminding us!

Yes, and please don't forget to include some sort of visual indicator for logged in owner on or around or near the thumbnail (regardless of style, and including keyword search results pages) to indicate that the image is hidden to visitors...small border of 'x's around the image, or a watermark across the image...something, anything, to highlight the fact that the image is hidden when logged out. Thanks in advance.

petebocken

In the "Move to other galleries" you cannot get info on a picture by clicking on the little "i" icon in the bottom right corner of the thumb like you can in the "Move to other gallery".

Bikes 'n Trails

Request: Named Resources - for Friendly URLs
Hi,

I'd like to see "named resources", so that URLs into my smugmug domain could be friendly. I have seen the javascript tricks, but they aren't really suitable - I'd like something "real", in the sense that it works on the URL and virtual filesystem level, even when javascript is not available.

The "keyword" approach is about 23% of what I'm looking for... a-la:
httq://images.vanity.com/keyword/carefully-chosen-keyword-applied-to-all-images-in-only-one-gallery

Use case:

Our organization hosts events, and after the events we put up posts on our site to show the rest of the world that something happened, with a couple of thumbnails in the article. The intention is to hotlink the thumbnail to the corresponding item at our SmugMug site.

[The following example assumes that httq://www.vanity.com is the site with our CMS/blogging system, and images.vanity.com is the site glued to vanity.smugmug.com via a CNAME record, and properly configured as such within the SM control panel.]

For example, the article at:
httq://www.vanity.com/events/October-Bash-08

would contain text, and a thumbnail:
httq://www.vanity.com/thumbs/October-Bash-08/MarySings-th.jpg

and this thumbnail would be linked to
httq://images.vanity.com/galleries/October-Bash-08/MarySings

This would be instead of httq://images.vanity.com/galleries/895410_H5CHX#66364851_3Yyer or something, which, in the minds of my contributors, translates roughly into this:

httq://images.vanity.com/galleries/@%&%@_Kr4zy_stuff_to_confuse_my_editors_0x#$%@^_g0od_luck_when_someone_moves_a_resource_HAHA!!


If this functionality were available, it would allow a user to create a story on one site, "MyLatestStory", and also create a gallery at SmugMug of the same name, "MyLatestStory", and be able to crosslink between resources without confusion. The easier it is for users to post stories including links to SmugMug, the more links to SmugMug will exist, and more traffic for SmugMug will be the result.

I can imagine tricks using .htaccess files, or virtual directory settings, or something in Apache to make this work, or the equivalent in whatever tech you are using, but I have no idea if that would be practical or not, based on implementation complexity, added resource usage, etc.


--

An elaboration on the scheme could be something like:
httq://www.vanity.com/thumbs/October-Bash-08/MarySings-th.jpg?cool-display-option=YES&enable-sales-button=NO


I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's thoughts on my suggestion. Hopefully it hasn't been posted before, I skimmed through all of the other feature requests and I didn't see anything similiar, other than the repeated pleas for Virtual Galleries. But this is really something different.


thanks-
B&T

P.S. I used "httq" to suppress the auto-hotlinking behavior of this board.

Opps

I like the idea, then I would be able to tell people where they can find the pictures from a certain event at once instead of having to ask them to send me an email so I can look up the correct URL

Bikes 'n Trails

Opps wrote:

I like the idea, then I would be able to tell people where they can find the pictures from a certain event at once instead of having to ask them to send me an email so I can look up the correct URL

Exactly - it's the difference between this conversation:

[Jane Doe, upon seeing me take pictures at the event:]

Hi, can I get a copy of these pictures you are taking? My mom wants to see what we've been doing. I told her I was doing Save the Trail day again this year, and she wants to see pictures.

[Me, eager to expand the traffic to our site, and spread the word about our work:]

Sure, it's easy. Just go to images.bike-n-trail.com, and search for "Save the Trail".

[Jane Doe:]

Um, well, she types all her searches directly into the address bar half the time. The other half, she types her search terms into the yahoo toolbar that keeps getting installed in her browser. That'll never work. Don't you have a folder or something?

[Me:]

Sure, we've got folders on the site. Today's photos will be in the Events category, under the 2008 subcategory. So, have her go to the homepage, click on the Events category, and then the 2008 subcategory. This gallery will be called Save the Trail.

[Jane Doe:]

You don't understand. My mom ... My mom is, shall we say, NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTER.

Don't you have a direct link, like images.bike-n-trail.com/save-the-trail/janes-crew?

[Me:]

Sure, I can just tag the pictures with the keyword savethetrail, and you can have your mom use the keyword facility. The keyword facility uses a dash character as a delimiter, so sometimes it's simpler to use "all one word" tags. So, tell her to type in images.bike-n-trail.com/keyword/savethetrail , and then click on janescrew on the line starting with "combine with". Alternatively, just have her type in images.bike-n-trail.com/keyword/savethetrail-janescrew.

[Jane Doe:]

Never mind.

and this one:

[Jane Doe, upon seeing me take pictures at the event:]

Hi, can I get a copy of these pictures you are taking? My mom wants to see what we've been doing. I told her I was doing Save the Trail day again this year, and she wants to see pictures.

[Me:]

Sure, just go to images.bike-n-trail.com/save-the-trail/janes-crew . You can tell her over the phone, none of the keystrokes are ambiguous, nor do any require the shift key. Your mom should find it easy; I was thinking of my mom when I set this system up.

[Jane Doe:]

Great! Thanks!

So I guess what I'm asking for, in terms of the way the system already works, is the following:

1. The ability to access the keyword system directly off the root, without appending /keyword/ within the URL
2. The ability to use some other type of delimiter between keywords, i.e.: images.vanity.com/tag01,tag-with-hyphen,tag08 in a way that is
   
   1. easy to communicate verbally
   2. simple to type without the shift key or taking the fingers off of the home row
3. An option that will automatically tag galleries and photos with the names of the category, subcategory, and gallery name, so that images will automatically be available via a direct, friendly URL which mirrors the organization of the site.
4. Ice cream for breakfast.
   

Thanks for listening.

Bikes 'n Trails

Bikes 'n Trails wrote:

So I guess what I'm asking for, in terms of the way the system already works, is the following:

1. The ability to access the keyword system directly off the root, without appending /keyword/ within the URL
2. The ability to use some other type of delimiter between keywords, i.e.: images.vanity.com/tag01,tag-with-hyphen,tag08 in a way that is
   
   1. easy to communicate verbally
   2. simple to type without the shift key or taking the fingers off of the home row
3. An option that will automatically tag galleries and photos with the names of the category, subcategory, and gallery name, so that images will automatically be available via a direct, friendly URL which mirrors the organization of the site.
4. Ice cream for breakfast.
   

Thanks for listening.

OK, so I just noticed that your keyword system allows space characters. Which is... really cool.

But spaces are always getting munged or eaten when links get emailed, reposted, etc. Using %20 in the URL will allow the space to survive, but it breaks the "easy to type", "easy to verbalize", and "not confusing to mom" rules.

JoeG

Bikes 'n Trails wrote:

OK, so I just noticed that your keyword system allows space characters. Which is... really cool.

But spaces are always getting munged or eaten when links get emailed, reposted, etc. Using %20 in the URL will allow the space to survive, but it breaks the "easy to type", "easy to verbalize", and "not confusing to mom" rules.

Most current browsers will automagically convert spaces to %20 when typed in the address bar

Opps

Keywords wouldn't really work for me ... why? Non-ascii characters are not accepted.

Bikes 'n Trails

JoeG wrote:

Most current browsers will automagically convert spaces to %20 when typed in the address bar

Yes, correct. But that depends on how you define "most current browsers". If by "current" you mean browsers released recently, then yes. If you mean, "the browser currently being used by my aunt", then maybe — and then again, maybe not.

In any case, certainly one cannot say that all hosted BBS and blogging software will behave as expected when mom clicks on the address bar and copies an URL containing spaces and pastes it in a post, email message, IM, etc. Your really cool URL with spaces, like

http://vanity.com/keyword/big event

Suddenly becomes:

http://vanity.com/keyword/big event

... which is when my phone starts ringing, and my logs get filled with 404's instead of happy customers finding what they want.

So I guess I will add another requirement to the request: URLs using a list of concatenated keywords should be represented in a form which will survive reposting in any environment. (So my suggestion above to use commas would likely have problems, some software might want to be "helpful" and insert a line break after the comma.)

Bendr

What if it were just a simple redirector that the site owner could configure, so say, you could configure a url and then select the gallery it takes you to. instead of trying to set up a url parser...

for example, I've got a gallery here at

http://bendr.smugmug.com/gallery/2020656_s5FxR

I want the keyword 'rover' to redirect to that gallery automatically, so I go into my control panel and add the keyword 'rover', setting it to redirect to the gallery I want.

After setting that up, then I just give my customer a url something like

Bendr.smugmug.com/k/rover

Which then will automatically redirect them to the gallery I specify. This way, if I move the gallery, I can just change the redirector, to the new location, and the customer can still find the photos.



Also, I would love to see a Copy to gallery function for the web interface, as it is, I have a gallery that automatically recieves all my photo's from an Eye-Fi, then I move them to other galleries as needed. However, I have been leaving the photo's in the original location as an archive of photo's, so as it is, I have to make a copy of every photo I want to move, and then move them. It would be much easier if all I had to do was one step that copied the photo's to the other gallery...

Thanks,
Ben