Custom Domain Name & URL's

leftquark

I have a somewhat strange question......

I have my own domain name and I pointed pictures.<mydomain>.net to smugmug and setup smugmug to use my custom domain. This has been working for the 1.5 years I've been using smugmug.

If a user went to http://<myusername>.smugmug.com then all the links to pictures, albums, etc stayed at the *.smugmug.com URL. But if a user went to http://pictures.<mydomain>.net then all the URL's for albums, ipctures, etc stayed at the *.<mydomain>.net.

This worked great because my work blocks most websites and then only allows certain ones. Smugmug is allowable but my website is not. I could send people at work my pictures (and I could view my pictures) by using the *.smugmug.com URL.

However, now that you use the "Nice" URL's, it appears that if I go to http://<myaccount>.smugmug.com then all links redirect to my domain URL. This means at work I can't get to my pictures.

To get around this, I temporarily removed my custom domain from my Smugmug settings; I can now view my pictures.

My question is this: is there any way to make the functionality work as it was before: if the user went to http://<myaccount>.smugmug.com then all the links stayed on *.smugmug.com, and if they went to http://pictures.<mydomain>.net, then all the links were at mydomain?

Thanks! Apologies if I'm confusing.
-Leftquark

jfriend

Hopefully someone from Smugmug will chime in to help, but I think the auto-redirection to your custom domain was done to fix issues people were having with Google searches. When people have a custom domain, they want that to be all that is indexed and not xxx.smugmug.com. This redirection to the custom domain fixes that as Google then only indexes the custom domain and thus it is all that is returned in searches.

Just to let you know, the situation you have where your custom domain is blocked, but smugmug.com is not is the opposite of what usually happens. Usually, smugmug.com gets blocked because a company thinks it's a "recreation" or "social" site that they don't want their employees going to. Usually, a company has no idea about your own custom domain so it is not blocked. So, this change usually helps people who have company blocking. It is odd that your situation is reversed.

leftquark

jfriend wrote:

Hopefully someone from Smugmug will chime in to help, but I think the auto-redirection to your custom domain was done to fix issues people were having with Google searches. When people have a custom domain, they want that to be all that is indexed and not xxx.smugmug.com. This redirection to the custom domain fixes that as Google then only indexes the custom domain and thus it is all that is returned in searches.

Just to let you know, the situation you have where your custom domain is blocked, but smugmug.com is not is the opposite of what usually happens. Usually, smugmug.com gets blocked because a company thinks it's a "recreation" or "social" site that they don't want their employees going to. Usually, a company has no idea about your own custom domain so it is not blocked. So, this change usually helps people who have company blocking. It is odd that your situation is reversed.

Yea, I realize my situation is a bit unique :P It's funny because our large corporation decided to block EVERYTHING and that allow certain sites. Someone complained to IT about not being able to view their pictures so SmugMug got unblocked. I haven't yet figured out how I could make an arguement to IT to unblock my personal domain, so I haven't done it. Oh well. And again, yes, I realize this is a fairly unique situation

jfriend

leftquark wrote:

Yea, I realize my situation is a bit unique :P It's funny because our large corporation decided to block EVERYTHING and that allow certain sites. Someone complained to IT about not being able to view their pictures so SmugMug got unblocked. I haven't yet figured out how I could make an arguement to IT to unblock my personal domain, so I haven't done it. Oh well. And again, yes, I realize this is a fairly unique situation

Wow, that's really restrictive. I'm just curious - is there some legit business reason for this type of lockdown or just an over zealous IT dept and untrusting management?

Andy

leftquark wrote:

My question is this: is there any way to make the functionality work as it was before:

I'm sorry - there isn't. I'm sorry your work is so restrictive