Can you apply password protection to a category?

HoldyourfireAl

For example, I have a category called Family. I want to password protect that entire category. I don't want anyone, but family & friends to be able to see any pictures from that category.

I also want family & friends to be able to see the category, Family, displayed on my Smugmug homepage, but no one else.

Is any of this possible or do I have to password protect EACH gallery within Family?

I am also worried about the view my family & friends will see as the Category, Family is unlisted.

Thoughts?

jfriend

HoldyourfireAl wrote:

For example, I have a category called Family. I want to password protect that entire category. I don't want anyone, but family & friends to be able to see any pictures from that category.

I also want family & friends to be able to see the category, Family, displayed on my Smugmug homepage, but no one else.

Is any of this possible or do I have to password protect EACH gallery within Family?

I am also worried about the view my family & friends will see as the Category, Family is unlisted.

Thoughts?

There are only three ways I know of to handle this:

1) Make all the galleries in the family category be password protected with the exact same password. The category will still show for everyone as will the existence of all the galleries, but only your family members will be able to get in. Once they've entered the password for one gallery, they won't have to enter it again for any of the other galleries (until their credentials expire).

2) Make all the galleries in the family category be unlisted. This will cause the family category to NOT show on your public site. You can then add them all to a sharegroup and send your family a link to the sharegroup (which kind of behaves like a category). You can decide to password protect the galleries all with the same password or not, that's up to you. The sharegroup and family category and subsequently all the family galleries will not be shown on your public site. The onlky way to access them will be via the sharegroup link.

3) Get a 2nd Smugmug account, use an account password and have all your family photos transferred over to this other account. The single account password will be required before anything can be seen, but once inside, your family members can freely roam around.

HoldyourfireAl

jfriend wrote:

There are only three ways I know of to handle this:

1) Make all the galleries in the family category be password protected with the exact same password. The category will still show for everyone as will the existence of all the galleries, but only your family members will be able to get in. Once they've entered the password for one gallery, they won't have to enter it again for any of the other galleries (until their credentials expire).

2) Make all the galleries in the family category be unlisted. This will cause the family category to NOT show on your public site. You can then add them all to a sharegroup and send your family a link to the sharegroup (which kind of behaves like a category). You can decide to password protect the galleries all with the same password or not, that's up to you. The sharegroup and family category and subsequently all the family galleries will not be shown on your public site. The onlky way to access them will be via the sharegroup link.

3) Get a 2nd Smugmug account, use an account password and have all your family photos transferred over to this other account. The single account password will be required before anything can be seen, but once inside, your family members can freely roam around.

Hmmm...the 3rd option would be kinda expensive, eh?

HoldyourfireAl

I wish we could just password protect an entire Category.

jfriend

HoldyourfireAl wrote:

I wish we could just password protect an entire Category.

It's been requested several times. I haven't seen any signs that it's being worked on, but you never know.

Password protecting all the galleries in a category actually works pretty well as long as you don't mind the public having access to the gallery titles. I do this all the time for kids sports teams where I often have 15-20 galleries per season, all in a sub-category of their own and all with the same password. The parents are prompted for the password only once and can then look at as many galleries as they want in that sub-category. I use a combination of StarExplorer and SmugBrowser to mass create and mass configure them all to be the same.