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Improve Share Group Navigation
dwterry
Registered Users Posts: 209 Major grins
There are two things that I'd really like to see improved upon in smugmug's implementation of share groups. Both of them have to do with Navigation. The second item is much more important than the first. But solving the first could also potentially solve the second. So here goes:
1) Right now I use a bit of javascript to forward customers from an easily readable/type-able URL over to the hard to remember / hard to type correctly URL used by share groups.
For example, www.dterryphotography.com/AaronAndShereena will take you to one of my share groups.
It would be really nice if that were, in actuality, the location of the images on smugmug, allowing me to create my own hierarchy of images, giving them their own unique URL that can be handed out.
Then, as you move around (clicking on folders within that URL) each folder could continue to use the above URL as the base location, making it easy to bookmark and reference images later.
As it is currently implemented, as soon as you arrive at the specified page, the URL changes to something obscure like share/5AAw9LxwAETZs which means nothing to the customer.
2) More importantly! Once there, if I click on a folder, it takes me into a hierarchy of folders that no longer matches the Share Group.
For example, if I click on the Newlyweds folder and then click around a bit (looking at various pictures), I have no "navigable way back" to where I started other than to hit the back button on the browser a whole bunch of times, or type in the URL all over again (not everyone is smart enough to bookmark a page on their very first visit).
In other words, if I click on the names "Aaron and Shereena" up on the Nav Bar, smugmug will take me to an "empty folder" with nothing more to click on. Basically ... I'm lost. (not me, I'm logged into smugmug and can see all of the private folders, but a customer cannot)
So what I'm asking for is the ability to navigate around the share group the same way you can currently navigate around the public folders on smugmug. If the NavBar could implement navigation amongst the share group that would work. Another possibility implementation would be to use idea #1 above to implement the sharegroup name as an actual navigable URL such that, upon returning back to that URL it would show all of the folders.
For reference, the reason all of my folders are private, is because I want to keep the customer folders easily accessible (all they need to know is a URL, they don't need a password) and presentable (having a ton of "visibly passworded folders" on my website is not at all desirable). I currently have over 60 sharegroups and nearly 1000 folders, most of which are private. You can just imagine how ugly and cluttered my website would become if they were all visible with locks on them.
1) Right now I use a bit of javascript to forward customers from an easily readable/type-able URL over to the hard to remember / hard to type correctly URL used by share groups.
For example, www.dterryphotography.com/AaronAndShereena will take you to one of my share groups.
It would be really nice if that were, in actuality, the location of the images on smugmug, allowing me to create my own hierarchy of images, giving them their own unique URL that can be handed out.
Then, as you move around (clicking on folders within that URL) each folder could continue to use the above URL as the base location, making it easy to bookmark and reference images later.
As it is currently implemented, as soon as you arrive at the specified page, the URL changes to something obscure like share/5AAw9LxwAETZs which means nothing to the customer.
2) More importantly! Once there, if I click on a folder, it takes me into a hierarchy of folders that no longer matches the Share Group.
For example, if I click on the Newlyweds folder and then click around a bit (looking at various pictures), I have no "navigable way back" to where I started other than to hit the back button on the browser a whole bunch of times, or type in the URL all over again (not everyone is smart enough to bookmark a page on their very first visit).
In other words, if I click on the names "Aaron and Shereena" up on the Nav Bar, smugmug will take me to an "empty folder" with nothing more to click on. Basically ... I'm lost. (not me, I'm logged into smugmug and can see all of the private folders, but a customer cannot)
So what I'm asking for is the ability to navigate around the share group the same way you can currently navigate around the public folders on smugmug. If the NavBar could implement navigation amongst the share group that would work. Another possibility implementation would be to use idea #1 above to implement the sharegroup name as an actual navigable URL such that, upon returning back to that URL it would show all of the folders.
For reference, the reason all of my folders are private, is because I want to keep the customer folders easily accessible (all they need to know is a URL, they don't need a password) and presentable (having a ton of "visibly passworded folders" on my website is not at all desirable). I currently have over 60 sharegroups and nearly 1000 folders, most of which are private. You can just imagine how ugly and cluttered my website would become if they were all visible with locks on them.
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