SmugMug for our church?

bobrandklev

I've started a photography club at our church and we have about 10 people who want to take photos and contribute. All have different degrees of experience and camera gear.

So the photographers take photos at events and upload to say a custom SmugMug site we purchase for the church. Then the pastors/office staff and other groups can login and view/print/download the photos they like.

So my question is SmugMug our best choice? I hope it is as I really like my site but do we get a custom pro site and share the login/password with everyone? I believe the "Friend" option for sharing is only with other paid smugmuggers?

Security is their big concern and I've assured them with private galleries and right click protect the photos are as safe as can be. The church doesn't want photos of children/families taken and put on a public photo sharing site for anyone to grab.

So it's really a team or as I started a photography club to be a safe central location to upload photos and then share them with people we want to and sell some if we like to our congregation!

Any ideas or comments are appreciated!

Tao Zero

Smugmug offers the ability to email photos to an online gallery designated as 'email'. Anyone can email the pics, if they are given the pword to upload. The password simply goes in the subject line of the email. This password does not give them access to anything else. The pastors/office staff can then sort through the uploaded pictures and move them to other galleries as they choose. Locking a gallery with a password is very easy too. Hope this helps.

Daniel

BenA2

SmugMug is a perfect option for you. I manage a SmugMug site for our church. Note that, since you're doing this for a none-profit organization (I assume your church is a 503(b)), SmugMug will provide you with a professional site for free. You just need to ask and provide them with a letter validating your 503(b) status.

My security strategy is to password protect the entire site. It has one simple password with a hint that everyone in the congregation can use to easily guess the password, but hard enough that random outsiders can't.

For uploading, I give folks an assistant password and let them upload and organize themselves. I do have to go back in and reorganize things for consistency sake.

A warning, though: I don't know how big your church is (ours is about 350 members with a small staff), but I know there's no way I can expect anyone on the staff to manage the SmugMug site. It's an all volunteer effort on my part, and it's the only way it'll get done. But, it's worth it.

Sam

BenA2 wrote:

SmugMug is a perfect option for you. I manage a SmugMug site for our church. Note that, since you're doing this for a none-profit organization (I assume your church is a 503(b)), SmugMug will provide you with a professional site for free. You just need to ask and provide them with a letter validating your 503(b) status.

My security strategy is to password protect the entire site. It has one simple password with a hint that everyone in the congregation can use to easily guess the password, but hard enough that random outsiders can't.

For uploading, I give folks an assistant password and let them upload and organize themselves. I do have to go back in and reorganize things for consistency sake.

A warning, though: I don't know how big your church is (ours is about 350 members with a small staff), but I know there's no way I can expect anyone on the staff to manage the SmugMug site. It's an all volunteer effort on my part, and it's the only way it'll get done. But, it's worth it.

Ben I just looked at your web site, and noticed I can buy your metalic prints at cost.

Sam

bobrandklev

BenA2 wrote:

SmugMug is a perfect option for you. I manage a SmugMug site for our church. Note that, since you're doing this for a none-profit organization (I assume your church is a 503(b)), SmugMug will provide you with a professional site for free. You just need to ask and provide them with a letter validating your 503(b) status.

My security strategy is to password protect the entire site. It has one simple password with a hint that everyone in the congregation can use to easily guess the password, but hard enough that random outsiders can't.

For uploading, I give folks an assistant password and let them upload and organize themselves. I do have to go back in and reorganize things for consistency sake.

A warning, though: I don't know how big your church is (ours is about 350 members with a small staff), but I know there's no way I can expect anyone on the staff to manage the SmugMug site. It's an all volunteer effort on my part, and it's the only way it'll get done. But, it's worth it.

Ben thanks for the great news and ideas and I think the idea to let people email photos to the site is awesome!

I'm going to get our letter ready and submit it next week! I may be in touch with more questions. Oh and we have about 350 families as well so I'm sure we'll have similar experiences!

Mohamed.Ghuloom

How this emailing thing works?
Because I teach photography to some people and our system is that after we teach them, they become a photographer in the company by having their photos uploaded to the website under their name ( "Taken by [Name]" )