Dear Smugmug - we need more than gallery names

jfriend

Dear Smugmug. When are you going to learn that a gallery name all by itself is not sufficient to tell me which gallery is which. Can we please have the full path of the gallery, including category and sub-category at all times. We've been telling you this for years in the various gallery manipulation tools like Move to Gallery (which is a flat list of gallery names with no category or sub-category info).

You've acknowledged the issue there, but not done anything about it. Now, you implement a new feature (ZIP download of a full gallery) and go an create a whole new feature that has the same problem. The email I receive says: "Great news! Your digital files for Julia are ready and waiting. Click on this link to get your zip file: http://www.smugmug.com/downloads/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/yyyyyy". There is no indication of category or sub-category info at all. If the gallery name is not unique and I've requested more than one of these, I have no way of knowing which gallery named "Julia" it's from. Please stop implementing new features that don't give us the whole path of the gallery.

Here's my scenario. A parent asks if I could generate ZIP files for their daughter's soccer gallery for both the spring season and the fall season. In both cases the gallery is named with the player's name (each is in a different sub-category that contains the team name and season info). So, I request ZIP files for both galleries. I get two emails and they are completely identical in text (except for the link) because the gallery name is the same for both galleries I requested from. I have no way of knowing which is which (without downloading and unzipping and then comparing filenames).

Please stop doing this with new features. And, please fix this feature to include category and sub-category info. You should know better by now.

FYI, this happens to me ALL THE TIME because I shoot sports teams and I put images up in a gallery for each player where the name of the gallery is the player's name. So, for my daughter, I literally have hundreds of galleries that all have the same name (all with unique category and sub-category names). I'm not mangling the presentation of my gallery names to work-around deficiencies in Smugmug tools. The tools should be made so I can present my galleries the way I want to present them and still have the tools work.

Incidentally, I love the new Download All function. I do wish I could let my viewers access it directly and I do wish it would generate a new ZIP automatically when I request the ZIP file if the gallery has changed since the last ZIP file was generated.

Andy

Thanks John, for your unvarnished feedback. I do hope you'll add your suggestions here http://feedback.smugmug.com thanks.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

Thanks John, for your unvarnished feedback. I do hope you'll add your suggestions here http://feedback.smugmug.com thanks.

I can't. You don't give me enough votes. I have way more suggestions and reports of problems than votes.

What I'm really hoping is that you give the team feedback that they shouldn't introduce any new features that only identify a gallery by it's name without the identifying category and sub-category. And, then please encourage the folks to FIX all the places in the tools where this problem already exists. Come on, you've known about this for years and have CHOSEN not to prioritize it high enough to fix it. It's clearly a busted usability issue. Many gallery tools cannot identify which gallery is which.

WinsomeWorks

Oh my words--- this has been driving me completely mental. Especially since we now can make virtual copies of a gallery (by making 'em smart & drawing from an entire other gallery) I now have certain basically identical galleries with the same name under different categories... but one contains originals and one contains be virtual copies. So now, with several of our tools, it's impossible to tell which gallery is which!! Worse yet, the tool that allows you to see the path (move to several galleries) is useless because the thumbs have no i.d.!! So you're then guessing which photos you're moving. But if you use "move to gallery", which does i.d. the thumbs, there's no category path, and you have to do this crazy random search with no apparent order, with your eyes going buggy. I mean, really... this truly is nuts at this point. Worse yet, virtual galleries and galleries w/ collected photos have nothing that identifies them for you. You know how I finally got around the worst part of it now? I added a (v) for virtual galleries or (c) for galleries of collected photos in the title, (ugly, I know, but I was pulling hair out) so I could at the very least keep track of them.

Things like this are not features; they are simply inconsistencies between tools, or tools that haven't been thought through or seemingly even tried by someone with a bunch of galleries. It's terribly unfair to make your users beg for something so obviously frustrating to them & so straightforward to fix. I don't have any votes either, and we've already been told for ages that this was getting fixed, so why would we start a feature request? Features should be for new ideas, etc. This is no new idea. To be able to simply find your gallery in the stack isn't a feature. Anyway, I already have a request to identify virtual & collected photos galleries, but it has no votes. Few people probably even have a clue what I'm talking about til try it & get frustrated. It's appears only a small percentage of people on Smug or even here on DGrin ever get over to the request forum... just too far removed from everything else.

richpepp

Go on, add it to uservoice and I'll add as many votes as I can. It drives me mad

Andy

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

. It's appears only a small percentage of people on Smug or even here on DGrin ever get over to the request forum... just too far removed from everything else.

We get far more requests on feedback.smugmug.com than we do here on Dgrin. Thanks for telling us how you feel about the gallery names! Until we revamp some of the tools, I suggest you use unique names that will help you identify them.

mrcoons

richpepp wrote: »

Go on, add it to uservoice and I'll add as many votes as I can. It drives me mad

I agree, I'll add my votes.

WinsomeWorks

Andy wrote: »

We get far more requests on feedback.smugmug.com than we do here on Dgrin. Thanks for telling us how you feel about the gallery names! Until we revamp some of the tools, I suggest you use unique names that will help you identify them.

Simply having a unique name isn't enough. Even if I give a gallery a unique name from another gallery that has the same exact photos in it, that doesn't help me figure out which one is virtual & which has originals in it. (Unless I add a stupid thing to it like I did... which is highly unattractive). Having a unique name also doesn't help with knowing which category the gallery is under, and giving a gallery a big long name is often not an option. Often you just really need to know the category. Once you have hundreds of galleries, the names of them are only helpful in a limited way, whereas the category & sub-category are rather crucial. It shocks me that another feature got added w/o this simple capability.

Andy

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

It shocks me

Andy wrote:

Until we revamp some of the tools,

WinsomeWorks

Andy wrote: »

We get far more requests on feedback.smugmug.com than we do here on Dgrin. Thanks for telling us how you feel about the gallery names! Until we revamp some of the tools, I suggest you use unique names that will help you identify them.

You might get more requests here on the Request forum, but that doesn't mean there aren't gazillions of people here on DGrin and more importantly on SmugMug itself who have all kinds of opinions & needs and frustrations that never even find out where to express them and never know what DGrin is. I guarantee you the fact my feature request has no votes (but mine) is not at all indicative of the number of people per day frustrated as all get out that they can't simply find their gallery. Imho, the vote numbers on there are highly un-impressive, and indicate that the vast majority never find their way there. It's not that they aren't getting upset about many of the same things the rest of us are. Just as an example, about a week ago I was trying to move something. I never did find the gallery I wanted to move it to! Yeah, it was there of course, but I'd already spent 5 min. going back & forth through the humongous list of galleries & just couldn't find it. I eventually gave up, and it never did get moved. Now that is pretty ridiculous. It's way worse now, because my archives are all mixed into the fray.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

Andy, the "It shocks me" comment made by Anna Lisa had nothing to do with revamping the tools. She was shocked (and so was I) that you introduced a brand new feature with the same problem. None of us should have to wait for tooling revamp to stop introducing new tools with the same problem. Please educate your designers and developers to sensitize them to this issue so they NEVER add a new feature that only refers to a gallery by its name without the hierarchy info.

And, please have someone systematically go through the entire system and fix all the places that don't present the hierarchy info, including the just added ZIP file email.

I've now got hundreds of galleries in each of several accounts and this is one place where Smugmug is NOT scaling well.

Andy

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

You might get more requests here on the Request forum,

Actually, we get most of our requests right to our help desk. Zillions. We love 'em all, Dgrin, feedback.smugmug.com, email, blogs, twitter, facebook - we take all that input and distill it into our plans.

Thanks John!

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

Andy, the "It shocks me" comment made by Anna Lisa had nothing to do with revamping the tools. She was shocked (and so was I) that you introduced a brand new feature with the same problem. None of us should have to wait for tooling revamp to stop introducing new tools with the same problem. Please educate your designers and developers to sensitize them to this issue so they NEVER add a new feature that only refers to a gallery by its name without the hierarchy info.

And, please have someone systematically go through the entire system and fix all the places that don't present the hierarchy info, including the just added ZIP file email.

I've now got hundreds of galleries in each of several accounts and this is one place where Smugmug is NOT scaling well.

Thanks John, I've made sure the team has seen this!

Malte

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

...Even if I give a gallery a unique name from another gallery that has the same exact photos in it, that doesn't help me figure out which one is virtual & which has originals in it...

Halleluja. Kinda thought I was stupid for not being able to tell them a part.

Malte

WinsomeWorks

Malte wrote: »

Halleluja. Kinda thought I was stupid for not being able to tell them a part.

Malte

Me too at first. I went through a LOT of hassles before I finally added the little codes. For instance, I would add original photos to what was a virtual gallery by accident. Well, then all the virtual photos go where they want, while the originals can be moved. And then you've also got a whole gallery behaving basically like its original copy except those few originals. You start to bulk keyword & then realize-- uh-oh! There's a whole host of other things, but it's too awfully boring to explain. It's been a real PITA to go through all these steps and finally figuring out what the problem was & what to do for some kind of workaround, especially when the workaround is not pretty. I'm sure people visit my galleries and say, Hmm, I wonder what the little [v] means? And anyway, it's not even a true workaround because it still doesn't tell me which category the gallery is in! I usually have to guess, then go check & see if it went to the right place, then move it from THAT gallery to the correct one if "eenie, meenie, miney, moe" didn't produce the correct result! Quite fun.