Why not be able to have galleries in multiple communities?

becomethechange

Currently you can only have a gallery associated with one community, what the heck? This makes no sense. Go here and sign up really quick, it takes 2 seconds, and cast your vote.

http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/382909-allow-gallery-to-be-linked-with-multiple-communities?ref=title

Andy

We're just not set up for this, I'm very sorry. It'll be a while if and when this is able to be done

becomethechange

Hmm, that's kind of aggravating, but thank you for your reply. I recently switched to smugmug from Flickr. I'm not trying to compare and contrast because there are a lot of things I like about smugmug better, but i feel some of their features are much more common sense, such as this one. Either way, I love smugmug and I will wait.

Andy wrote:

We're just not set up for this, I'm very sorry. It'll be a while if and when this is able to be done

MasterCow

I think this is a good limitation, as it prevents someone from using multiple communities in a spammy way to gain popularity or increase photo sales.

WinsomeWorks

becomethechange wrote:

Hmm, that's kind of aggravating, but thank you for your reply. I recently switched to smugmug from Flickr. I'm not trying to compare and contrast because there are a lot of things I like about smugmug better, but i feel some of their features are much more common sense, such as this one. Either way, I love smugmug and I will wait.

I think PhotoCommunities is just not as huge a part of this site as some places-- our main energies are elsewhere here, is the way I see it... and actually I'm glad that's the way it is. I am on one other site where groups is basically the main activity. I have sold absolutely nothing there, and there is almost no customizing. So it's just a whole different direction. This site is better in thousands of ways. The other thing is, on SmugMug, PhotoCommunities often set the theme for your gallery, so if the gallery could be in two communities, someone's theme would need to take precedence... not sure how we'd duke that out!

sskinner

I was curious about this too...

I'm a flickr user on my 14 day trial, and am looking at how to get the most out of smugmug. I love the galleries, the look and feel, and how easy it is to manage and share my photos, and printing options. I'll probably covert 100% to smugmug just for those reasons alone, but the groups on flickr are one thing I have really enjoyed - promoting and sharing particular photos (not whole galleries) to many groups. Getting comments and feedback from admirers and fellow photographers has been valuable in helping me become a better photographer.

For instance, I have a really cool image of an F-18 with a vapor cone:
http://svsimagery.smugmug.com/Airplanes/aviation/292083909428e367db17o/733114233_zQqov-L.jpg
On flickr I posted this to a group for air shows, but there were also groups specific to military aviation and also even just for f-18's. I posted this photo in those places and got a ton of responses and it even helped generate a significant amount of sales for this photo on istockphoto.com. What's the best way to get your best photos noticed on smugmug?

It never occurred to me that I could actually sell prints of my pictures to people I don't know on smugmug but it sounds like a lot of you do this so I am considering the pro level account to try this out. I also take stock photography and post to istock, dreamstime and a few others which I make some money from.

I'd love to hear from long time smugmug users on how best to make use of smugmug, beyond the simple sharing abilities with family and friends. Do you really sell prints and make any money from that? If you can only share an entire gallery with a single community, how do you choose the best place for it - or do you try one for awhile and then switch it to another?

Lots of questions from a newbie smugmug user, I know. Appreciate your feedback though.

loonsailor

Workaround
I agree, it's a nuisance. I just started using communities, and found several of the limitations surprising and disappointing. I think what I'm going to do is to create custom, selected galleries for specific communities. Hopefully those will send users to all my other galleries. So, in addition to my 15 or so Galapagos galleries, I'll make one more community-specific gallery (or maybe more than one for different communities) and only link that one to the community, with a note telling about lots of other galleries in the category. That way, most of my "core" galleries can also retain my customizations, which gets around another annoying limitation.

BTW, is there any way of tracking whether viewers are coming to my galleries via a community? That would be really nice!