"Nice Names" are a PITA!

MT Stringer

How do I turn off the "nice names" feature that y'all decided I had to have?
It is the biggest PITA I have ever seen. I've been struggling to create galleries for my pics and I get stuck at every turn.

So, wizards and geniuses, tell me how to create galleries with these names

Tarkington HS v Cold Spring - Oakhurst
Tarkington HS v Huffman - Hargrave HS
Lutheran High North v Dallas Lutheran

These are all too many characters. I'm so frustrated, I don't know what to do.

In my opinion this is a bunch of bunk.

Now that I am off my soapbox, I still have hundreds of pics to upload but no gallery title.

Help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mike

The Mack

Tarkington HS v Cold Spring - Oakhurst
Tarkington HS v Huffman - Hargrave HS
Lutheran High North v Dallas Lutheran

Tark vs Cold/Oak
Tark vs Huff/Hargrave
Lutheran vs Dal Luth

colourbox

You actually don't have to use NiceNames, if you don't want to. NiceNames are nice, but they're so LONG. I find that I'm still emailing people the short, old-style gallery path which still works and I hope they continue to support it.

In other words you can ignore the NiceName and keep using the URL:
username.smugmug.com/gallery/XXXXX_xxxx

A lot of times I am doing this because these are unlisted galleries with hidden breadcrumbs, so I don't want people browsing the path that would be revealed with a NiceName.

Enitsugua

MT Stringer wrote:

How do I turn off the "nice names" feature that y'all decided I had to have?
It is the biggest PITA I have ever seen. I've been struggling to create galleries for my pics and I get stuck at every turn.

So, wizards and geniuses, tell me how to create galleries with these names

Tarkington HS v Cold Spring - Oakhurst
Tarkington HS v Huffman - Hargrave HS
Lutheran High North v Dallas Lutheran

These are all too many characters. I'm so frustrated, I don't know what to do.

In my opinion this is a bunch of bunk.

Now that I am off my soapbox, I still have hundreds of pics to upload but no gallery title.

Help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mike

You mean they are too many characters for NiceNames? Of course they are. Who wants to type all of that in a URL? Create the gallery with those long names. While creating it, specify a shorter NiceName (the place to do it is right there on the next line down from the Gallery name when you create a new gallery). For those you listed, I'd do something like:

THSvsCSO
or THS-CSO
THSvsHH
or THS-HH
LHNvsDL
or LHN-DL

You get the idea. Make the Nice Name just that, a nice name (short and easy to remember) for the URL to the gallery.

brjphoto

For the record... I really like NiceNames.

When I am checking my stats in Statcounter, it is much easier to see where people went, and what galleries on the site they visited. With NiceNames it easier to follow their traffic and see what pages they are visiting.

So count me as one who really likes the update.

jfriend

brjphoto wrote:

For the record... I really like NiceNames.

When I am checking my stats in Statcounter, it is much easier to see where people went, and what galleries on the site they visited. With NiceNames it easier to follow their traffic and see what pages they are visiting.

So count me as one who really likes the update.

Nicenames would be great if they would fix the auto-generation so it always works and then it would ONLY be a positive for everyone. There are a bunch of circumstances where it won't just let you type your gallery name and hit OK because the auto-generated nicename isn't a legal nicename. Thus, you get errors and get mad at the nicenames feature. I hope Smugmug fixes this and then they could be a plus for everyone.

P.S. I love seeing the nicename in my Statcounter reports too.

MT Stringer

jfriend wrote:

Nicenames would be great if they would fix the auto-generation so it always works and then it would ONLY be a positive for everyone. There are a bunch of circumstances where it won't just let you type your gallery name and hit OK because the auto-generated nicename isn't a legal nicename. Thus, you get errors and get mad at the nicenames feature. I hope Smugmug fixes this and then they could be a plus for everyone.

P.S. I love seeing the nicename in my Statcounter reports too.

Thanks for your replies. Guess I'll just have to live with it.

John, that is my exact complaint. It has created more work for me instead of less.

Mike

jfriend

MT Stringer wrote:

Thanks for your replies. Guess I'll just have to live with it.

John, that is my exact complaint. It has created more work for me instead of less.

Mike

Yeah, I hear you. I just wanted to point out that the issue isn't really that nicenames are causing problems. It's a useful and nice feature. They just need to fix the auto-generation so it gets out of your way and always works when you don't want to customize it. Then, we won't have to throw the baby out with the bath water or however that saying goes.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

Yeah, I hear you. I just wanted to point out that the issue isn't really that nicenames are causing problems. It's a useful and nice feature. They just need to fix the auto-generation so it gets out of your way and always works when you don't want to customize it. Then, we won't have to throw the baby out with the bath water or however that saying goes.

Can you make it fail 100% of the time? I can't, which is the maddening thing

jfriend

Andy wrote:

Can you make it fail 100% of the time? I can't, which is the maddening thing

I haven't run tests myself on all of these, but the reports in the last few days combined with my own experiences are:

1. When there's a parent category name that has formerly allowed, but now disallowed characters, in it like &, then it gives you a constant error. Pre-existing category and subcategory names need to be grandfathered in. They exist and they work so with proper programming one does not have to make new galleries in them generate errors.
2. When you type a particularly long gallery name (it auto generates a nicename 39 chars long, then gives you an error msg that 30 is the max length). Seems like a simple bug to fix. Easy to reproduce this.
3. When you paste the gallery name into the field instead of typing it in (some reports are that it doesn't auto create a nicename when you paste into the gallery title field - I can't reproduce this one. Perhaps it's a browser specific problem.
4. If you have an & or < in the gallery name, the nicename stops at the & or < entirely and doesn't generate something unique.
5. If your different gallery names in the same cat/subcat only differ after the first 30 chars, then it doesn't generate something unique, forcing you to edit each nicename yourself.

All of these can potentially create errors for users in the new nicename era where they didn't have errors to deal with before.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

I haven't run tests myself on all of these, but the reports in the last few days combined with my own experiences are:

1. When there's a parent category name that has formerly allowed, but now disallowed characters, in it like &, then it gives you a constant error. Pre-existing category and subcategory names need to be grandfathered in. They exist and they work so with proper programming one does not have to make new galleries in them generate errors.
2. When you type a particularly long gallery name (it auto generates a nicename 39 chars long, then gives you an error msg that 30 is the max length). Seems like a simple bug to fix. Easy to reproduce this.
3. When you paste the gallery name into the field instead of typing it in (some reports are that it doesn't auto create a nicename when you paste into the gallery title field - I can't reproduce this one. Perhaps it's a browser specific problem.
4. If you have an & or < in the gallery name, the nicename stops at the & or < entirely and doesn't generate something unique.
5. If your different gallery names in the same cat/subcat only differ after the first 30 chars, then it doesn't generate something unique, forcing you to edit each nicename yourself.

All of these can potentially create errors for users in the new nicename era where they didn't have errors to deal with before.

Thanks, that's really helpful.