Organizing Photos Summer Camp Program

shcproduction

Greetings,

I'm new to the SmugMug community and seeking much input in how best SpringHill Camps, the organization I represent can utilize SmugMug to host summer camp photos of guests and campers who are attending one of our summer camp programs.

We have 2 main locations with a day camp programs also.

Each location has many weeks of camp and as many as 4 camp centers (age group) per location. We would like to group pictures in galleries down to cabin group level which would be the next level below the camp center.

We would prefer to use Adobe Bridge over iPhoto however MacDaddy is not supported under Bridge from what I can see.

I would like to automatically sync adds and deleted to the gallery structure.

Please advise on how to organize how to organize 3000+ photos weekly as detailed and easily accessible to our guests!

Thank you
Christopher Law
SpringHill Camps

jfriend

You have a couple choices for how to set up the categorization. The goal should be to make it easiest for viewers to find the photos they are interested in without introducing more clicks than necessary.

If I understand correctly, you have these classifications:

week, location, camp center (age group), cabin

in that order. I'm guessing that there are somewhere between 6-12 weeks. You say two locations, up to 4 age groups and I don't know how many cabins, but I'll guess 5-15.

Smugmug has categories, sub-categories and galleries so we need to find the easiest way to organize this in those three delineations and not have too few or too many items at any given level.

In the diagrams below, white is category or sub-category and yellow is gallery

Option 1 (by week):

Week 6/1-6/7
....Location 1, Camp Center 1
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Location 1, Camp Center 2
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Location 1, Camp Center 3
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Location 2, Camp Center 1
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3

Week 6/8-6/14
....Location 1, Camp Center 1
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Location 1, Camp Center 2
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Location 1, Camp Center 3
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Location 2, Camp Center 1
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3

Option 2 (by location and week):

Week 6/1-6/7, Location 1
....Camp Center 1
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Camp Center 2
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Camp Center 3
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3

Week 6/1-6/7, Location 2
....Camp Center 1
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Camp Center 2
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Camp Center 3
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3

Week 6/8-6/14, Location 1
....Camp Center 1
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Camp Center 2
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3
....Camp Center 3
........Cabin 1
........Cabin 2
........Cabin 3

You could similarly try out scenarios with location at the top level or camp center or cabin, but none of those seem to make as much sense. Of these two I like the second one best. You scroll on the main category page until you find the right week and location (a max of 24 items, but in sorted order) and then once you have that, you just pick camp center and cabin and you're there.

I don't know about auto-sync tools on the Mac. If you're using Bridge to organize the images, you can just drag/drop any selection of images from Bridge to any of the uploaders.

shcproduction

Yes this is partly how it would work. However I would like to have Michigan, Indiana and Day Camp be the top category with camp center (age group) or retreat being the sub category.

Without a way to group by week and the number of cabins we have per location (50-70 range?) that means a lot of gallarys for a guest to have to sort through on SmugMug.

Any other ideas on how to get a sub-sub-category? Anything with share groups? our cabins are themed so some are teepees, others are planes, cabooses, etc. the each caboose would have a specific name.

We do retreats but these would be grouped as the retreat name under the category of location.

Thanks for your help! I do appreciate it!

Claw

jfriend

shcproduction wrote:

Yes this is partly how it would work. However I would like to have Michigan, Indiana and Day Camp be the top category with camp center (age group) or retreat being the sub category.

Without a way to group by week and the number of cabins we have per location (50-70 range?) that means a lot of gallarys for a guest to have to sort through on SmugMug.

Any other ideas on how to get a sub-sub-category? Anything with share groups? our cabins are themed so some are teepees, others are planes, cabooses, etc. the each caboose would have a specific name.

We do retreats but these would be grouped as the retreat name under the category of location.

Thanks for your help! I do appreciate it!

Claw

You guarantee the most levels and the most galleries to sort through to find something if you choose the small possible groups for your top levels. I was suggesting ways to avoid that problem. If you already knew you didn't want to do that, I'm not sure why you asked for ideas.

The only way to make more than two levels of categories is to use your own HTML pages.

shcproduction

jfriend wrote:

You guarantee the most levels and the most galleries to sort through to find something if you choose the small possible groups for your top levels. I was suggesting ways to avoid that problem. If you already knew you didn't want to do that, I'm not sure why you asked for ideas.

The only way to make more than two levels of categories is to use your own HTML pages.

Sorry I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding. How your posted your example is much like how I would like to see it. Just didn't know if there was a simple way to add more levels to this sorting or not. I feel like the answer is no.

Using HTML how would I setup SmugMug to interact with more "levels"? Would the code just use a gallery and select only some photos based on naming?

Chris

jfriend

shcproduction wrote:

Sorry I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding. How your posted your example is much like how I would like to see it. Just didn't know if there was a simple way to add more levels to this sorting or not. I feel like the answer is no.

Using HTML how would I setup SmugMug to interact with more "levels"? Would the code just use a gallery and select only some photos based on naming?

Chris

You can simulate adding more levels by going:

Smugmug category
....Smugmug sub-category
........Smugmug gallery that only shows HTML in the gallery description and that HTML is a list of more galleries that you build by hand
............Smugmug gallery

You have to build the HTML galleries yourself and the breadcrumb navigation won't show the extra levels, but it can otherwise be made to work.