Tweet & Facebook buttons in my gallery

Tango

How do I get those tweet & facebook buttons out of my gallery?

kdog

Ha! You don't like your viewers user interface changing out from underneath ya? I thought I was the only one.

jfriend

If you want them gone on a particular gallery, then turn off Easy Sharing in the gallery settings.

If you want them gone site-wide, then go to the control panel, Settings tab and find the option for Quick Share and set it to disabled.

Andy

Guys, we published the 'way out' in our release notes and in our help pages It's an easy one-click thing to make them not be there, if you won't want to be 'liked' - your choice!

denisegoldberg

Andy wrote: »

Guys, we published the 'way out' in our release notes and in our help pages It's an easy one-click thing to make them not be there, if you won't want to be 'liked' - your choice!

I saw the information in the release notes and immediately turned the buttons off. If I hadn't seen the release notes, those unwanted options could have been available on my site for longer than I would have liked.

I also believe that the buttons should have separate on / off ability. I might have chosen to include twitter, but not facebook.

I'd like to see a smoother introduction of new features for users with existing sites. I hate it that options like this are enabled without my choosing them - in my experience so far, I very often don't want to use the new features.

For future additions, can turning the option on be deferred and turned on by the owner answering a yes / no question the next time he or she logs on to their site?

--- Denise

Tango

thanks for the reply ALL, even you Kdog.:D

Andy, Sadly I ignore release note, heck I dont even know where they are located... besides, I'm not well liked anyway

jfriend

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I saw the information in the release notes and immediately turned the buttons off. If I hadn't seen the release notes, those unwanted options could have been available on my site for longer than I would have liked.

I also believe that the buttons should have separate on / off ability. I might have chosen to include twitter, but not facebook.

I'd like to see a smoother introduction of new features for users with existing sites. I hate it that options like this are enabled without my choosing them - in my experience so far, I very often don't want to use the new features.

For future additions, can turning the option on be deferred and turned on by the owner answering a yes / no question the next time he or she logs on to their site?

--- Denise

FYI, you can control them separately with CSS if you want. I agree on your other suggestions.

Andy

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I saw the information in the release notes and immediately turned the buttons off. If I hadn't seen the release notes, those unwanted options could have been available on my site for longer than I would have liked.

We also put the news notice on your page when you (owner) visited your site as soon as we shipped.

I also believe that the buttons should have separate on / off ability. I might have chosen to include twitter, but not facebook.

I'd like to see a smoother introduction of new features for users with existing sites. I hate it that options like this are enabled without my choosing them - in my experience so far, I very often don't want to use the new features.

For future additions, can turning the option on be deferred and turned on by the owner answering a yes / no question the next time he or she logs on to their site?

--- Denise

Thanks for the awesome feedback!

Andy

AaronNelson wrote: »

thanks for the reply ALL, even you Kdog.:D

Andy, Sadly I ignore release note, heck I dont even know where they are located... besides, I'm not well liked anyway

We point you to them with a news item on your page (as owner) when we release. But, they are here: http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/

denisegoldberg

Andy wrote: »

We also put the news notice on your page when you (owner) visited your site as soon as we shipped.

Yes, you did, and yes, I did see that.

There are times when I tend not to be on my site - if I am traveling I update my blog from the road but not my smug site. I really don't want new features to be turned on automatically; I want to control whether I use them or not.

I hope that you'll treat my suggestions (above) seriously.

--- Denise

kdog

Andy wrote: »

Guys, we published the 'way out' in our release notes and in our help pages It's an easy one-click thing to make them not be there, if you won't want to be 'liked' - your choice!

Release notes? Help pages? Why would I be reading those? I didn't install anything. One should not be assigning homework to customers to keep their sites from changing out beneath them, unless you intend to put them on the payroll.

beetle8

kdog wrote: »

Release notes? Help pages? Why would I be reading those? I didn't install anything. One should not be assigning homework to customers to keep their sites from changing out beneath them, unless you intend to put them on the payroll.

Agreed! as well as with Denise,

I am glad to see them but upon trying it out on a friends SM gallery last night was informed of an unwanted BUG.

I clicked on the like of a particular image in my friends gallery, the gallery was entitled Amberlynn,
My FB feed then responded -
Keith likes Amberlynn on http://www.leoandteri.com.

The Amberlynn is correctly linked to the gallery but the click prone URL goes to SM's homepage, that's a fail and a missed opportunity for the photographer resulting in a frustrated clicker that will probably not return to dig for the solution.

_ETA_ the URL above is linking to the correct location because the forums "Smartlink" is sending you to the actuall adress that I copied off my FB wall, the link on the FB wall however goes directly to this page http://www.smugmug.com/ -I don't know why

alacranera

I agree that new features by default ought to be turned off. Though it might be hard to believe, not all Smugmug subscribers are breathlessly logged in and waiting at the moment of release to manage features they may or may not want. The ability to opt-in rather than opt-out is always preferable, particularly when the new features are as half-baked and untested as this apparently is.

Andy

kdog wrote: »

Release notes? Help pages? Why would I be reading those? I didn't install anything. One should not be assigning homework to customers to keep their sites from changing out beneath them, unless you intend to put them on the payroll.

And this is why we put the notice right on your page, kdog. When we have new features, you now see it instantly when you go to your site when you are logged in.

Thanks for the feedback!

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

And this is why we put the notice right on your page, kdog. When we have new features, you now see it instantly when you go to your site when you are logged in.

Thanks for the feedback!

Andy, it sounds to us like maybe you're missing the point. People get their sites the way they like them and they don't want to feel like they have to watch everything Smugmug does everyday like a hawk in order to keep it that way. I think what people are asking for is a more graceful way for them to learn about new features, evaluate whether they want to have them on their site and what settings are optimal for their site ON THEIR OWN TIME, not by watching everything you do and then evaluating things Friday morning at 2am PDT so their site is the way they want it later Friday morning.

Surely, you get that lots of your customers do not make it a habit of viewing their own site every day to see these notices. And, even if they did, they aren't webmasters as a job. They all have other jobs and having a web site is a means to an end and they'd like it to take as little time as possible to keep it the way they want it. I'm sure most would be happy to learn about the existence of new features and then take some time when it's convenient for them to evaluate and decide if they want to adopt a change or not. But forcing a change on them and forcing them to follow every movement you make on the site in order to keep their site the way they want it is not a customer-friendly way to do things and that's the point that is being made here.

Standard accounts are yours to change however you like as long as you don't drastically change a theme, continue to honor their security settings and don't break anything they had displaying. That's because the standard account customer just gets whatever you give them with little option of customization.

Power and Pro accounts typically went to those levels because they want to make decisions about how their site looks and surely you can see that not everything you'd like to make available as a new option for customers is something that everyone wants automatically added to their site.

Are you really saying that if a customer wants to keep their site looking the way it is, then they need to study both the release notes and the impact on their own site every time you do anything to the site? And, if they want their site on Friday morning to look like they want it to, then they have to study the release notes around 2am Friday morning, in case there was a release Thursday evening that changed their site?

kdog

Andy wrote: »

And this is why we put the notice right on your page, kdog. When we have new features, you now see it instantly when you go to your site when you are logged in.

Thanks for the feedback!

Frankly I rarely read the notices, Andy. I'm usually in a rush to do something when I log into my site and so just skip over them.

beetle8

Very well put John,

Do we have any ideas or input about the "Like" buttone generating a link that shows the desired URL yet arrives at the SM home page.

jfriend

beetle8 wrote: »

Very well put John,

Do we have any ideas or input about the "Like" button generating a link that shows the desired URL yet arrives at the SM home page.

I believe Smugmug has acknowledged that that is a bug that they will fix.

pmbpro

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I'd like to see a smoother introduction of new features for users with existing sites. I hate it that options like this are enabled without my choosing them - in my experience so far, I very often don't want to use the new features.

--- Denise

I agree Denise, with your entire post.
The irony is that this very thing reminds me of how Facebook does it too, especially regarding the FB user "privacy" settings issues of late, and it ticks users off. They sneak features on, and assume everyone wants the same defaults (i.e. making your stuff available to "everyone" even though you may not want that). The last thing I want is this kind of thing happening on my own photo site too...

ebwest

I'd like to add my voice (or type) to what others are saying about new features being automatically enabled. I've been to Twitter and Facebook once or twice, enough to know I have no desire to use either of them. It may be the new way of doing business but I'm not in business. I don't like the little buttons and as soon as I learned how, I removed them.

I know a lot of people work hard to get these changes up and running and most of them are at the request of users, but I think that we users should have the choice to enable them.

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

Andy, it sounds to us like maybe you're missing the point.

Nope, not missing the point. I get it. And I thanked you all for the great feedback.

Are you really saying that if a customer wants to keep their site looking the way it is, then they need to study both the release notes and the impact on their own site every time you do anything to the site? And, if they want their site on Friday morning to look like they want it to, then they have to study the release notes around 2am Friday morning, in case there was a release Thursday evening that changed their site?

Nope, not saying that at all. You were among the most vocal that told us to do what we're doing - notify about changes. We came up with a way to do this - when you as owner of site come to site you see our news. In that news, we put the links to help pages, release notes, etc.

We made the business decision to have the FB and Twitter buttons be opt-out - and the response has been overwhelmingly positive We see this response at our help desk, on facebook, twitter and even here. If we'd make it opt-in, so many would never, ever see it for a long time. And adoption would be slower.

We learned the lesson about making things easy to turn off. It's one click in control panel, John.

And, my counter to you is that if control over your websites is so important, then taking the very few mins to read the release note or help page, and then going to CP and turning off the feature, should be part of something that you do

Thanks for the amazingly great feedback - from you and all the folks in this thread - we love it and consider it gold.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

And, my counter to you is that if control over your websites is so important, then taking the very few mins to read the release note or help page, and then going to CP and turning off the feature, should be part of something that you do

Just to be clear here. This isn't really an issue for me personally because I tend to know about stuff because I spend a so much time here. I'm just trying to explain the point of view I'm seeing in this thread.

So whether your point above is OK or not depends upon whether one thinks they have a site that only changes when they want it to change or whether they have to do active work, potentially every week, to keep control over their site. I think the folks in this thread don't want to have to do active work to keep control over their site. They want it to set it up, go about their other business and have it stay the way they left it until they change it.

If you think Twitter and FB adoption is so important and you think that the homepage notification works, then why not default the new feature to off and put a notification in the homepage that requires an answer from the customer yes or no, do they want the new feature (right there in the notification). Then, nobody gets surprised and everyone gets the new feature as soon as they see the notification and decide they want it. If the homepage notification works, then you get the adoption you want from everyone who wants the feature. And, those who don't want it never had a surprise on their site.

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

Just to be clear here. This isn't really an issue for me personally because I tend to know about stuff because I spend a so much time here. I'm just trying to explain the point of view I'm seeing in this thread.

So whether your point above is OK or not depends upon whether one thinks they have a site that only changes when they want it to change or whether they have to do active work, potentially every week, to keep control over their site. I think the folks in this thread don't want to have to do active work to keep control over their site. They want it to set it up, go about their other business and have it stay the way they left it until they change it.

If you think Twitter and FB adoption is so important and you think that the homepage notification works, then why not default the new feature to off and put a notification in the homepage that requires an answer from the customer yes or no, do they want the new feature (right there in the notification). Then, nobody gets surprised and everyone gets the new feature as soon as they see the notification and decide they want it. If the homepage notification works, then you get the adoption you want from everyone who wants the feature. And, those who don't want it never had a surprise on their site.

We may - thanks! It's great feedback and we love it.

mbellot

Andy wrote: »

We learned the lesson about making things easy to turn off. It's one click in control panel, John.

And that is greatly appreciated.

Now if you would just learn to default them to off (like you already do with new products), publish the release notes and allow us to turn them on (or not) at our discretion.

Andy

mbellot wrote: »

And that is greatly appreciated.

Now if you would just learn to default them to off (like you already do with new products), publish the release notes and allow us to turn them on (or not) at our discretion.

We may, can't say if we'll do this or not. Right now, the overwhelming responses are coming in saying 'glad you did it this way' - of course, we'll keep monitoring!

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

We may, can't say if we'll do this or not. Right now, the overwhelming responses are coming in saying 'glad you did it this way' - of course, we'll keep monitoring!

This isn't a popularity contest where most votes wins (or at least I hope it isn't). It's a decision about how you want to run your site and what expectations you set for customers who don't want their site changing out from under them.

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

This isn't a popularity contest where most votes wins (or at least I hope it isn't). It's a decision about how you want to run your site and what expectations you set for customers who don't want their site changing out from under them.

Yup. And we weigh all the feedback that we get and try to make the best decision. Thanks John!

WinsomeWorks

jfriend wrote: »

Just to be clear here. This isn't really an issue for me personally because I tend to know about stuff because I spend a so much time here. I'm just trying to explain the point of view I'm seeing in this thread.

So whether your point above is OK or not depends upon whether one thinks they have a site that only changes when they want it to change or whether they have to do active work, potentially every week, to keep control over their site. I think the folks in this thread don't want to have to do active work to keep control over their site. They want it to set it up, go about their other business and have it stay the way they left it until they change it.

If you think Twitter and FB adoption is so important and you think that the homepage notification works, then why not default the new feature to off and put a notification in the homepage that requires an answer from the customer yes or no, do they want the new feature (right there in the notification). Then, nobody gets surprised and everyone gets the new feature as soon as they see the notification and decide they want it. If the homepage notification works, then you get the adoption you want from everyone who wants the feature. And, those who don't want it never had a surprise on their site.

Amen, Amen, Amen. There is nothing in the world that makes it such a necessity that we have the "like" buttons turned on immediately, that this should be the default!! I don't see people here on DGrin happy that it's the default. And I assure you that even lots of Pros are not in the habit of landing on their own homepage-- for many, there's no reason to. That's not where we go to upload, or to edit our galleries. I guarantee you that half the account-holders here still haven't even discovered the addition-- it's still summer; plenty of people are on vacation! I think what gets pros mad in these frequent "opt-in by default" additions is that in almost all other cases here, we're treated like this is our own private site. We got the pro account because we were looking for a way to make it unique, look professional, etc. etc., and we're also aware of the fact that people around the world are looking at our sites at every hr. of the clock.

Like John says, who really wants their site changed on them suddenly... if it's really, to them, their site and practically everything else visible to the visitor properly needs the site owner's permission in order to change? I feel that the point being missed by SmugMug is that no one would have a problem with a notice telling them, "If you want this feature, it's there... turn it on in your control panel"!!! Why would anyone get upset about that? They'd feel like SmugMug gave them a gift, and some respect as well! However, when so many new features are "opt-in by default", of course you're going to have lots of people angry. The numbers don't even matter. What matters is the fact that doing the opposite: "opt-in if you want it", would simply avoid all the frustration.. ya know, a "nobody gets hurt" kind of approach. So I'm not saying I hate these buttons & please get rid of them. I'm saying it feels like I've lost my ability to make pro-active choices here when so many things are on by default, even though I'm one of the minority who may still be up at 2 AM when the changes happen. And I know Smug wouldn't be getting all this flack if most additions could be "off" by default. Wouldn't that be nice? We want people coming here to DGrin being impressed (as they should be), not taken aback because they see people up in arms when a change happens. :cry

alacranera

Andy wrote: »

We learned the lesson about making things easy to turn off. It's one click in control panel, John.

I'm not John, but apparently you did NOT learn this lesson, Andy. The one click to disable the buttons in the control panel does not work. I have "Quick Share" disabled globally and "Easy Sharing" ticked 'no' on all my galleries, yet every single photo on my site displays with the unwanted facebook and tweet buttons if viewed by keyword.

(I understand I can suppress the display
of the buttons with CSS, and I have done that.)

The point is, Andy, not only is this not a universally desired feature, even the basics of turning it on or off don't work. Why do you insist on forcing these unfinished crappy features on your subscribers?

Andy

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

And I assure you that even lots of Pros are not in the habit of landing on their own homepage-- for many, there's no reason to. That's not where we go to upload, or to edit our galleries.

which is why we made the news items appear on -any- page you own when you get to it when logged in

brecklundin

here is an advantage of rolling out new, ahem, "features" as an opt-in rather than opt-out thing. I suspect site OWNERS will be happier to help thresh out the quirks of system rather than placing all of the burden on SM before hand. Perhaps consider all features, newly released anyway, as Beta 2 or even RC releases until enough site owners have tried them covering a sufficient number of sites, pages as well as customization scenarios.

This sure sounds easier to swallow than a fully rolled out and, for all intents and purposes, manditory (opt-out releases are indeed manditory until the site owner notices its there and can be removed if they so decide). You have a huge userbase why not involve us in the process once a new "feature" is thought to be rollout ready then turn site owners loose on it to see what can be further shaken out.

As an example I offer the post above mine from alacanera....even if there is code in his site affecting the issue, its still something that could be easier to deal with from the owner's standpoint if it was explained as a Beta 2 or RC opt-in release. It would still be a problem but at the same time its likely a situation never encountered during whatever test releases happened before the rollout.