Ack, I'm sorry... I was looking in the wrong spot. All three links you posted are distinct requests in my mind, but you're absolutely right in that they overlap with parts of the list you posted.
As the author of the request in the second link, I believe it aligns with John's requests perfectly. I wrote it a long time ago and the problem I illustrate I don't even think is exactly technically accurate anymore, even thought the overall problem still exists. No one voted for it, though, so I figured it had no traction with the user base or SmugMug. I'm happy to see the visibility the issue is now getting with John bringing it up. And, I really agree with John's point that the right solution is probably more about making the SmugMug gallery pages more compatible with facebook's own link tool than trying to make SmugMug's "Be Social" feature more capable.
As the author of the request in the second link, I believe it aligns with John's requests perfectly. I wrote it a long time ago and the problem I illustrate I don't even think is exactly technically accurate anymore, even thought the overall problem still exists. No one voted for it, though, so I figured it had no traction with the user base or SmugMug. I'm happy to see the visibility the issue is now getting with John bringing it up. And, I really agree with John's point that the right solution is probably more about making the SmugMug gallery pages more compatible with facebook's own link tool than trying to make SmugMug's "Be Social" feature more capable.
Good point Ben. After thinking about this some more, I will not be satisified with the FB integration until Smugmug's pages are compatible with using FB's own interface for posting where FB can see appropriate thumbnails and page descriptions in the Smugmug pages. The Be Social interface needs to be substantially improved for those who use it, but I'd rather use FB directly and control what's going on and to do that all of Smugmug's pages need to be made compatbile with FB scanning the page and finding thumbnails and page titles and page descriptions. This will also let me use my own link shortener/tracker.
My request was here. Yes, all these requests have different wording, but they all arrive to the same basic conclusion. And that's that Smugmug's social integration is lacking big time.
For people who arent Pros, this is kind of a big deal. Non-Pro people who use Smugmug arent as interested in their SM sites being a "final destination" for visitors & having them walled in. You have to be better able to share things so people can come & go, jumping between your site & social sites. And making it easy for us to pull this off on multiple platforms (both desktop & mobile). If those arent seamless, its not going to work.
Now, when I go through this, I'm talking about improving the entire experience for both ends (users & visitors). And Im not going to make another UserVoice request either. You can take this info here or leave it.
The first thing I would do is improve your mobile site. Its basically been unchanged since it launched way back in the original iPhone days. Do away with the special mobile-address, as that only complicates things. If someone is using an iPhone or Android phone (mobile webkit browser), just show them the mobile-optimized version of the site & be done with it. Posterous does this & its great. All the links are the same, the web address is the same, everything. And they put a link on the bottom that will switch the view to the full-site if need be (and back again). This will make most things people care about accessible on desktop & on mobile as well.
Also, the mobile site needs cleaned up. No one needs to see my "real" Smugmug address name on the top, esp if they got there by using my custom URL. It looks odd & no doubt could cause visitors to question if this is even the page they meant to access. Also, mimic the homepage layout better so that it looks more like the desktop-version page. As it is now, they're totally different. Meaning if I have all my categories on my homepage, then show that on the mobile site too.
This ties into the second thing, which is to make social interactivity better. And thats desktop AND mobile. Like I said guys, people mostly do this stuff on the go, so if your mobility integration is broken, no one is gonna use it because its a total PITA.
"Be Social" needs a revamp. Its way too hard to share things at this point & you can only do it using the desktop version of your site. I do like a lot of the suggestions here, but the main thing you have to get down first & foremost is the ease of use & the consistency across the board. If those are broken, then the whole thing is gonna go to hell.
I'd get rid of that ridiculously huge "SHARE" bar & just use tiny icons like most sites do. The user can turn on which ones they want & skip the rest. I'd also use an automatic URL shortener. Or better yet, get your own internal one for more control & better brand recognition (like Flickr & Posterous have).
I've already went through my beef with the iPhone/iPad apps, but I'll do it again. They need to be consistent with each other & you need the same app across the board. Why do we need 2 totally different ones?? Mix the best of both apps into one, make it a universal App & call it a day. Twitter & Facebook integration in these should be a top priority. Not because I said so, but because thats just whats expected these days from Apps like this. You're a photo/video host for Christ sake. Make it easy to upload & share from the same App instead of having users jump through God-awful hoops of fire to get this seemingly simple task done.
Thats really about all I have right now on these subjects. Let me know if I need to be more specific about anything. But these to me are some of the biggest issues with the site currently.
combine "Be Social" improvements with mobile device improvements & FB fan-page access
I have to agree with peestandingup's comprehensive thoughts below-- his suggestions and jfriend's and also another UserVoice request: http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/332140-allow-be-social-capability-with-facebook-fan-pag could neatly be part of one major re-do rather than trying to have everyone vote on tiny portions of a couple of big related issues. I feel that those 3 requests should be combined cuz they're tied together so closely. I don't know all the ins & outs of mobile device problems because I don't own any beyond a simple phone, but I've seen the displays on my siblings' various devices & understand the basics of p's suggestions. (Of course there's the apple/flash-no-talkee problem that I s'pose we can't do anything about... I hate it that my whole homepage is useless on Apple devices because they won't display the flash slideshows. But that's a whole other issue) Anyway, if we could combine these requests (or 2 of them at least), they might get some steam behind them.
The request I linked above asks for a way to "Be Social" on our Facebook Pages (sometimes known as fan pages, artist pages, etc.) instead of only on our regular personal page. This should really be part of all the other "Be Social" improvements.... it's kind of a no-brainer since so many of us have a separate page for our photo business, and SmugMug appeals to many pros or serious photographers. "Be Social" just assumes that we have one personal page only & no biz page, so the main place we may wish to share our photos (i.e. on our photo biz page!!) is not able to be accessed through "Be Social"... very strange. Sadly, that's the very place I'd most like to just bring people to SmugMug from-- so I can easily show my already-watermarked photos here, rather than watermarking all my art photos in a Facebook gallery.... aaargh! And it would be some of the best free advertising for SmugMug-- we've already missed out on it for yrs! Again, there's nothing in any of these 3 different persons' UserVoice requests that people are gonna dislike.. I'm sure lots of folks would want them prioritized if they understood that the entire social package would get major attention.
I'm finding all this frustrating right now because I'm working on whole piles of extended family-vacation & wedding galleries that could be so neatly shared on both my pages, bringing tons of traffic to Smug & helping people find/see/buy stuff at home and on their mobile devices. Currently too many of them just end up confused, & it's awful to hear that when this is such a great site. I just got another friend to get an account, but he's extremely computer-savvy & I'd love if some of my 1000s of non-savvy family would be grabbed by what see they on Facebook & their mobile devices.
I think we're sort of entering a new era in how we share things. How our personal sites on the web & how our devices all play a role in that. Mobility & convergence of sites that play well together are clearly the future of how we reach out to people. And its not the distant future either. Having a walled-in site isn't really where things are going IMO. It makes it too difficult to bring people together.
Apple had their earnings call yesterday & one of the most surprising stats was that iPads almost outsold their entire Mac line (and it was the Mac's best quarter ever). This sorta leads me to believe that eventually, iOS (or Mobile Mac OS) will eventually overtake the "classic" Desktop version of Mac OS. Esp when it matures more & you get more of the Pro apps onto the platform. I often wonder if they'll even be a Mac OS 11. Buy that time, I have my doubts there will be.
Anyways, I had a feeling it would come to this, which is why I'm so adamant about you guys getting your mobility & social networking stuff straightened out. I feel that skimping on it is going to cost you a lot of your casual & non-Pro users because there are so many media sites that are doing it so much better right now.
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
edited July 22, 2010
Yes, our iPhone interface needs a re-work. Seems like it should just default to the mobile site version instead of the blue bar that switches you to it, no? We used to do that, but so many pros freaked that it lost their branding, we reverted.
But maybe we can allow the pro to upload their logo to replace ours in the mobile interface and then we can get away with defaulting to it, which is what I think consumers want.
I didn't read any requests for adding the facebook like button to galleries in this thread. Is that because you've added it in your customization like
Yes, our iPhone interface needs a re-work....
...I didn't read any requests for adding the facebook like button to galleries in this thread. Is that because you've added it in your customization like
or is there lack of interest? This is something we get asked for often and we're working on how best to do it.
Baldy, it may just be because the Facebook "like" button for off-of-Facebook stuff is pretty new. I've been on Facebook for a couple yrs. now, but this new ability w/ the "like" button is something I forget about... I mean I haven't gotten used to the fact that it can be used for stuff elsewhere besides Facebook. I personally think it would be a great thing to add, and didn't even know there was a customization for it. It would be simpler of course if a customization wasn't needed.
Baldy, it may just be because the Facebook "like" button for off-of-Facebook stuff is pretty new. I've been on Facebook for a couple yrs. now, but this new ability w/ the "like" button is something I forget about... I mean I haven't gotten used to the fact that it can be used for stuff elsewhere besides Facebook. I personally think it would be a great thing to add, and didn't even know there was a customization for it. It would be simpler of course if a customization wasn't needed.
I think this whole notion of "Liking" things outside of FB is absolutely brilliant by FB and is the next step in FB connecting to lots of stuff outside of FB. If you spend any time on CNN.com at all, they have thoroughly embraced the FB like functionality. You can say that you Like many different things on CNN.com and, even more interesting, you can see what stories other of your FB friends like on CNN.com. And, of course, in FB, you can see what CNN.com stories your friends liked. This is a big step for FB to start hooking into lots of content that is outside of FB and letting you, as a FB user, see what external stuff your friends like. I think the possibilities are actually quite staggering for how interesting this could all be.
As for how to integrate this best into Smugmug, I haven't given that a lot of thought yet (I'm hoping that the Smug folks will do that). Done right, you get several valuable things from it:
1) You get to see what Smugmug things your FB friends like.
2) You get to share with your FB friends what Smugmug things you like with nothing more than a single click.
3) Smugmug could get some overall "Like" data from it by also capturing "Like" impressions. This might be merged with the thumbs up/thumbs down data that they use now.
And, probably lots more interesting things than I'm even thinking now...
Another "Be Social" enhancement-- share a category or sub-category page ?
I agree that was a brilliant move by FB. I'm not completely sure about the privacy aspects-- haven't had enough time to think it through. There are already aspects of the directed advertising that are rather annoying, & this new "like" thing seems to have made that worse. But smart on their part-- probably yes! I think they did limit some stuff they were about to initiate, and it sounded to me like a good thing they did limit it... can't recall details.
But anyway, I'd thought earlier about another enhancement that would help the "Be Social" thing with SmugMug. I don't know whether anyone else has mentioned this... sorry for the dup. if so. It would be great if we could link a category page or sub-category page through "Be Social" rather than just a gallery. For instance, I just made a whole sub-category "California" after my travels. When I get a few more public galleries in it, I'd love to be able to share the whole sub-category on FB through the "Be Social" method, esp. when "Be Social" is improved. Lots of my relatives are still pretty clueless about how to navigate around on my site, so many of them get stuck in one gallery & don't see that there are others they can easily access.
Andy, I caption them in the title field if I've processed them for stock. 99% of the time, in the stock industry, the title field is what's used for the caption, which only makes sense. The description field is just what it says it is... a description! That's typically a longer explanation, not a simple caption/title. I can give you a ton of examples. But we've been through this before. The point is not that SmugMug has to do it like the stock industry or anyone else, but it sure would be fantastic to have a choice. It doesn't make sense to me that the longer field, in which you can get very descriptive, would be the one to end up as my caption, & then my caption (title) is unable to show up here. Just wish I had the choice, because only those that I've processed for stock already have a caption anyway, yet I still have to re-write it once it appears here on Smug.
Yes, our iPhone interface needs a re-work. Seems like it should just default to the mobile site version instead of the blue bar that switches you to it, no? We used to do that, but so many pros freaked that it lost their branding, we reverted.
But maybe we can allow the pro to upload their logo to replace ours in the mobile interface and then we can get away with defaulting to it, which is what I think consumers want.
I'd revert back honestly. I mean, I understand where the Pros are coming from, but they also have to understand that the "full" version of their sites just dont function/look good on small mobile devices. So what's more important to them, keeping their branding or having their site actually functional on mobile devices? I'd imagine most would choose the latter. That blue bar is so obtrusive anyway & it can be hard to close on tiny screens. Just defaulting to the mobile friendly version automatically & putting a simple link to the full version of the their sites at the bottom would suffice.
But yes, I do think there are small little tweaks you could do to alleviate some of those concerns. For instance, leaving their custom URL completely intact would be one (without adding anything extra to the address. There's no reason for that). And also instead of showing their visitors their "original" Smugmug site name at the top, just show their custom one. Like I said, that could get confusing if someone visits their site by way of custom URL & sees a totally different name at the top.
I agree that was a brilliant move by FB. I'm not completely sure about the privacy aspects-- haven't had enough time to think it through. There are already aspects of the directed advertising that are rather annoying, & this new "like" thing seems to have made that worse. But smart on their part-- probably yes! I think they did limit some stuff they were about to initiate, and it sounded to me like a good thing they did limit it... can't recall details.
But anyway, I'd thought earlier about another enhancement that would help the "Be Social" thing with SmugMug. I don't know whether anyone else has mentioned this... sorry for the dup. if so. It would be great if we could link a category page or sub-category page through "Be Social" rather than just a gallery. For instance, I just made a whole sub-category "California" after my travels. When I get a few more public galleries in it, I'd love to be able to share the whole sub-category on FB through the "Be Social" method, esp. when "Be Social" is improved. Lots of my relatives are still pretty clueless about how to navigate around on my site, so many of them get stuck in one gallery & don't see that there are others they can easily access.
So for now, you can and probably do, just copy the Category url into your facebook post, right?
So for now, you can and probably do, just copy the Category url into your facebook post, right?
Yep, Andy, you can do that. It's just that it only gives you one thumbnail (would be great to have at least 3-6 or so to give a person a better idea of what the category contains) and then it puts the description that's in your bio-box on there. That description may or may not have a thing to do with the category you wanna share. I'm going to think about what might be a better thing to put in there... perhaps nothing... or perhaps there could be place to write a note to go with it, which is (I assume) what would happen if we could ever do this through "Be Social".... cuz that's what we can do now when we post a gallery. I know a lot of people are wanting a place to write a category description just like we have gallery descriptions. If that is implemented someday, I imagine that description would often work great for the Facebook "Be Social" post of a category or sub-category page.
Yep, Andy, you can do that. It's just that it only gives you one thumbnail (would be great to have at least 3-6 or so to give a person a better idea of what the category contains) and then it puts the description that's in your bio-box on there. That description may or may not have a thing to do with the category you wanna share. I'm going to think about what might be a better thing to put in there... perhaps nothing... or perhaps there could be place to write a note to go with it, which is (I assume) what would happen if we could ever do this through "Be Social".... cuz that's what we can do now when we post a gallery. I know a lot of people are wanting a place to write a category description just like we have gallery descriptions. If that is implemented someday, I imagine that description would often work great for the Facebook "Be Social" post of a category or sub-category page.
I tried this and found no way to get a thumbnail at all for a category page. But, I did discover that if you click on the meta description for the category in FB, it will let you edit it to anything you want which is useful. The same is true for the title of the category page. If you click on it in FB, you can also edit it to anything you want. Nice hidden features in FB that make using the URLs directly in FB a little more doable. Still problems getting a desirable icon for the page though.
I tried this and found no way to get a thumbnail at all for a category page. But, I did discover that if you click on the meta description for the category in FB, it will let you edit it to anything you want which is useful. The same is true for the title of the category page. If you click on it in FB, you can also edit it to anything you want. Nice hidden features in FB that make using the URLs directly in FB a little more doable. Still problems getting a desirable icon for the page though.
Ahh-- ok, hadn't ever tried that, John. I think I just gave up on trying to post a category at all. So that's good to know. About the lack of thumbnail-- there was a thread around here somewhere about this problem, because it happens when posting galleries too. There are various times when no thumbnail will show up, and someone figured out why, I believe. At this point, I've forgotten the answer. It wasn't about privacy settings or anything, if I recall. If I find the thread, or the reason, will post back. I didn't actually post the FB thing just a bit ago-- I only pasted in the link and acted like I was going to post it, just to see what would happen. But I had a choice of 23 thumbs (which I think is about the number of "travel" sub-categories I have. ETA: I found the thread here: http://www.digitalgrin.com/showthread.php?t=154942 . Ha! Looks like I actually posted in it, and here it is a few months later & I'd completely forgotten that or even what I learned. This particular thread is only dealing with lack of thumbs showing for gallery posts though. And no one posted back with an update to the problem I found. I wonder though-- could it be that if the thumb chosen for a category page post is not the first photo in a particular gallery, perhaps that's why it won't show up? It appears that I had to actually post it to discover that the thumb wouldn't show. So maybe my "test" a little while ago was useless, because I only acted like I was gonna post; didn't actually do it. Well, post back if you learn anything!
I would also like to note that the Be Social Facebook integration does not handle international characters (e.g. Icelandic characters like á ó þ ý). This applies both to the custom message you can write in the Be Social dialog, and the text in the photo caption that is sent to Facebook as well.
I hope this will be addressed by the dev team when the Be Social features gets a makeover.
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As the author of the request in the second link, I believe it aligns with John's requests perfectly. I wrote it a long time ago and the problem I illustrate I don't even think is exactly technically accurate anymore, even thought the overall problem still exists. No one voted for it, though, so I figured it had no traction with the user base or SmugMug. I'm happy to see the visibility the issue is now getting with John bringing it up. And, I really agree with John's point that the right solution is probably more about making the SmugMug gallery pages more compatible with facebook's own link tool than trying to make SmugMug's "Be Social" feature more capable.
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For people who arent Pros, this is kind of a big deal. Non-Pro people who use Smugmug arent as interested in their SM sites being a "final destination" for visitors & having them walled in. You have to be better able to share things so people can come & go, jumping between your site & social sites. And making it easy for us to pull this off on multiple platforms (both desktop & mobile). If those arent seamless, its not going to work.
Now, when I go through this, I'm talking about improving the entire experience for both ends (users & visitors). And Im not going to make another UserVoice request either. You can take this info here or leave it.
The first thing I would do is improve your mobile site. Its basically been unchanged since it launched way back in the original iPhone days. Do away with the special mobile-address, as that only complicates things. If someone is using an iPhone or Android phone (mobile webkit browser), just show them the mobile-optimized version of the site & be done with it. Posterous does this & its great. All the links are the same, the web address is the same, everything. And they put a link on the bottom that will switch the view to the full-site if need be (and back again). This will make most things people care about accessible on desktop & on mobile as well.
Also, the mobile site needs cleaned up. No one needs to see my "real" Smugmug address name on the top, esp if they got there by using my custom URL. It looks odd & no doubt could cause visitors to question if this is even the page they meant to access. Also, mimic the homepage layout better so that it looks more like the desktop-version page. As it is now, they're totally different. Meaning if I have all my categories on my homepage, then show that on the mobile site too.
This ties into the second thing, which is to make social interactivity better. And thats desktop AND mobile. Like I said guys, people mostly do this stuff on the go, so if your mobility integration is broken, no one is gonna use it because its a total PITA.
"Be Social" needs a revamp. Its way too hard to share things at this point & you can only do it using the desktop version of your site. I do like a lot of the suggestions here, but the main thing you have to get down first & foremost is the ease of use & the consistency across the board. If those are broken, then the whole thing is gonna go to hell.
I'd get rid of that ridiculously huge "SHARE" bar & just use tiny icons like most sites do. The user can turn on which ones they want & skip the rest. I'd also use an automatic URL shortener. Or better yet, get your own internal one for more control & better brand recognition (like Flickr & Posterous have).
I've already went through my beef with the iPhone/iPad apps, but I'll do it again. They need to be consistent with each other & you need the same app across the board. Why do we need 2 totally different ones?? Mix the best of both apps into one, make it a universal App & call it a day. Twitter & Facebook integration in these should be a top priority. Not because I said so, but because thats just whats expected these days from Apps like this. You're a photo/video host for Christ sake. Make it easy to upload & share from the same App instead of having users jump through God-awful hoops of fire to get this seemingly simple task done.
Thats really about all I have right now on these subjects. Let me know if I need to be more specific about anything. But these to me are some of the biggest issues with the site currently.
I have to agree with peestandingup's comprehensive thoughts below-- his suggestions and jfriend's and also another UserVoice request: http://smugmug.uservoice.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/332140-allow-be-social-capability-with-facebook-fan-pag could neatly be part of one major re-do rather than trying to have everyone vote on tiny portions of a couple of big related issues. I feel that those 3 requests should be combined cuz they're tied together so closely. I don't know all the ins & outs of mobile device problems because I don't own any beyond a simple phone, but I've seen the displays on my siblings' various devices & understand the basics of p's suggestions. (Of course there's the apple/flash-no-talkee problem that I s'pose we can't do anything about... I hate it that my whole homepage is useless on Apple devices because they won't display the flash slideshows. But that's a whole other issue) Anyway, if we could combine these requests (or 2 of them at least), they might get some steam behind them.
The request I linked above asks for a way to "Be Social" on our Facebook Pages (sometimes known as fan pages, artist pages, etc.) instead of only on our regular personal page. This should really be part of all the other "Be Social" improvements.... it's kind of a no-brainer since so many of us have a separate page for our photo business, and SmugMug appeals to many pros or serious photographers. "Be Social" just assumes that we have one personal page only & no biz page, so the main place we may wish to share our photos (i.e. on our photo biz page!!) is not able to be accessed through "Be Social"... very strange. Sadly, that's the very place I'd most like to just bring people to SmugMug from-- so I can easily show my already-watermarked photos here, rather than watermarking all my art photos in a Facebook gallery.... aaargh! And it would be some of the best free advertising for SmugMug-- we've already missed out on it for yrs! Again, there's nothing in any of these 3 different persons' UserVoice requests that people are gonna dislike.. I'm sure lots of folks would want them prioritized if they understood that the entire social package would get major attention.
I'm finding all this frustrating right now because I'm working on whole piles of extended family-vacation & wedding galleries that could be so neatly shared on both my pages, bringing tons of traffic to Smug & helping people find/see/buy stuff at home and on their mobile devices. Currently too many of them just end up confused, & it's awful to hear that when this is such a great site. I just got another friend to get an account, but he's extremely computer-savvy & I'd love if some of my 1000s of non-savvy family would be grabbed by what see they on Facebook & their mobile devices.
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it's always a no brainer to us lay-people. But there's more to it than we know.
We understand the request and we want to do it.
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Apple had their earnings call yesterday & one of the most surprising stats was that iPads almost outsold their entire Mac line (and it was the Mac's best quarter ever). This sorta leads me to believe that eventually, iOS (or Mobile Mac OS) will eventually overtake the "classic" Desktop version of Mac OS. Esp when it matures more & you get more of the Pro apps onto the platform. I often wonder if they'll even be a Mac OS 11. Buy that time, I have my doubts there will be.
Anyways, I had a feeling it would come to this, which is why I'm so adamant about you guys getting your mobility & social networking stuff straightened out. I feel that skimping on it is going to cost you a lot of your casual & non-Pro users because there are so many media sites that are doing it so much better right now.
But maybe we can allow the pro to upload their logo to replace ours in the mobile interface and then we can get away with defaulting to it, which is what I think consumers want.
I didn't read any requests for adding the facebook like button to galleries in this thread. Is that because you've added it in your customization like
http://www.liketheocean.com/Portfolio/All/11881036_48Ji3?ao=0#857036834_GFAPL
or is there lack of interest? This is something we get asked for often and we're working on how best to do it.
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As for how to integrate this best into Smugmug, I haven't given that a lot of thought yet (I'm hoping that the Smug folks will do that). Done right, you get several valuable things from it:
1) You get to see what Smugmug things your FB friends like.
2) You get to share with your FB friends what Smugmug things you like with nothing more than a single click.
3) Smugmug could get some overall "Like" data from it by also capturing "Like" impressions. This might be merged with the thumbs up/thumbs down data that they use now.
And, probably lots more interesting things than I'm even thinking now...
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I agree that was a brilliant move by FB. I'm not completely sure about the privacy aspects-- haven't had enough time to think it through. There are already aspects of the directed advertising that are rather annoying, & this new "like" thing seems to have made that worse. But smart on their part-- probably yes! I think they did limit some stuff they were about to initiate, and it sounded to me like a good thing they did limit it... can't recall details.
But anyway, I'd thought earlier about another enhancement that would help the "Be Social" thing with SmugMug. I don't know whether anyone else has mentioned this... sorry for the dup. if so. It would be great if we could link a category page or sub-category page through "Be Social" rather than just a gallery. For instance, I just made a whole sub-category "California" after my travels. When I get a few more public galleries in it, I'd love to be able to share the whole sub-category on FB through the "Be Social" method, esp. when "Be Social" is improved. Lots of my relatives are still pretty clueless about how to navigate around on my site, so many of them get stuck in one gallery & don't see that there are others they can easily access.
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I fully agree (even it it's a different issue).
But yes, I do think there are small little tweaks you could do to alleviate some of those concerns. For instance, leaving their custom URL completely intact would be one (without adding anything extra to the address. There's no reason for that). And also instead of showing their visitors their "original" Smugmug site name at the top, just show their custom one. Like I said, that could get confusing if someone visits their site by way of custom URL & sees a totally different name at the top.
So for now, you can and probably do, just copy the Category url into your facebook post, right?
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JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
I would also like to note that the Be Social Facebook integration does not handle international characters (e.g. Icelandic characters like á ó þ ý). This applies both to the custom message you can write in the Be Social dialog, and the text in the photo caption that is sent to Facebook as well.
I hope this will be addressed by the dev team when the Be Social features gets a makeover.