Frustrated with the categories system
fourseasons
Registered Users Posts: 34 Big grins
It is very hard to organize and there are too many categories. I didn't mind at first but as the collection increased it's become a major major headache to organize!. :cry
Won't smugmug dump this system and apply a more friendly system such as "folder tree" where one can create folders in folders?
Please smugmug, I know I am not the only one who's frustrated! :cry
Anyone else feels the same way that I do here??
-FS-
Won't smugmug dump this system and apply a more friendly system such as "folder tree" where one can create folders in folders?
Please smugmug, I know I am not the only one who's frustrated! :cry
Anyone else feels the same way that I do here??
-FS-
0
Comments
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
-FS-
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
I do wish however, that I could have thumbnails of my albums all on one page rather than all in a row x 2's. Is that possible? [like Pbase?] Like 6 across and 8 down.?
thanks
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
www.shanecanfieldphotography.com
They've been used on the web for sometime now, and they will be used for your file system in whatever, was to be Longhorn, but not now, OS we will get in the future.
A heirarchy is a pain in the ass to go through with thousands of photos looking for a pic I took of Aunt Ethel during Christmas 2003. When I can type in keywords like ethel, christmas, 2003 and get a few hits and find exactly what I want quickly.
Change is good.
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
I'm not sure what kind of races you do but say it's the Tacoma Sound to Narrows 12k (not the 5k) and you have all the bib numbers. You could send someone to their gallery by giving them a link to yourname.smugmug.com/keyword/tacoma-sound+to+narrows-12k-BIB#. I bet someone could even create a script that would let people enter their bib# and pull the race from a dropdown list. Keywords are much more flexible and powerful than heirarchy.
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
http://jamesjweg.smugmug.com/Racing/72351
It would take hours to enter all those kart numbers, but maybe I ought to do it?. An example of why I want another level of catagories is that "BSRRS" is the sanctioning body, next time I shot a BSRRS race I would like to place it in a catagory with just other BSRRS races. To do that now I would need to create a Catagory "BSRRS" and then sub-cat for the event, and then galleries for session etc. If I went that way my root level page would be clutered way beyond what it already is. By adding one more level of sub cat I could do this. I do not see any good way to do this with keywords. Anther problem with keywords is sorting. Why does this happen, these should both be the exact same pics, why are they not in the same order? How do you sort order with keywords?
http://pics.jamesjweg.com/keyword/srrs-workers-051405
http://pics.jamesjweg.com/gallery/669835
another problem, which of those links is easier to tell someone over the phone etc?
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
One thing I need to do next is get an email list of customers, and then after uploading, email those people with a keyword URL to their photos.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
Depends on how large the event is. For a club race with only 4 groups and maybe 24 drivers total, about 350 shots taken, and 250 posted. For a regional race that goes all day then over a thousand.
Looking over your galleries, and please take this as constructive criticism, but you were complaining about having to keyword so many photos per event. You need to thin the herd. You are posting some images that frankly should be tossed. This will make your life much easier and your work appear much better.
For example, about 12 of the 15 photos on this page http://jamesjweg.smugmug.com/gallery/660991/5/28465182 should just be tossed.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
Keyword usage is neither quick nor intuitive for users of websites for those shooting lots of events over time. Nor is setting it up as easy as suggested here. For one little example, I shoot for three teams at one particular high school. Each team has many games per season...20 at least. Each game has 50 to 100 photos published. Plus there are numerous seasons. On the websites of many pros who shoot events for a living, websites and photo collections quickly run into many, many thousands of photos.
Plus many photos that are not technically perfect are on line for parents to view and/or buy...parents are not photo editors for SI--so to suggest that photos need to be deleted because they don't meet a certain standard is obnoxious and lacks understanding of how many pros (and others, pro bono shooters for example) make a living shooting events.
So back to the single HS example, viewers need to be able to look up High School X, then Year Y, then drilling down, to Sport A, then to season (some sports have multiple seasons) B, then JV or Varsity, then the specific game so-and-so, then some tournaments go even deeper, and the keywords are constantly repeated. This is typical and I shoot many such teams and events. So keyword searches are not an option...what is suggested here is not realistic. It may be for people that don't shoot much or have no need to store work over time. It is simply not possible to email every one who looks at sight, in advance, a list of keywords or expect customers to figure it out...that is a sure way to lose lots of clients fast--people don't want to have to labor on a website to find what they want...easy clicks and they will enjoy the experience. Customers look at the list of keywords on the bottom of a page and wonder what kind of mess is that...and with lots over events, it would quickly be many words in a long string, and they would not bother with the site...too much work to navigate.
I think SmugMug should have both. Then people like those here that think keywords are better can use those...people with other expanded needs can have the normal tree setup. But to suggest that keywords are easier or faster seems to ignore pro shooters and those that shoot many events all the time...and SmugMug is selling its services to pros too. And those that shoot a lot and wants to have a user friendly site for many viewers (including those not on distribution lists for emails on keywords) uses hierarchies. No one goes to Amazon and only searches on keywords...you can search on text, but the entire site is set up as a hierarchy. Any website of consequence (newspapers, corps sites, stores, pro photograhpers who custom set up a website, stock photographers) is set up as a hierarchy…with the ability for people to also search on text, and this text seaching is not limited to key words that folks going to the site have to know in advance, but has its own logic and does not rely on exact keywords or a specific syntax.
I like SmugMug a lot, it has lots of great features…but this area could be more robust.
I go to View>Page Source on my Homepage, in whatever browser I'm using, scroll down to all the html code for the various key words in the Keywords Section of my Homepage, pick important keywords I want to use as sub-categories, then copy the html entry (all of it) for the particular keyword and paste it as a link in my header using co-branding. I have about 6 of these under the Title of my Smugmug site's Homepage. They can't see thumbnails of these sub-categories, but they can quickly click on theme-titles of various photo-groupings of my choice and see those photos. And the thubnails of the galleries themselves are still available further down the page. It's not a perfect alternative but is another way of going if you're frustrated with the usual way of configuring groups of photos. Take a look if you like.
gerald finnegan
www.finnegan.smugmug.com
I tell my racers to start at my keyword page and select their number. Then "combine with" an event date, or track, then with a car/bike type. Etc. This is fundamentally the same as your hierarchy. They are drilling down a system, starting at a large number of images and thinning the herd with each mouse click.
In the keyword example, they would click on the keyword for High School X, then combine with the year Y, then combine with Sport A, then combine with Varisity or Reserves, then combine with a game date, then combine with a specific game.
The only difference between your hierarchy and the keyword system is that you enforce a particular order in which the tree is traversed, whereas with keywords the tree can be traversed in any order. With hard categories you force the user to start with high school name, then choose a year, then choose a sport, etc. With keywords it can be done in any order.
And if you claim that forcing the order of the search is of benefit to 90% of the users out there, to keep them from being confused or confronted with too many choices, I would actually agree with you.
My only complaint about this keyword system is that the "combine with" list is not all-inclusive, and that is a big problem. Keywords as it exists today would not work for you because of this, and it barely works for me. If it matters any, with a keyword system you can do some things that you cannot do with a static hierarchy of albums. For example, a racer can pull up all his images from every race in one search. Or, he can find all his photos that his buddy also happens to be in.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
Keywords offer the customer unlimited flexibility and precise matches that a heirarchial system simply cannot match. The downside is that you have to be diligent about entering keywords either in photoshop (or whatever) or in SM after you upload them. Also SM limits the amount of additive keywords (for a lack of a better term) on the keyword results page (something that I think they should change ASAP) so you may have to implement a keyword search on your own (which isn't difficult to do).
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
How? How? How? Thanks.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
But in the end, it is the SmugMug executives that I want to see these comments. To SmugMug, I would ask that you simply build on the Catigories and Sub-Catigories and allow for further levels of depth. Obviously many others agree with the need to have levels for organizing. For keywords fans, they have what they desire so no need to deal with that end of things. However, this forum is not going all that useful when all the dialogue is cheerleading. In my business, we welcome the hard issues that clients bring to us, they are the real challenge...and listening to them determines our long-term success.
Running a small company myself, I am truly impressed with the responsive nature of SumgMug and look forward to the continuing evolution of this product. Best, Shane
<form name="keywordBox" class="search2" style="right-margin:0px" method="get" action="/keyword/jump.mg"> <input type="text" name="Keyword" size="18" class="SchBox" value=" search my keywords" onClick="if(document.keywordBox.Keyword.value == ' search my keywords') { document.keywordBox.Keyword.value = ' ' }" /> <input type="image" src="http://img131.echo.cx/img131/5954/magglass8qx.png" title="Search my keywords" align="absmiddle" width="19" height="21" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" onclick="if(document.keywordBox.Keyword.value == ' search my keywords') { document.keywordBox.Keyword.value = ' ' }" /> </form>Okay, about this search... It uses a class (search2) you can just delete that if you don't want to use it (on the other hand I'll show you what I used if you want, just let me know). Also I (with a little help from a view source on someone else's page) gave the search box and search button kind of fancy, you may or may not want to change that too. I just want you to know what to expect from this code. You may want to wrap all of this in a table, or if you're extra fancy a layer div may be a better option (it'll be the more flexible-albeit more difficult to implement-option anyhow).
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
As for my part, I am no more a cheerleader for SM than I am for del.icio.us (which uses the exact same flat keyword system), dozens of other websites, or for that matter relational databases. This is nothing all that new or exciting. What is exciting is how much time and energy it saves.
But then again, they're your customers and if you want them to waste their time just to have to wade through a bunch of pictures that they don't want, well best of luck to you.
All you need is to do a search to see what the SM guys think. They made their opinions abundantly clear in this thread: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=13810. I suggest you read the whole thing.
And may I suggest you learn to embrace new ideas. New ways of doing things aren't always bad or scary.
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
With all due respect, it is a amazingly thick that you read a thread, from an a entirely different set of customers, complaining about the exact same problem. and what you see that they are all wrong. But why you can't see the obvious is better left for a psychologist...as for me, I embrace intelligent change that makes it easier for clients, not forcing my odd version of reality on them and assuming that they are too stupid to understand my peculiar version of what is best for them. But certainly this thread is at an end…I’d say use your keywords and be happy.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
James.
http://www.jamesjweg.com
Well I think I have my first candidate for an ignore here...
Jesus, what a moron.
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/