Communities?

flyingpylonflyingpylon Registered Users Posts: 260 Major grins
edited May 20, 2004 in SmugMug Support
Is there any information available regarding community support at smugmug? I'm intrigued by this feature but can't find any information other than a brief mention at the bottom of the Help...Galleries...Customize page.

What are they?

How are they different from regular smugmug accounts?

How do you start one?

Thanks.

Comments

  • BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
    edited May 20, 2004
    flyingpylon wrote:
    Is there any information available regarding community support at smugmug? I'm intrigued by this feature but can't find any information other than a brief mention at the bottom of the Help...Galleries...Customize page.

    What are they?

    How are they different from regular smugmug accounts?

    How do you start one?

    Thanks.
    Hi flyingpylon,

    They were my brainchild in the early days of smugmug and we have a few active communities who use them but for some reason they didn't really catch on. One example is www.advrider.com — note what you see when you click photo galleries in the header.

    Basically, for any gallery you create as a subscriber, you can add the branding for the community you took them for and show up on their community page. ADVrider doesn't have featured galleries at the moment, but they usually do and will soon again.

    I have been thinking of setting this up for dgrin. It would be great for a hall of fame, for the contests, etc.

    Let me know if you have more questions.

    Thanks,
    Baldy
    My Smug Mug
  • flyingpylonflyingpylon Registered Users Posts: 260 Major grins
    edited May 20, 2004
    I can certainly see the value in the idea. But was there ever any additional information provided to help people understand what they are, how they can be used, and how to set one up? If not, maybe that's why they never caught on.

    I'm interested in this because I'm developing a web site where I'd like to have members share their photos in conjunction with other activities such as forums, etc. While I'm going to start off by having members just upload photos to my site (I expect it will be quite small for a while) I can see benefits to having members join smugmug as well and being able to display their images on my site from there. A tangent off of that idea would be to allow print purchases where my site would get a small commission if the order originated from there.

    This all ties in with another idea that I had for a web services interface to smugmug. I sent that idea to Ben a day or two ago. Once you expose the data via something like web services the possibilities are almost endless. Wouldn't it be cool if a member could mark a gallery as being accessible from my site, then my site queries your servers for all such galleries, and then they automatically get displayed on my site? I could completely customize the look and feel of my site, as well as leverage my existing membership and comments infrastructure, while still encouraging members to join smugmug, order prints, etc.

    You guys seem pretty technically adept. I think you should take a long look at all of the functionality and flexibility web services could provide.
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