As I step from the thank you podeum, I hope you can feel and see the applauds that are coming your way. Do not take them lightly. You guys really are heros for the frantic 911 callers as myself. Take a bow ... Job well done!! Hip-Hip-Hooray! Hip-Hip-Hooray! Hip-Hip-Hooray!
I am so happy right now.. SO happy!! I SmugMug to pieces.
Click... click....click and voila.. my smug matches my main site.
HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY
You guys do all the hard work... all I have to do is take pictures. *falls over from pure excitement*
This is exactly what we were shooting for Thanks for telling us!
Is they any plan for this to save to different custom Themes?
I personally like to have a little bit of global settings, and then themes for changing the appearance. Then I can have a light and dark themes for different galleries.
Thanks
Daniel
Good suggestion, Brian (The Awesome Sorcerer that built this) has a whole bunch of feature-adds, I'll discuss this one with him!
Folks, please do read carefully my post #1 of this thread. And remember who this is designed for
If you have extensive customizing already in place it's probably not for you.
Andy -
I'm absolutely appalled - yet not surprised - at the folks with extensive customizations who have jumped in to the easy customizer and actually saved changes from there without protecting themselves by saving a copy of their existing customizations. (Not smug's fault, the fault of the individuals who haven't bothered to protect themselves by backing up their customizations.)
It's quite obvious from looking at the preview screens against a previously customized site that changes will be made that alter the previous customizations, and that not all already-made customizations are not picked up by the new tool. Yes, I looked with my site, even assuming that the intent of this tool was that it be used by people who have not yet customized their sites. The things that jumped out at me immediately is that the smugmug header was back, the large footer was showing, my light background was ignored, my page title was gone.
This post is not a complaint, but a request. If someone goes into the easy customizer and that individual already has advanced customizations in place, can you at least pop up a reminder on the Easy Customizer to suggest that the individual take the time to back up their existing customizations before taking the next step? Yes, I know, you did say that in the first post of this thread, but there are individuals who stumbled on the Easy Customizer in smug (as opposed to in this thread) and did not see your recommendation. And unfortunately, people somehow manage to skim over details like that.
This looks to be a great starting point for people who want relatively simple changes. I suspect that it will cut down on some of the questions in the customization forum.
This looks to be a great starting point for people who want relatively simple changes. I suspect that it will cut down on some of the questions in the customization forum.
--- Denise
Yup - we expect folks to get a header, colors, navbar etc, done in minutes not hours/days. Upload photos, and share or sell 'em.
And then, at their leisure, they can take time and learn about customizing in advanced detail, if they like!
Or come here and post and get awesome help to do more tricks
We'll definitely be adding more stuff to the Easy Customizer, as well, in the near future.
Thanks Denise, as always, for your amazing help here on the forum! I'll ask Brian about backup reminder and such. Changing Easy Customizer stuff doesn't overwrite the stuff in cobrand.mg - but folks can be leery of making changes. We'll make it obvious.
First off Love the tool very easy to use!!!!!! next I would like to see add to the tool is a way to use different headers on different galleries.... Andy can you make this magic happen for me????? and also a way to change the nav bar order without deleting the link you have alrdy created..... thx again
A Day where One can Spend all day doing something they Love is a wonderful day in deed... ~sparky~
I think it would be useful for those of us with existing CSS customization to be able to at least see what easy changes would look like without having to hack out all of our css code first. I know I can back it up first (actually I can't back it up I have to copy and paste the code into a new blank document which is not the same thing) but it just seems a bit drastic.
Because I have existing themes, codes and site wide preferences it's impossible to see what any changes would look like on an existing gallery because my existing preferences affect the customization - can there not be the option of having a new blank gallery used in the preview?
Otherwise (and correct me if I'm wrong) I would have to remove all of my css code, save my site like that (goodness knows what any visitors to my site will see in the meantime) and effectively start over again with the Easy Customizer. If I don't like the changes I have to go back and paste all the css code back in again.
Or maybe there could be a dummy site somewhere we could practise on?
If I was starting out fresh today then this would be a godsend but as it is it seems totally impractical.
Saving Your Custom Code via .webarchive
Maybe I'm missing something, but since I was also paranoid before hitting the button on Easy Customizer I opened my site in the old Customization mode(/cobrand.mg) and did a Save As in the .webarchive format.
It saved all the text within the scrolling windows, etc. Pretty painless way to save the text...unless I really missed something.
Much easier than cut/paste to a text doc.
This is on a Mac, but it shouldn't matter. If not doable on Windows, what can I say. ;-)
Maybe I'm missing something, but since I was also paranoid before hitting the button on Easy Customizer I opened my site in the old Customization mode(/cobrand.mg) and did a Save As in the .webarchive format.
It saved all the text within the scrolling windows, etc. Pretty painless way to save the text...unless I really missed something.
Much easier than cut/paste to a text doc.
This is on a Mac, but it shouldn't matter. If not doable on Windows, what can I say. ;-)
You are right - thank you. I guess I can cut and paste from that instead.
BEWARE....easy come easy go....
Like many people before me, I jumped right into the Easy Customizer with reckless abandon - only to find myself in more trouble then I had wished for on a Sunday afternoon.
Although Andy is clear in this post that you should backup your customization code before trying out the "Easy" tool, I actually made changes using that tool BEFORE I came to dgrin. How was I to know?
Yes, there needs to be a major disclaimer on the actually Easy tool webpage (or pop-up or whatever...).
Another important point, is NO - smugmug cannot assume only NEW smugmugers are going to use this tool. When I saw that the Easy tool includes a "favicon" upload at the click of a button, of course I am going to use it. And a quick tweak to my smugmug footer - why not!
How was I supposed to know that my fonts were going to get all screwy and headers would appear out of thin air.
No, the "undo" didn't work for me either - not fully anyway. I needed to do some referse engineering (by trial and error). In the end, no harm done, but the experience hasn't been pleasurable.
Don't get me wrong, I love smugmug and recommend them to any photogapher I meet.......but this one scared me. I'm confident the heros will right the ship and all will be right as rain soon.
Just had to pipe up about what I went through........so Beware --- easy come, easy go.....
Static title only?
There's an option to set the title, but that seems static only. Searching in google with "site: photos.reinout.vanrees.org" gives me only "Reinout van Rees' photos - powered by SmugMug" now. So I can change it to some other static text. Which doesn't help search-engine-wise.
What I want: the title of the photo in the URL. "${title} - Reinout's photos" or something to that effect. I've only seen some javascript tricks to do that, which obviously has no effect on google and friends.
Titles are really important for search engine visibility, which is something I want. It is one of the (only two!) things I liked more about flickr.com: their search engine visibility of my photos was/is great.
Maybe I'm missing something, but since I was also paranoid before hitting the button on Easy Customizer I opened my site in the old Customization mode(/cobrand.mg) and did a Save As in the .webarchive format.
It saved all the text within the scrolling windows, etc. Pretty painless way to save the text...unless I really missed something.
Much easier than cut/paste to a text doc.
This is on a Mac, but it shouldn't matter. If not doable on Windows, what can I say. ;-)
You sir... ROCK!
Thanks for this... I hadn't thought of doing it this way but yes, it works great for the advanced customisation - but for some reason doesn't work for the themes ???
This is something that we're working on for a different part of the site, and we hope to have news on it soon. Stay up to date by subscribing to release notes! http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/
Almost There
Ok...this question is kinda vague, I know. I like the Easy Customizer...it's great. I'm trying though to get more a Andy's "feel" on his homepage of Moonriver. Any ideas on what and how to do it?
Ok...this question is kinda vague, I know. I like the Easy Customizer...it's great. I'm trying though to get more a Andy's "feel" on his homepage of Moonriver. Any ideas on what and how to do it?
You've got a good start! All you need to do is add a banner/logo image and then place your navbar to the right of it. You can do this in the Easy Customizer, under Header --> Custom Banner. Since you have already created the navbar with the Easy Customizer, just change the position of it to the right of your logo after you add that.
I have a couple of questions... when I experimented with this last night, I set my background and boxes to black so the boxes wouldn't show up at all, and it worked everywhere but on my galleries page, where it said "Galleries Galleries" at the top of the page in a gray box. Not sure how to fix this... For the moment I have reverted back to my CSS customization that I had in place beforehand.
Two other things, about the preview window: Is there a way to see the preview in "visitor view"? Trying to figure out what it looks like in owner mode is a mess. I also was unable to preview my "galleries" page, although I could preview individual galleries. Is this something that could be fixed?
Sorry if this has been addressed before; I didn't read all 12 pages of the thread before posting...
Just curious, will navbar fly-outs be part of future additions to the Easy Customizer? (I'd like to have one button with categories and the galleries in the fly-outs which I can do via the complex customizing but I'm still hesitant to start complex customization because I'd rather prefer this incorporated in the EC tool).
We might use YUI-menus (like we use on other parts of the site)....
It's a down-the-road thing.
Yes, YUI menus would be much better than the CSS menu hacks.
It's amazing how much junk has to be inserted into your CSS to make these drop-downs work and then to make the menu HTML itself work in a variety of browsers, it has all sorts of <table> and ifdef stuff in it that makes it entirely unreadable and undebuggable. I think Allen is the only one of the helpers that cares to actually try to help people fix busted hierarchical menus. I avoid them like the plague. Yui menus on the other hard are very simple to build and maintain and make cross platform (because Yahoo already did all the work).
A couple of comments and a bug report
First, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that you rolled this out. I realize it requires a higher subscription level, but even then it's relatively unheard of for a company to willing allow its customers to remove all branding.
Second, the implementation is excellent. Great job to everyone involved.
Now, for my bug report, which is: for some reason the "No footer" menu has disappeared as an option for me altogether. All I've been doing is playing around - never once hit publish - and I've never done any advanced customizations up to now. I've verified this behavior on both FF 3.0.10 and latest shipping Safari 3, both on the Mac, and I get the same behavior:
Edit: Just verified that this is also missing in FF3 & IE7 on WinXP. Looks like it's completely gone on the server side?
First, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that you rolled this out. I realize it requires a higher subscription level, but even then it's relatively unheard of for a company to willing allow its customers to remove all branding.
Second, the implementation is excellent. Great job to everyone involved.
Now, for my bug report, which is: for some reason the "No footer" menu has disappeared as an option for me altogether. All I've been doing is playing around - never once hit publish - and I've never done any advanced customizations up to now. I've verified this behavior on both FF 3.0.10 and latest shipping Safari 3, both on the Mac, and I get the same behavior:
Edit: Just verified that this is also missing in FF3 & IE7 on WinXP. Looks like it's completely gone on the server side?
Let me know if you need more info.
Thanks again!
Paul
Hi, you don't list your site so I can't check.. but this is a pro-only feature (removing the branding).
Comments
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I'm absolutely appalled - yet not surprised - at the folks with extensive customizations who have jumped in to the easy customizer and actually saved changes from there without protecting themselves by saving a copy of their existing customizations. (Not smug's fault, the fault of the individuals who haven't bothered to protect themselves by backing up their customizations.)
It's quite obvious from looking at the preview screens against a previously customized site that changes will be made that alter the previous customizations, and that not all already-made customizations are not picked up by the new tool. Yes, I looked with my site, even assuming that the intent of this tool was that it be used by people who have not yet customized their sites. The things that jumped out at me immediately is that the smugmug header was back, the large footer was showing, my light background was ignored, my page title was gone.
This post is not a complaint, but a request. If someone goes into the easy customizer and that individual already has advanced customizations in place, can you at least pop up a reminder on the Easy Customizer to suggest that the individual take the time to back up their existing customizations before taking the next step? Yes, I know, you did say that in the first post of this thread, but there are individuals who stumbled on the Easy Customizer in smug (as opposed to in this thread) and did not see your recommendation. And unfortunately, people somehow manage to skim over details like that.
This looks to be a great starting point for people who want relatively simple changes. I suspect that it will cut down on some of the questions in the customization forum.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
And then, at their leisure, they can take time and learn about customizing in advanced detail, if they like!
Or come here and post and get awesome help to do more tricks
We'll definitely be adding more stuff to the Easy Customizer, as well, in the near future.
Thanks Denise, as always, for your amazing help here on the forum! I'll ask Brian about backup reminder and such. Changing Easy Customizer stuff doesn't overwrite the stuff in cobrand.mg - but folks can be leery of making changes. We'll make it obvious.
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Sparkyphotography.net
But we'll see
For now, use the Customizing forum, and our awesome tutorial on multiple headers:
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1932865
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Because I have existing themes, codes and site wide preferences it's impossible to see what any changes would look like on an existing gallery because my existing preferences affect the customization - can there not be the option of having a new blank gallery used in the preview?
Otherwise (and correct me if I'm wrong) I would have to remove all of my css code, save my site like that (goodness knows what any visitors to my site will see in the meantime) and effectively start over again with the Easy Customizer. If I don't like the changes I have to go back and paste all the css code back in again.
Or maybe there could be a dummy site somewhere we could practise on?
If I was starting out fresh today then this would be a godsend but as it is it seems totally impractical.
You're welcome to start another Trial- use a separate email address. Sorry we don't presently have another way.
This tool was designed for folks that don't have extensive customizing
I imagine someone like you, you'd benefit from using Firefox Web Dev, that's a far better tool for you
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Maybe I'm missing something, but since I was also paranoid before hitting the button on Easy Customizer I opened my site in the old Customization mode(/cobrand.mg) and did a Save As in the .webarchive format.
It saved all the text within the scrolling windows, etc. Pretty painless way to save the text...unless I really missed something.
Much easier than cut/paste to a text doc.
This is on a Mac, but it shouldn't matter. If not doable on Windows, what can I say. ;-)
Facebook
You are right - thank you. I guess I can cut and paste from that instead.
Like many people before me, I jumped right into the Easy Customizer with reckless abandon - only to find myself in more trouble then I had wished for on a Sunday afternoon.
Although Andy is clear in this post that you should backup your customization code before trying out the "Easy" tool, I actually made changes using that tool BEFORE I came to dgrin. How was I to know?
Yes, there needs to be a major disclaimer on the actually Easy tool webpage (or pop-up or whatever...).
Another important point, is NO - smugmug cannot assume only NEW smugmugers are going to use this tool. When I saw that the Easy tool includes a "favicon" upload at the click of a button, of course I am going to use it. And a quick tweak to my smugmug footer - why not!
How was I supposed to know that my fonts were going to get all screwy and headers would appear out of thin air.
No, the "undo" didn't work for me either - not fully anyway. I needed to do some referse engineering (by trial and error). In the end, no harm done, but the experience hasn't been pleasurable.
Don't get me wrong, I love smugmug and recommend them to any photogapher I meet.......but this one scared me. I'm confident the heros will right the ship and all will be right as rain soon.
Just had to pipe up about what I went through........so Beware --- easy come, easy go.....
www.photographyontheside.com [My blog about creating a part-time photography business]
Create A Gorgeous Photography Website with Smugmug in 90 Minutes [My free course if you need help setting up and customizing your SmugMug site]
If you nuke completely from EZC,then your cobrand.mg page should still be in tact. We don't change your css there.
How did your fonts change?
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Thanks a million, Aaron! This is exactly what I was looking for!! Smug footer is gone, but my custom footer remains.
There's an option to set the title, but that seems static only. Searching in google with "site: photos.reinout.vanrees.org" gives me only "Reinout van Rees' photos - powered by SmugMug" now. So I can change it to some other static text. Which doesn't help search-engine-wise.
What I want: the title of the photo in the URL. "${title} - Reinout's photos" or something to that effect. I've only seen some javascript tricks to do that, which obviously has no effect on google and friends.
Titles are really important for search engine visibility, which is something I want. It is one of the (only two!) things I liked more about flickr.com: their search engine visibility of my photos was/is great.
Reinout
You sir... ROCK!
Thanks for this... I hadn't thought of doing it this way but yes, it works great for the advanced customisation - but for some reason doesn't work for the themes ???
Cheers - N
http://www.nzsnaps.com (talkiet.smugmug.com)
I'd like to join in with this praise.
Thanks a lot.
Only the £ sign, selling my digital images through your service and I'll be a very man.
This really is a great developement.
Roy Palmer - Digital Images
http://www.digital-images.org.uk/
This is something that we're working on for a different part of the site, and we hope to have news on it soon. Stay up to date by subscribing to release notes! http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/
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Ok...this question is kinda vague, I know. I like the Easy Customizer...it's great. I'm trying though to get more a Andy's "feel" on his homepage of Moonriver. Any ideas on what and how to do it?
My url is www.meesoonsmugmug.com
Thanks in advance for the help
Jerry
Hi Jerry,
You've got a good start! All you need to do is add a banner/logo image and then place your navbar to the right of it. You can do this in the Easy Customizer, under Header --> Custom Banner. Since you have already created the navbar with the Easy Customizer, just change the position of it to the right of your logo after you add that.
Smug since 2006
SmugMug Help
PhotoscapeDesign
Two other things, about the preview window: Is there a way to see the preview in "visitor view"? Trying to figure out what it looks like in owner mode is a mess. I also was unable to preview my "galleries" page, although I could preview individual galleries. Is this something that could be fixed?
Sorry if this has been addressed before; I didn't read all 12 pages of the thread before posting...
http://blog.timkphotography.com
Luc
Maybe, but they're really, really advanced
We might use YUI-menus (like we use on other parts of the site)....
It's a down-the-road thing.
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Thanks bunches for the information Andy!
Luc
It's amazing how much junk has to be inserted into your CSS to make these drop-downs work and then to make the menu HTML itself work in a variety of browsers, it has all sorts of <table> and ifdef stuff in it that makes it entirely unreadable and undebuggable. I think Allen is the only one of the helpers that cares to actually try to help people fix busted hierarchical menus. I avoid them like the plague. Yui menus on the other hard are very simple to build and maintain and make cross platform (because Yahoo already did all the work).
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
First, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate that you rolled this out. I realize it requires a higher subscription level, but even then it's relatively unheard of for a company to willing allow its customers to remove all branding.
Second, the implementation is excellent. Great job to everyone involved.
Now, for my bug report, which is: for some reason the "No footer" menu has disappeared as an option for me altogether. All I've been doing is playing around - never once hit publish - and I've never done any advanced customizations up to now. I've verified this behavior on both FF 3.0.10 and latest shipping Safari 3, both on the Mac, and I get the same behavior:
Edit: Just verified that this is also missing in FF3 & IE7 on WinXP. Looks like it's completely gone on the server side?
Let me know if you need more info.
Thanks again!
Paul
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Hi
Having removed the Smugmug Info from the bottom of my page how do you login?
I have two links to smugmug on my desktop, one to what the customer sees and one to the login mode. Is this the only way to do it.
Still looks great though.
Roy Palmer - Digital Images
http://www.digital-images.org.uk/
@ www.smugmug.com
http://www.smugmug.com/help/acctlogin
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Thanks Andy, I knew it would be simple, cheers.
Roy Palmer - Digital Images
http://www.digital-images.org.uk/