About categories, subcategories...

dosmildreams

Hi all! I'm new to SmugMug :-) It took me a while to decide subscribing but I think I chose one of the best photosharing sites. Congratulations for your work.

Anyway, I am still trying to get used to the hierarchy concept here. I know much have been written in the Help and in this forum, but I didn't find a post that actually helped me...

I think categories and subcategories should co-exist with galleries and subgalleries. Really. Semantically, there is a difference: all my photos will be one category: travel. So I wouldn't need categories. But well, let's try to solve the problem with categories. Correct me, or suggest me please some solution to this:

I want my site to show my travel albums by date. Some have different subalbums. I want it to be like this:

Travel:
-2008.10-Argentina:
---Buenos Aires
---Patagonia
---Glaciers
-2008.08-Croatia
-2008.03-Germany:
---North
---South

The thing is: Argentina and Germany have subalbums, but Croatia not. Croatia is a gallery with photos directly below. Whereas Argentina and Germany have to be categories (or subcategories)

But I want the tree to be shown that way: Argentina, Croatia and Germany displayed in the same page, in order, and in the same way. And I can't... When seeing the Travel category, there's a big double line separating the subcategories and the galleries areas.

Is there a solution to people who don't really need "categories"?

Thank you!

denisegoldberg

dosmildreams wrote:

I think categories and subcategories should co-exist with galleries and subgalleries. Really. Semantically, there is a difference: all my photos will be one category: travel. So I wouldn't need categories. But well, let's try to solve the problem with categories. Correct me, or suggest me please some solution to this:

I want my site to show my travel albums by date. Some have different subalbums. I want it to be like this:

Travel:
-2008.10-Argentina:
---Buenos Aires
---Patagonia
---Glaciers
-2008.08-Croatia
-2008.03-Germany:
---North
---South

The thing is: Argentina and Germany have subalbums, but Croatia not. Croatia is a gallery with photos directly below. Whereas Argentina and Germany have to be categories (or subcategories)

But I want the tree to be shown that way: Argentina, Croatia and Germany displayed in the same page, in order, and in the same way. And I can't... When seeing the Travel category, there's a big double line separating the subcategories and the galleries areas.

Is there a solution to people who don't really need "categories"?

Unfortunately there isn't. There is a way to remove the differentiation of subcategory and gallery in a display, but that only removes the boxes and the headers. The subcategories are all shown together or the galleries are all shown together.

I can't tell what type of account you have. Just as a warning, the full html-only page option needs some CSS changes, so it really needs a power or pro account.

The only way around this is with an HTML-only page where you define the order of things and can mix galleries and subcategories together. I use html-only pages for all of my category and subcategory displays. You may not want to go that route because it's a lot of work to maintain (as in at least one html-only gallery needs to be updated each time you add a new gallery). My Travel category (at http://www.denisegoldberg.com/gallery/4859072_Z5YkN) is a seamless display of galleries and subcategories. The Recent Galleries page I make available in my blog also mixes subcategories and galleries, and that page crosses category boundaries as well. It is also an html-only page, at http://www.denisegoldberg.com/gallery/3137264_NGWFU.

If you want to start delving into this you might want to look at Allen's tutorial at http://allen-steve.smugmug.com/gallery/3539056. I used something similar to this on my Recent Galleries page, but my category and subcategory pages use a different method.

--- Denise

Allen

I also have this example which lets you create your own virtual levels.
Smug has mentioned that someday we'll have more layers to play with so might wait for that.

dosmildreams

Thank you for your answers! (Splendid photos, by the way...)

I can't stop thinking of workarounds to solve the 'categories obstacle'. I was aware of the customization possibilities when you are power/pro (I'm standard for the moment, I just signed up), but that was actually my point to migrate from my all-by-myself previous website (http://www.dosmildreams.com): avoid manual customization. I have no time...

So an easy workaround will be this:

Travel:
-2008.10-Argentina:
---Buenos Aires
---Patagonia
---Glaciers
-2008.08-Croatia
---Croatia (<<<< one category, one gallery...)
-2008.03-Germany:
---North
---South

Still, I have another problem: I want to add a description to my travels, i.e.: to my categories. And I can't.... :cry (can I?).

Even with full HTML customization, maybe I am too purist, I just think categories were really not made to be used the way I am using them. You see, in this way, that I will have to create hundreds of categories, one for each trip...

Everything would be easy and all problems would be solved if we could have galleries and subgalleries (category: Travel; subcategory: 2008; gallery: My trip to Argentina; subgallery: First days in Buenos Aires). But this is just my wish, and thinking as a programmer, I don't know how many implications this would have... I guess many... :-(

Thank you!!
Alberto

jfriend

dosmildreams wrote:

Thank you for your answers! (Splendid photos, by the way...)

I can't stop thinking of workarounds to solve the 'categories obstacle'. I was aware of the customization possibilities when you are power/pro (I'm standard for the moment, I just signed up), but that was actually my point to migrate from my all-by-myself previous website (http://www.dosmildreams.com): avoid manual customization. I have no time...

So an easy workaround will be this:

Travel:
-2008.10-Argentina:
---Buenos Aires
---Patagonia
---Glaciers
-2008.08-Croatia
---Croatia (<<<< one category, one gallery...)
-2008.03-Germany:
---North
---South

Still, I have another problem: I want to add a description to my travels, i.e.: to my categories. And I can't.... :cry (can I?).

Even with full HTML customization, maybe I am too purist, I just think categories were really not made to be used the way I am using them. You see, in this way, that I will have to create hundreds of categories, one for each trip...

Everything would be easy and all problems would be solved if we could have galleries and subgalleries (category: Travel; subcategory: 2008; gallery: My trip to Argentina; subgallery: First days in Buenos Aires). But this is just my wish, and thinking as a programmer, I don't know how many implications this would have... I guess many... :-(

Thank you!!
Alberto

Until Smugmug adds more levels of sub-categories, it looks like you have the right work-around. It's no big deal to create a sub-category whenever you need one - I do it all the time for every sports team or event I cover.

With a power or pro account, there is a popular customization that lets you add descriptions for categories and sub-categories.

PBolchover

You can also mix galleries and sub-categories using "gallery redirects", but that is another Power-User and Pro- technique.

One thought: if all of your photos are going to be in a single category, then don't bother with that category. Either make all of your "sub-categories" as full categories in their own right, or create user-defined categories to suit your purposed (e.g. you might wish to create a "2008" category, to make future expansion easier).

Paul

jfriend

dosmildreams wrote:

Thank you for your answers! (Splendid photos, by the way...)

I can't stop thinking of workarounds to solve the 'categories obstacle'. I was aware of the customization possibilities when you are power/pro (I'm standard for the moment, I just signed up), but that was actually my point to migrate from my all-by-myself previous website (http://www.dosmildreams.com): avoid manual customization. I have no time...

So an easy workaround will be this:

Travel:
-2008.10-Argentina:
---Buenos Aires
---Patagonia
---Glaciers
-2008.08-Croatia
---Croatia (<<<< one category, one gallery...)
-2008.03-Germany:
---North
---South

Still, I have another problem: I want to add a description to my travels, i.e.: to my categories. And I can't.... :cry (can I?).

Even with full HTML customization, maybe I am too purist, I just think categories were really not made to be used the way I am using them. You see, in this way, that I will have to create hundreds of categories, one for each trip...

Everything would be easy and all problems would be solved if we could have galleries and subgalleries (category: Travel; subcategory: 2008; gallery: My trip to Argentina; subgallery: First days in Buenos Aires). But this is just my wish, and thinking as a programmer, I don't know how many implications this would have... I guess many... :-(

Thank you!!
Alberto

Paul has a good point. You want to pick a category strategy where you will have 3-30 galleries in each category and avoid situations where you only have one or two galleries per category because it will seem to the user that you have made extra categories that result in nothing buy extra clicks to get deeper into the structure.

Have you considered doing it like this:

Travel:
-2008
---Argentina - Buenos Aires
---Argentina - Patagonia
---Argentina - Glaciers
---Croatia
---Germany - North
---Germany - South

This would have a category for travel and a sub-category for 2008. Each trip would not be in it's own category, but unless you had more than 30 travel galleries in a given year, a viewer should still be able to find the trips of interest fairly easily. You could either sort the trip galleries in alphabetical order or chronological order - obviously keeping all galleries from a single trip together.

This has the advantage that it's very expandable as you add a 2009 sub-category the next year while there are never categories or sub-categories with single galleries in them so you don't have needless clicking or hierarchy.

This also had the advantage that when Smugmug adds another level of hierarchy in the future (I'm assuming they are going to do that), you will have the least change to take advantage of that.

dosmildreams

jfriend wrote:

Have you considered doing it like this:

Travel:
-2008
---Argentina - Buenos Aires
---Argentina - Patagonia
---Argentina - Glaciers
---Croatia
---Germany - North
---Germany - South

I am ashamed I didn't think of it before... Thanks :-) But I'll see... Still, I think I find it nicer to have everything more hierarchical. But it's another good workaround :-)

Thanks all...

jfriend

dosmildreams wrote:

I am ashamed I didn't think of it before... Thanks :-) But I'll see... Still, I think I find it nicer to have everything more hierarchical. But it's another good workaround :-)

Thanks all...

It is common for people who are setting up their galleries to want deep hierarchy. My guess is that we feel a sense of tidiness and organization when there's good hierarchy. But, at Smugmug the hierarchy has nothing to do with that, it's only there to enhance the viewer's experience and make it easier/quicker to find things. If you put in more hierarchy than is really needed for the viewer to find things, all you do is make the viewer do more looking into categories and do more clicking to get somewhere - both cardinal sins for good web development.

So, really your goal is for it to be easy for your viewers to find things in the fewest number of clicks. So, even when Smugmug supports more levels, this structure will probably be a better web design until you start to get so many galleries at one level that a viewer has trouble finding what they want.

dosmildreams

Yeah, you are right. With all these discussions and thoughts I'm start thinking if it should actually be 'me' who must change the philosophy, not just forcing my SmugMug to fit my needs...

Thanks for all the advice :-)

And happy holidays to everyone!