why sharegroups?

everydaymemories

I'm not sure I understand the purpose of sharegroups? Why do you use them? I'm considering using one to share photos with my homeschool group. Up to now I've just been "Hiding Owner" and sharing individual galleries with my homeschool group, to keep my family pictures private. Does the sharegroup allow my homeschool friends to look at the photos without having to enter my site password? Is the sharegroup still private, so only people with access to the URL can find it? Also I don't like the way I can't customize the look of the sharegroup page like the rest of my website... or can I, and I just missed it?

THANKS!

edited to add: It doesn't seem that the sharegroup is separate from my site--my custom banner and navigation bar are there--so it wouldn't serve the purpose of setting aside photos for my homeschool group and keeping my family photos private, would it?

Smug Eric

The real purpose of them is instead of sharing single galleries you can share all the galleries at once. The sharegroup will still be private. You give your homeschool friends one link and they can see every gallery you have added to the sharegroup. Also there is some customization you can do to separate the sharegroup from your main page. After setting up the sharegroup if you need help customizing it just ask here or email us at help@smugmug.com.

Eric
Support Hero

rainforest1155

everydaymemories wrote:

edited to add: It doesn't seem that the sharegroup is separate from my site--my custom banner and navigation bar are there--so it wouldn't serve the purpose of setting aside photos for my homeschool group and keeping my family photos private, would it?

If all galleries within the sharegroup have hide owner set, we'll apply this as well to the sharegroup. Read about it in our release notes.

Sebastian

everydaymemories

Thank you! I may have more questions on this later. I'm busily uploading photos now. (I've switched over from another photo sharing site.)

everydaymemories

Oh! Just remembered a question I had! Can I change the Sharegroup page look, or is black the only choice?

rainforest1155

everydaymemories wrote:

Oh! Just remembered a question I had! Can I change the Sharegroup page look, or is black the only choice?

If you're a Power or Pro user, you can customize your sharegroups along with the rest of your site. Just try the following CSS in the CSS box of your 'site-wide customizations' in the customize tab of your control panel:
.shareHomepage {
background: #ffffff;
}

To get started on customizations, have a look at this thread

Sebastian

everydaymemories

Is there a way to just apply the Fresh Air theme to my Sharepage?

If not, now that I've got my background on my Sharepage to be blue, what is the code for the inner box surrounding the galleries?

Thanks! I wish I had more time to learn this from all the helpful tutorials--and I will someday--but I have three little kids.