Subcategories?

ssimmonsphoto

I know the number seems piddly to most of you, but I'm going to be hitting my 40th wedding during my first weekend of shooting in 2011. Looking at my list of clients, I'm thinking about using subcategories to help organize and break them down a bit better for myself. That would mean that the URLs for my clients would be http://www.suzannesimmonsphotography.com/Weddings/2010/HeidiMartin. Am I over thinking it all and making it too complicated? Right now they don't have the 2010. Oh, and the URL would be changing over to http://www.suzannesimmons.com/ in two months since I just managed to buy that domain from someone. (That made me super happy!)

Beyond my concept, what do you guys use subcategories for?

innershell

Don't waste your time. Most visitors do not care about what year you took your photo and 99% would not go beyond your front page.

mmmatt

I have a client galleries link at the top of my page(s) and all my pro shoots are lightcraft > client > weddings, e-sessions, product, portrait, familly, etc. I wish I could do one more subcatigory beyond that though so that I could do client > customer name > and then have each of their galleries under that. Many customers I do multiple shoots for and it would be nice to have things set upt that way. It works though so nbd.

Matt

Shima

I do Clients -> Client Name / Date -> Individual Galleries

Works well for me, and for the occasional repeat customer I just do Client Name only instead of client name + date for the subcategory.

ssimmonsphoto

mmmatt wrote: »

I have a client galleries link at the top of my page(s) and all my pro shoots are lightcraft > client > weddings, e-sessions, product, portrait, familly, etc. I wish I could do one more subcatigory beyond that though so that I could do client > customer name > and then have each of their galleries under that. Many customers I do multiple shoots for and it would be nice to have things set upt that way. It works though so nbd.

Matt

Sounds like a good system to me. I primarily do weddings, so having that category level is mildly pointless. And most of my portraits are with my brides/grooms anyways. Sounds like I may switch to something along those lines this winter. It certainly would make it easier for my clients!

tenoverthenose

You can use categories for easier navigation and SEO. You do realize that entire URL is searchable?

Matthew Saville

Having had a similar dilema when my SmugMug drew near the 20,000 image mark a few years ago, I went through some PAINFUL category + sub-category changes, multiple times. Here's what I've finally arrived at: (This organization has kept on working for me, even now at ~6 years and 70,000+ images...)

Categories:

Weddings
Albums
Engagements
Clients
Theater
Nature
Friends
Family
Photo Shoots & Workshops
Photographer Articles
...And then a few other misc. categories for invisible / generic stuff.

* Then within most categories, the subcategories are organized into years.

* Others, such as "Photographer Articles" have different sub-categories... Just click the link in my signature...

* MOST client and friends / family galleries are un-searchable by Google.

* A hobbyist who does far more personal work and less paid work may choose to put years as the categories, and then organize the sub-categories into specific types of events such as "vacations" or "kids gymnastics / theater etc."


=Matt=

ssimmonsphoto

tenoverthenose wrote: »

You can use categories for easier navigation and SEO. You do realize that entire URL is searchable?

Yup, I do. I'm pretty geeky. But I'm also thinking about how to make it easier for my clients. And, while Events are nice, my brides just aren't using the link I send them to view their event. So using my clients are the category would likely make it a lot easier for them.

Agnieszka

ssimmonsphoto wrote: »

So using my clients are the category would likely make it a lot easier for them.

Hm, that's an interesting way to do it, if you have many clients coming back for other shoots.

I have the basic categories, and then just sub-divide it in years, so:

weddings: 2009 / 2010 / ...
portraits: 2009 / 2010 / ...
cards (thank you / announcement / holiday / ...): 2009 / 2010 / ...
albums: 2009 / 2010 / ...
.
.
.
Works for me, it's super easy for ME to upload, I doubt they browse my gallery page beyond their personal galleries + everything is password protected anyway, so there is no real reason for them to "look around" and whenever I upload a new gallery for a returning client, I copy paste any old gallery links into the same email, so they can check it out again (since my galleries don't expire)

Matthew Saville

ssimmonsphoto wrote: »

...my brides just aren't using the link I send them to view their event...

...Why not? It's the ONLY link I ever give my clients. 100% of my client galleries are actually invisible to the public, and to search engines, so the back-end category / subcategory organization is just for me, really...

Am I missing something huge by not putting a "client galleries" link on my front page or something?

=Matt=

ssimmonsphoto

Matthew Saville wrote: »

...Why not? It's the ONLY link I ever give my clients. 100% of my client galleries are actually invisible to the public, and to search engines, so the back-end category / subcategory organization is just for me, really...

Am I missing something huge by not putting a "client galleries" link on my front page or something?

=Matt=

Good point. But I get a lot of traffic to my client galleries from people who went to the wedding, but whom the b&g might not have an email address for. So seeing it on my site is the only way to get to them. When I pass out my business card to guests at weddings, it makes it easy for them to find my site and then to see if the gallery is there. Then they can ask the bride, groom, MOB, etc. for the password if the bride doesn't want me to put a prompt in. I hope that makes sense.

I'm still a little bit away from reorganizing. But you guys definitely have me think about how to make it better. I especially see the value in client name categories for the engagement, TTD, family photo sets as it could really help tidy things up.