Categories With One Gallery
winnjewett
Registered Users Posts: 329 Major grins
When categories on the home page have just one gallery on it, a user has to click twice to get to the gallery.
I brought this issue up 4 years ago. It is now time to build a fix to this limitation.
Here's a hypothetical that explains the situation:
Suppose I have 6 categories. Five of these categories have just one gallery, and one has lots of subcategories and lots of galleries. On the home page, I would like to display the following links:
Instead, smugmug displays the following links:
To get to the galleries, the user has to click twice, once on the category, and once on the gallery.
Potential Solutions, and why they don't work:
Featured Galleries
This doesn't solve the problem for four reasons:
Simply change "Display: Categories" to "Display: Galleries".
This doesn't work for one simple reason. All those galleries that used to be neatly organized are now spread out on the home page.
My Proposed Solution
I understand that mixing galleries and categories on the home page has the potential for confusion on the smugmug user's part. I believe my solution is simple to explain, and understand.
They would be sorted and organized as if they were categories on the home page. Visitors to the site won't be confused because they will click on a thumbnail labeled "portraits", and will be taken to a gallery with portraits - just what they wanted!
I brought this issue up 4 years ago. It is now time to build a fix to this limitation.
Here's a hypothetical that explains the situation:
Suppose I have 6 categories. Five of these categories have just one gallery, and one has lots of subcategories and lots of galleries. On the home page, I would like to display the following links:
- Gallery 1
- Gallery 2
- Category 3
- Gallery 4
- Gallery 5
- Gallery 6
Instead, smugmug displays the following links:
- Category 1
- Category 2
- Category 3
- Category 4
- Category 5
- Category 6
To get to the galleries, the user has to click twice, once on the category, and once on the gallery.
Potential Solutions, and why they don't work:
Featured Galleries
This doesn't solve the problem for four reasons:
- Only 4 galleries can be featured. I have 5.
- The categories still show up on the home page, which means that the galleries essentially show up twice.
- Grouping these galleries together doesn't make sense. The only thing they have in common is a technical limitation on smugmug's part to display them properly.
- The galleries are no longer displayed alphabetically.
Simply change "Display: Categories" to "Display: Galleries".
This doesn't work for one simple reason. All those galleries that used to be neatly organized are now spread out on the home page.
My Proposed Solution
I understand that mixing galleries and categories on the home page has the potential for confusion on the smugmug user's part. I believe my solution is simple to explain, and understand.
- There is a category titled "Home Page"
- Any galleries placed in this category show up on the home page.
They would be sorted and organized as if they were categories on the home page. Visitors to the site won't be confused because they will click on a thumbnail labeled "portraits", and will be taken to a gallery with portraits - just what they wanted!
0
Comments
Thanks for the awesome explanation and suggestion. Care to put it in our new feature system? http://smugmug.uservoice.com - thanks!
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I second this request. I think the reason it's not this way already is because it's too difficult to implement, not because it would be difficult to use. I recognise the officials' runaround from category hierachy depth request, try asking for that and you'll hear loads about click-fatigue and jadijada.
I realise that making choices comes with consequenses, if things like these are impossible or too costly to implement on Smugmug's platform, I get that. Just level with me and say so.
Malte
PS, more levels ('n-deep') is still alive, we'd love to add this feature and hope to.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Good to be back. I'll be sure to add it to the feedback site.
Thanks
http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/337325-categories-with-one-gallery