Community gallery appearance

rutt

I associated a gallery of mine with a community for the first time. This is a nice feature, but I think it needs work. Why can't my gallery keep my own apperance and branding instead of taking on the community or smugmug look?

Putting galleries in communities is potentially a great way to get noticed, but more useful with my own branding.

Opinions?

mercphoto

rutt wrote:

I associated a gallery of mine with a community for the first time. This is a nice feature, but I think it needs work. Why can't my gallery keep my own apperance and branding instead of taking on the community or smugmug look?

Putting galleries in communities is potentially a great way to get noticed, but more useful with my own branding.

Opinions?

I'm tempted to agree. A third option would be nice: Smugmug, Community, or User appearance.

But, I almost didn't respond. I don't want to take time away from them implementing digital file downloads!

rdlugosz

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I just ran into the same thing - I joined a few communities & associated albums, but then reverted that when I discovered that you cannot use your own appearance anymore! Any updates on when/if this will be addressed?

rainforest1155

I don't think this is smugmug's fault anymore. The owner of the community can choose if he wants to force his cobranding on all galleries or not. I choose not to - have a look at my community: Apostolos' gallery has it's unique look and feel in contrast to the one from allsportspics.

I would recommend to leave a comment on the page of the community owner asking him to simply change the setting.

Hope this clears things up,
Sebastian

rdlugosz

rainforest1155 wrote:

I don't think this is smugmug's fault anymore. The owner of the community can choose if he wants to force his cobranding on all galleries or not. I choose not to - have a look at my community: Apostolos' gallery has it's unique look and feel in contrast to the one from allsportspics.

Thanks for the reply... it appears that you're correct - the Trains Community seems to enforce a theme, while the Zoo community does not.

It seems to me that this shouldn't be entirely under the control of the community owner... I'd be inclined to not participate in the communities rather than risk someone "hijacking" my galleries (intentionally or otherwise) by switching on the "you must use community theme" setting. This is a big problem when you look at what's happening with the Trains community: the theme enforced there has a banner and links to another member's page! Kind of makes it look like they're *his* photos and not the true owner's...

Any reason why this has to be this way?

rainforest1155

rdlugosz wrote:

It seems to me that this shouldn't be entirely under the control of the community owner... [...] This is a big problem when you look at what's happening with the Trains community: the theme enforced there has a banner and links to another member's page! Kind of makes it look like they're *his* photos and not the true owner's...

I agree with you on this. This should be an option for the people contributing their galleries! They should be able to deceide which cobranding they would like to use. Their own, of the community or no cobranding.

Who's with me on this?

Sebastian

rutt

At least for pro accounts, this is fixed. See http://www.smugmug.com/community/kpotd and click through to my gallery or Khoas' for example.

rdlugosz

rutt wrote:

At least for pro accounts, this is fixed. See http://www.smugmug.com/community/kpotd and click through to my gallery or Khoas' for example.

I have a pro account, and as far as I can tell it is not. Add a gallery to the "Trains" community and see what happens for you... maybe just something I'm doing wrong.

rutt

Maybe they implimented the "it's rutt, do it his way" feature.

Seriously, there are a few different "Appearance" options on the gallery options. Did you play with these?

rdlugosz

rutt wrote:

Seriously, there are a few different "Appearance" options on the gallery options. Did you play with these?

Yea, but it seems that no matter what I set it to, it's always set back to "Community" when I return to the options page for the gallery.

rutt

rdlugosz wrote:

Yea, but it seems that no matter what I set it to, it's always set back to "Community" when I return to the options page for the gallery.

Try joining KPOTD and putting a gallery there. What happens?

rdlugosz

rutt wrote:

Try joining KPOTD and putting a gallery there. What happens?

OK - that one seems to behave more or less correctly, although the "Community" appearance is still always selected every time I go to the options page. There are two "Appearance" sections: the normal one and the one right below the community slection. They appear to be in the same radion button group, as they are all exclusive. No matter how many times I select and save with "Custom" it always seems to go back to "Community".

Anyway, that still seems to be OK on this community, since it appears to be using my custom layout. Still, it seems like there's a bug here...

Also, could you try joining "Trains-railways-TrainStations " and see what happens for you?

rainforest1155

rdlugosz wrote:

Anyway, that still seems to be OK on this community, since it appears to be using my custom layout. Still, it seems like there's a bug here...

Also, could you try joining "Trains-railways-TrainStations " and see what happens for you?

Like I said I still thing that the different behaviour in communities comes from the settings of the owners. But we need to wait on an official statement. Maybe you could mail to help@smugmug.com and ask them to look at the setting of the train community so we can figure out if this one forces cobranding and therefore overrides your settings.

Sebastian

rutt

Try creating your own community and I'm sure you'll find out.