On what do you base that data? I'll stack our performance up against anyone, anyone. Nobody likes things like this, Peter, but thankfully your photos are safe, and viewable right now. Our engineers will get things back to 100%, I'm sure of it.
What slow browsing? There's 3rd party (Quantcast.com) that shows we're faster than any other photo sharing site out there. You may have particular issues, and we can help - we'd love to help, in fact - have you contacted a hero at our help desk?
Andy,
My comments are not based on "data", but rather my own experience with SM over the last several months. Call it my luck and bad timing, but when I have time to upload images in my busy schedule I often come across problems with slow uploading and freezing on uploads. I've since moved to IE (instead of FF) for uploading photos. This helps somewhat when using the Simple uploader. Again, perhaps by bad timing, I have experienced at least 3 downtimes when logging into my account. Considering I rarely come online it concerns me that I've seen that many downtimes relative to the times I've logged on. At least 4 times now I've had to upload my images to my Zenfolio account to fulfill promises of having pictures available to my viewers. I have not experienced a downtime with Zenfolio. Not that they have not occured I'm sure, but certainly not to the SM frequency. I am not comparing SM with Zenfolio since SM is still my top choice for "online" image hosting.
As for speed. Over 90% of the time I have very slow displays of my images. Images come up pixelated first, and then resolve to a clear image. This has been reported by my viewers as well. Also, I've pretty much given up on the slideshow since many times it shows the progress bar first, then the image, for every image. And there have been too many times where the screen simply stays black, with no image.
As for contacting support, yes I have, in the past. But I tend to go to this forum first to see if others are having similar problems. If I don't see similar problems then I will contact support.
Anyway, I've made this response way too long. Sorry. And as for my post, my frustration is coming across because last night and early this morning were some of my rare "free moments" to upload photos . . . .
Just want to thank the smugmug team for all their work done here! If it weren't for them... well... I wouldn't have a site at smugmug.
I really do appreciate everything that you do to keep this site up and when trouble happens and I read negative posts I really want to speak up about how wonderful this site has been. I'll leave comments to the negative posters to Andy, but if you ever need backup, just give a shout and I'll be around.
Anyway, I've made this response way too long. Sorry.
not too long and do not ever be sorry!
I'm certain we can help. When you're ready for some serious Prob Determination and diagnosis, email us @ the desk ATTN: Andy and I'll put our experts on the case for you.
I have used smugmug for around 4 years now on my personal account, and 2 or so for a business site. Really I must say like always I am highly impressed with Smugmug and the professional service. The down times really seem to be infrequent, and relatively short.
I do have a wish list for smugmug, but really I must say that overall I am highly impressed with your guys service.
I have used smugmug for around 4 years now on my personal account, and 2 or so for a business site. Really I must say like always I am highly impressed with Smugmug and the professional service. The down times really seem to be infrequent, and relatively short.
I do have a wish list for smugmug, but really I must say that overall I am highly impressed with your guys service.
I'm going to waste some space just to put a big DITTO here on all accounts.
My personal experience with support has been nothing short of stellar. Mine and that of my customers.
Sorry for the ditto post, but I'm very compelled to say how I feel!
not too long and do not ever be sorry!
I'm certain we can help. When you're ready for some serious Prob Determination and diagnosis, email us @ the desk ATTN: Andy and I'll put our experts on the case for you.
Thanks Andy,
I'll send you details when I have some free time (next week perhaps) . . .
one remaining issue?
I didn't experience any of the downtime this morning, but perhaps this problem was an artifact of that - many of the gallery thumbnails were replaced with a "photo not found" unhappy face image, as were the thumbnails inside the galleries. It seems like the underlying images are still there, because the clicking on the placeholder thumbnail brings it up properly.
My comments are not based on "data", but rather my own experience with SM over the last several months. Call it my luck and bad timing, but when I have time to upload images in my busy schedule I often come across problems with slow uploading and freezing on uploads. I've since moved to IE (instead of FF) for uploading photos. This helps somewhat when using the Simple uploader.
Peter - I would strongly suggest you look into a separate uploader, apart from the simple uploader that works in IE or Firefox. I use Star*Explorer and it has made my use of Smugmug so much nicer. I can create the gallery, select the images I want to upload to the gallery and tell it to upload. Away it goes.
If something interrupts it in the middle, it has the wherewithall to know that and ask if you wish to resume uploading from where you were last located.
Well worth the money (no, I don't make any money from the program, I am just a very happy user).
Peter - I would strongly suggest you look into a separate uploader, apart from the simple uploader that works in IE or Firefox. I use Star*Explorer and it has made my use of Smugmug so much nicer. I can create the gallery, select the images I want to upload to the gallery and tell it to upload. Away it goes.
If something interrupts it in the middle, it has the wherewithall to know that and ask if you wish to resume uploading from where you were last located.
Well worth the money (no, I don't make any money from the program, I am just a very happy user).
I second that recommendation. I just uploaded 600 photos to 30 different galleries last night in one unattended upload session. I see from the logs that a couple images transmissions got interrupted and StarExplorer just retried them successfully. When I checked this morning, there was one image that didn't get uploaded (apparently several retries failed). It was still sitting there in the upload queue waiting all by itself for me. I just hit upload this morning and it finished in a few minutes. For large uploads, for unattended uploads, for uploads across many galleries, for connectivity that isn't rock solid, I highly recommend StarExplorer. It even writes your upload queue persisntently to disk so even if you PC crashes, it still knows what images you asked to be uploaded the next time you start it.
In my opinion, Smugmug really ought to take some robustness lessons from StarExplorer. If you ask to upload images, they should get there even if the connectivity is flaky.
Peter - I would strongly suggest you look into a separate uploader, apart from the simple uploader that works in IE or Firefox. I use Star*Explorer and it has made my use of Smugmug so much nicer. I can create the gallery, select the images I want to upload to the gallery and tell it to upload. Away it goes.
If something interrupts it in the middle, it has the wherewithall to know that and ask if you wish to resume uploading from where you were last located.
Well worth the money (no, I don't make any money from the program, I am just a very happy user).
Comments
Andy,
My comments are not based on "data", but rather my own experience with SM over the last several months. Call it my luck and bad timing, but when I have time to upload images in my busy schedule I often come across problems with slow uploading and freezing on uploads. I've since moved to IE (instead of FF) for uploading photos. This helps somewhat when using the Simple uploader. Again, perhaps by bad timing, I have experienced at least 3 downtimes when logging into my account. Considering I rarely come online it concerns me that I've seen that many downtimes relative to the times I've logged on. At least 4 times now I've had to upload my images to my Zenfolio account to fulfill promises of having pictures available to my viewers. I have not experienced a downtime with Zenfolio. Not that they have not occured I'm sure, but certainly not to the SM frequency. I am not comparing SM with Zenfolio since SM is still my top choice for "online" image hosting.
As for speed. Over 90% of the time I have very slow displays of my images. Images come up pixelated first, and then resolve to a clear image. This has been reported by my viewers as well. Also, I've pretty much given up on the slideshow since many times it shows the progress bar first, then the image, for every image. And there have been too many times where the screen simply stays black, with no image.
As for contacting support, yes I have, in the past. But I tend to go to this forum first to see if others are having similar problems. If I don't see similar problems then I will contact support.
Anyway, I've made this response way too long. Sorry. And as for my post, my frustration is coming across because last night and early this morning were some of my rare "free moments" to upload photos . . . .
Peter
I really do appreciate everything that you do to keep this site up and when trouble happens and I read negative posts I really want to speak up about how wonderful this site has been. I'll leave comments to the negative posters to Andy, but if you ever need backup, just give a shout and I'll be around.
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I'm certain we can help. When you're ready for some serious Prob Determination and diagnosis, email us @ the desk ATTN: Andy and I'll put our experts on the case for you.
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I do have a wish list for smugmug, but really I must say that overall I am highly impressed with your guys service.
I'm going to waste some space just to put a big DITTO here on all accounts.
My personal experience with support has been nothing short of stellar. Mine and that of my customers.
Sorry for the ditto post, but I'm very compelled to say how I feel!
Thanks Andy,
I'll send you details when I have some free time (next week perhaps) . . .
Peter
I didn't experience any of the downtime this morning, but perhaps this problem was an artifact of that - many of the gallery thumbnails were replaced with a "photo not found" unhappy face image, as were the thumbnails inside the galleries. It seems like the underlying images are still there, because the clicking on the placeholder thumbnail brings it up properly.
Peter - I would strongly suggest you look into a separate uploader, apart from the simple uploader that works in IE or Firefox. I use Star*Explorer and it has made my use of Smugmug so much nicer. I can create the gallery, select the images I want to upload to the gallery and tell it to upload. Away it goes.
If something interrupts it in the middle, it has the wherewithall to know that and ask if you wish to resume uploading from where you were last located.
Well worth the money (no, I don't make any money from the program, I am just a very happy user).
http://www.starexplorer.com/
Mike.
http://www.fourangelsphotography.com/
I second that recommendation. I just uploaded 600 photos to 30 different galleries last night in one unattended upload session. I see from the logs that a couple images transmissions got interrupted and StarExplorer just retried them successfully. When I checked this morning, there was one image that didn't get uploaded (apparently several retries failed). It was still sitting there in the upload queue waiting all by itself for me. I just hit upload this morning and it finished in a few minutes. For large uploads, for unattended uploads, for uploads across many galleries, for connectivity that isn't rock solid, I highly recommend StarExplorer. It even writes your upload queue persisntently to disk so even if you PC crashes, it still knows what images you asked to be uploaded the next time you start it.
In my opinion, Smugmug really ought to take some robustness lessons from StarExplorer. If you ask to upload images, they should get there even if the connectivity is flaky.
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Thanks Mike, I'll give it a try . . .
Peter
Thanks John.