Subcategory problems

Shempster

New here & to Smugmug & I can’t figure out a few things. I’ve tried & looked around but can’t figure out their methodology or hierarchy for organizing my pictures. For example:

I need a category named “Aviation Related” – no problem there.
In this category I need a subcategory named “Bombardier” – no problem there.
In this subcategory I need two subcategories named “Challenger” & “Lear Jet”
In Challenger I need subcategories named “600” & “300” & in Lear Jet I need subcategories named “31A”, “35”, “45” & “60”. In these last subcategories I want to put my photos.

I can’t seem to find a way to create multiple subcategories within a subcategory.

They need to just use a folder/tree like method to do this. Am I missing something here?

Thanks

jfriend

Smugmug supports three levels only.

Category
Sub-category
Gallery

A gallery can either be in a category or a sub-category.

They will be adding more levels in the future, but for now that's what they have. You are asking for six levels plus gallery. Unless you are going to have thousands of galleries, it is pretty rare that your viewers would actually benefit from having that many levels in the presentation of your site. As many pages as CNN or ESPN have, they probably don't have 7 levels deep anywhere. It's just hard for viewers to find what they want and it's laborious to click that much. Broad and shallow with lots of choices on each screen is usually lots better for quick navigation and fast finding.

Categories and subcategories are not for filing things away and making them seem organized (like one might do in a file system on your computer). They should be used only to make it as quick and simple for your viewers to find what they are looking for in the fewest number of clicks.

To that end, I like to think of the galleries I'm presenting in chunks of 10-30 galleries at a time and find a category or sub-category name that can hold 10-30 galleries at once. It is way, way, way easier for a viewer to scan a screen of 10-30 galleries to see if the one they want is there than it is to open 20 sub-categories, looking in each one for the galleries they want.

If you want some help thinking this through, let me know how many total aviation galleries you think you will have in the next year?

Shempster

jfriend wrote:

Smugmug supports three levels only.

Category
Sub-category
Gallery

A gallery can either be in a category or a sub-category.

They will be adding more levels in the future, but for now that's what they have. You are asking for six levels plus gallery. Unless you are going to have thousands of galleries, it is pretty rare that your viewers would actually benefit from having that many levels in the presentation of your site. As many pages as CNN or ESPN have, they probably don't have 7 levels deep anywhere. It's just hard for viewers to find what they want and it's laborious to click that much. Broad and shallow with lots of choices on each screen is usually lots better for quick navigation and fast finding.

Categories and subcategories are not for filing things away and making them seem organized (like one might do in a file system on your computer). They should be used only to make it as quick and simple for your viewers to find what they are looking for in the fewest number of clicks.

To that end, I like to think of the galleries I'm presenting in chunks of 10-30 galleries at a time and find a category or sub-category name that can hold 10-30 galleries at once. It is way, way, way easier for a viewer to scan a screen of 10-30 galleries to see if the one they want is there than it is to open 20 sub-categories, looking in each one for the galleries they want.

If you want some help thinking this through, let me know how many total aviation galleries you think you will have in the next year?

Thanks for the reply. I thought was something like a limit was going on here. I've set up a site on zenfolio if you'd like to look & see what I'm talking about. (shempster.zenfolio.com) I don't know how many more galleries will be added but I've just started setting this up & potentially have hunderds more photos.

Bottom line though is you've answered my question. I may just stick with zenfolio because of this.

Thanks

Shemp

jfriend

Shempster wrote:

Thanks for the reply. I thought was something like a limit was going on here. I've set up a site on zenfolio if you'd like to look & see what I'm talking about. (shempster.zenfolio.com) I don't know how many more galleries will be added but I've just started setting this up & potentially have hunderds more photos.

Bottom line though is you've answered my question. I may just stick with zenfolio because of this.

Thanks

Shemp

On Smugmug, this is how you would do it:

Aviation Related
.....Bombardier
.........Challenger 600
.........Challenger 300
.........Lear 60
.........Lear 45
.........Lear 35
.........Lear 31A

While it may not seem as "purely organized", it is faster to browse and get to a particular gallery when it's shallower like this. That said, Smugmug has said they are going to add more levels at some point.

soloshooter

Interesting??
I am struggling with a similar issue. Here it is:

From homepage, I want to click on Galleries button, which takes me to different selections (portraits, landscape, etc). From this page, I want to click on portraits, and within this gallery, have separate categories (Madden Family, Denham Kids, etc) so that viewers do not have to sort through hundreds of photos. How can I accomplish this?

www.chrisdenhamphotography.com

jfriend wrote:

Smugmug supports three levels only.

Category
Sub-category
Gallery

A gallery can either be in a category or a sub-category.

They will be adding more levels in the future, but for now that's what they have. You are asking for six levels plus gallery. Unless you are going to have thousands of galleries, it is pretty rare that your viewers would actually benefit from having that many levels in the presentation of your site. As many pages as CNN or ESPN have, they probably don't have 7 levels deep anywhere. It's just hard for viewers to find what they want and it's laborious to click that much. Broad and shallow with lots of choices on each screen is usually lots better for quick navigation and fast finding.

Categories and subcategories are not for filing things away and making them seem organized (like one might do in a file system on your computer). They should be used only to make it as quick and simple for your viewers to find what they are looking for in the fewest number of clicks.

To that end, I like to think of the galleries I'm presenting in chunks of 10-30 galleries at a time and find a category or sub-category name that can hold 10-30 galleries at once. It is way, way, way easier for a viewer to scan a screen of 10-30 galleries to see if the one they want is there than it is to open 20 sub-categories, looking in each one for the galleries they want.

If you want some help thinking this through, let me know how many total aviation galleries you think you will have in the next year?

jfriend

soloshooter wrote:

I am struggling with a similar issue. Here it is:

From homepage, I want to click on Galleries button, which takes me to different selections (portraits, landscape, etc). From this page, I want to click on portraits, and within this gallery, have separate categories (Madden Family, Denham Kids, etc) so that viewers do not have to sort through hundreds of photos. How can I accomplish this?

www.chrisdenhamphotography.com

Set your galleries to show by category instead of a flat list of galleries. Then, change the name on each of your galleries so the actual gallery name describes what they are (rather than the gallery description). For example, Denham Photography - Advertising should have a gallery name of Advertising. Then, create the portraits category and the Landscapes category. Then, just assign your galleries to the right category in the customize gallery screen and you should end up with this structure and a galleries page that just shows your categories.

Portraits
...Madden Family
...Denham Kids
...Etc...
Landscapes
...

soloshooter

Thanks
That was clear and concise, thanks for your help.:ivar

jfriend wrote:

Set your galleries to show by category instead of a flat list of galleries. Then, change the name on each of your galleries so the actual gallery name describes what they are (rather than the gallery description). For example, Denham Photography - Advertising should have a gallery name of Advertising. Then, create the portraits category and the Landscapes category. Then, just assign your galleries to the right category in the customize gallery screen and you should end up with this structure and a galleries page that just shows your categories.

Portraits
...Madden Family
...Denham Kids
...Etc...
Landscapes
...

HeavyJ

Where is the option to set it to show it this way?

jfriend

HeavyJ wrote:

Where is the option to set it to show it this way?

On your homepage: