Bug when arranging galleries?

blackqueen

Is there a bug when arranging galleries? I have tried to do this within sub galleries and it just shows me every gallery in the whole of my Smugmug, making it impossible to sort out arranging within certain galleries. Has anyone else encountered this?

nickjohnson

I've been having a similar problem myself. When I have my galleries in my sub-categories (specific wedding in the event category) I can only sort by last updated. I want to reverse the order but when I hit arange I just get sent up one directory and to no effect. IE and FF both do it.

-Nick

blackqueen

nickjohnson wrote:

I've been having a similar problem myself. When I have my galleries in my sub-categories (specific wedding in the event category) I can only sort by last updated. I want to reverse the order but when I hit arange I just get sent up one directory and to no effect. IE and FF both do it.

-Nick

Well, it's good to know it's not just me but it does seem to be a problem. I've tried logging out and logging back in again but it's still doing it. Anyone else have this problem or - better still - have a solution???

Mike Lane

Thanks for the input, I have contacted the smugmug team about this.

blackqueen

Mike Lane wrote:

Thanks for the input, I have contacted the smugmug team about this.

Thanx Mike, hopefully it's not too serious a gremlin for the gang at Smugmug...

blackqueen

blackqueen wrote:

Thanx Mike, hopefully it's not too serious a gremlin for the gang at Smugmug...

Sorry but I just wanted to bump this up as a recent thread by Californiahiker seemed to highlight the same problem - or at least I think they are encountering the same problem. Anyone know of a fix yet? It's annoying and frustrating and I'd like to be able to rearrange my galleries some time soon without it becoming a major headache.

Cheers.

asd

First, the gallery arrangement help page, which doesn't really mention what you guys are talking about.

nickjohnson - a work around for your problem is to change the sorting options from your homepage, as the links there still work (I couldn't make the changes within my categories either). To my knowledge, this option has always been applied sitewide (ie you can't have a gallery autosort by Most Recent when your homepage is set to Organize), so this is really no different from making the change within a category.

blackqueen - I ran into what you're talking about a while back. I believe right now smugmug directs you to the same gallery arrangement page (compare the links used) whether you click Organize from your main page or from a subgallery, which is why it lists all of your galleries (and since it's the same page, you know that changes apply sitewide).

Think of category or subcategory album arrangement as smugmug simply looking at the order of a subset of the albums you've arranged on this page.

So, the way to deal with this is to pay attention to a few things:
1) Getting your subcategory or category albums in a particular order means you need them in order on the gallery arrangement page, but it doesn't matter where they are with respect to any of the other galleries there. Other galleries can even come between them. So if you want galleries a,b and c in order a b c (and all galleries outside of this category are x), then the following would both work and look the same inside the category. x x x a b x c AND x a b c x x x AND x a x b x x c
2) The sitewide application means that what you do in a category might affect your homepage, so while the orders I just listed may look the same within a category they could have very different effects on the homepage. If your homepage is in gallery view, then the arrange gallery page is showing you exactly how it will look. If it's in category view, then you have to pay some attention to categories. To me, smugmug seems to go through the list of arranged albums and look at categories: whenever it comes across a category it has not yet displayed on the main page it will plop it down at the end of the list. So your individual gallery arrangement controls the way categories appear on your main page.

Hope this helps..and maybe smugmug has some easier to understand arrangement tools in the works. Or maybe I've got it all wrong.

blackqueen

asd wrote:

blackqueen - I ran into what you're talking about a while back. I believe right now smugmug directs you to the same gallery arrangement page (compare the links used) whether you click Organize from your main page or from a subgallery, which is why it lists all of your galleries (and since it's the same page, you know that changes apply sitewide).

Think of category or subcategory album arrangement as smugmug simply looking at the order of a subset of the albums you've arranged on this page.

So, the way to deal with this is to pay attention to a few things:
1) Getting your subcategory or category albums in a particular order means you need them in order on the gallery arrangement page, but it doesn't matter where they are with respect to any of the other galleries there. Other galleries can even come between them. So if you want galleries a,b and c in order a b c (and all galleries outside of this category are x), then the following would both work and look the same inside the category. x x x a b x c AND x a b c x x x AND x a x b x x c
2) The sitewide application means that what you do in a category might affect your homepage, so while the orders I just listed may look the same within a category they could have very different effects on the homepage. If your homepage is in gallery view, then the arrange gallery page is showing you exactly how it will look. If it's in category view, then you have to pay some attention to categories. To me, smugmug seems to go through the list of arranged albums and look at categories: whenever it comes across a category it has not yet displayed on the main page it will plop it down at the end of the list. So your individual gallery arrangement controls the way categories appear on your main page.

Hope this helps..and maybe smugmug has some easier to understand arrangement tools in the works. Or maybe I've got it all wrong.

Blimey ASD, you have just made my brain explode!!! I think I almost get what you're saying and that's pretty much how I've approached rearranging my galleries, having to sort them in amongst the rest of the galleries from my album that are in there. But... it's a nightmare and not easy and I can't tell you how many times I've had to do it to get it right. What was, in the old Smugmug, a simple 5 min job because you could arrange galleries within categories and sub-catergories as easy as you could arrange the order of your photos - has now turned into over an hour's worth of headache and frustration inducing nightmare! I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have so many galleries within sub-catergories that trying to rearrange them had me literally crying, yes... :cry..., with frustration.

There HAS to be an easier way doesn't there? You could do it before with Smugmug, why not now? Why has it changed? And can you PLEASE change it back before I end up in a mental asylum due to this frustration... pretty please? Don't make me beg, it's not a pretty sight!!!

This has been my ONLY major gripe about the changes to Smugmug. Otherwise, it's been great, but if I'm going to have this sort of problem every time then I may as well go to Photobucket or elsewhere, which I really do not want to do.

Thank you kindly.

asd

blackqueen wrote:

Blimey ASD, you have just made my brain explode!!! I think I almost get what you're saying and that's pretty much how I've approached rearranging my galleries, having to sort them in amongst the rest of the galleries from my album that are in there. But... it's a nightmare and not easy and I can't tell you how many times I've had to do it to get it right. What was, in the old Smugmug, a simple 5 min job because you could arrange galleries within categories and sub-catergories as easy as you could arrange the order of your photos - has now turned into over an hour's worth of headache and frustration inducing nightmare! I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have so many galleries within sub-catergories that trying to rearrange them had me literally crying, yes... :cry..., with frustration.

There HAS to be an easier way doesn't there? You could do it before with Smugmug, why not now? Why has it changed? And can you PLEASE change it back before I end up in a mental asylum due to this frustration... pretty please? Don't make me beg, it's not a pretty sight!!!

This has been my ONLY major gripe about the changes to Smugmug. Otherwise, it's been great, but if I'm going to have this sort of problem every time then I may as well go to Photobucket or elsewhere, which I really do not want to do.

Thank you kindly.

I agree that it's kind of cumbersome, but it's a feature I don't use often that's been that way for as long as I can remember (I've only been a member for ~9 months I believe, and didn't need to use it for quite awhile). There's so much other great stuff here that I can live with a quirky little thing like this.

blackqueen

asd wrote:

I agree that it's kind of cumbersome, but it's a feature I don't use often that's been that way for as long as I can remember (I've only been a member for ~9 months I believe, and didn't need to use it for quite awhile). There's so much other great stuff here that I can live with a quirky little thing like this.

Hmm, it IS cumbersome and it's a shame because, apart from that, Smugmug is great. I am arranging galleries in gig order for a band and as they have been gigging a lot, there are a lot of galleries. This will only increase as the band starts to do major touring so it's really an integral part of what I am having to do.

Does ANYONE know if Smugmug are ever going to sort this? It would be cool if they did as I am sure I am not the only person who will find this a really tiresome feature to use as it currently stands. It should really be as easy to do as arranging photos within galleries in my opinion.

Andy

blackqueen wrote:

Does ANYONE know if Smugmug are ever going to sort this?

i emailed this link to the engineers.