"Arrange Photos" not saving the arrangement

WinsomeWorks · January 30, 2011

Remember how "Arrange Galleries" was not "sticking" or saving changes awhile back? Well, "Arrange Photos" has been doing the same thing. Under "Tools > Many Photos> Arrange > Arrange Photos" I've had a number of galleries now where my arrangement didn't stick on the first try & I've had to go back & do it again. On one occasion, it didn't save on the first or second try. This happened last week already, but it's happening more frequently this week. No particular gallery-- it's happened in a bunch of galleries. Just like in the old gallery arrange problem, it's as if the "Save" button is simply not registering the save.

Andy · January 30, 2011

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

Remember how "Arrange Galleries" was not "sticking" or saving changes awhile back? Well, "Arrange Photos" has been doing the same thing. Under "Tools > Many Photos> Arrange > Arrange Photos" I've had a number of galleries now where my arrangement didn't stick on the first try & I've had to go back & do it again. On one occasion, it didn't save on the first or second try. This happened last week already, but it's happening more frequently this week. No particular gallery-- it's happened in a bunch of galleries. Just like in the old gallery arrange problem, it's as if the "Save" button is simply not registering the save.

Link?

WinsomeWorks · January 30, 2011

Andy wrote: »

Link?

All the galleries I was working on aren't public yet & I'd like to keep it that way for now. So no link at the moment. As I said, it's happened in a whole bunch of galleries... all were in my travel or family categories as far as I can recall.

Andy · January 30, 2011

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

All the galleries I was working on aren't public yet & I'd like to keep it that way for now. So no link at the moment. As I said, it's happened in a whole bunch of galleries... all were in my travel or family categories as far as I can recall.

Please write our Support Heroes attn: Doc then thanks

WinsomeWorks · January 30, 2011

Andy wrote: »

Please write our Support Heroes attn: Doc then thanks

Doc'll see this, right? I won't have time to spend on this, and will be out late tonight, etc... Sorrry, I don't have any other info. With something like this that's happening frequently, there's nothing else to report. Saving an arrangement is a one-click "Save". It just isn't always sticking. It doesn't matter what gallery, right? I think sometimes you gotta not put all the onus on SmugMuggers to spend so much time on these things. It's just too much.

Andy · January 30, 2011

WinsomeWorks wrote: »

I think sometimes you gotta not put all the onus on SmugMuggers to spend so much time on these things. It's just too much.

You said you didn't want to post the link. Anna Lisa, you can EMAIL the private gallery link to Doc. Then he can actually help

Thank you

dennismullen · March 6, 2011

Arrange screwing up again!
I thought this problem was finally fixed. I have been struggling with my pictures rearranging themselves ever since I joined Smugmug. For the last six months (year?, I can't remember) my pictures have finally stayed where I put them. Thank God.
Now it's happening all over again. I uploaded a picture to a gallery and instead of being at the top like they have been doing of late it was at the bottom and random pictures from the middle are now at the beginning and mixed up throughout without any logical pattern. I checked and the gallery settings are still set at none and descending.

Here is the gallery...

http://www.dennismullen.com/Animals/Animals/311200

I can not tell you how frustrating this is. It takes forever to arrange the pictures in the order I want them in. All I want is for the pictures to stay put and a newly uploaded picture to be put at the top.
Now I have to start all over again with no confidence they will stay put.

gluwater · March 6, 2011

Hi Dennis! Give me a little time to do some testing on this. I can't reproduce what you describe but I'm looking into it. Can you describe exactly what steps you did when this occurred? Did you go into the Arrange Tool at all or you just uploaded the new photo and it changed the order of the gallery? Can I change the settings in the gallery or have you re-arranged the images already? I don't want to change anything in that gallery if you've already changed it back.

dennismullen · March 6, 2011

gluwater wrote: »

Hi Dennis! Give me a little time to do some testing on this. I can't reproduce what you describe but I'm looking into it. Can you describe exactly what steps you did when this occurred? Did you go into the Arrange Tool at all or you just uploaded the new photo and it changed the order of the gallery? Can I change the settings in the gallery or have you re-arranged the images already? I don't want to change anything in that gallery if you've already changed it back.

I left everything alone. The last picture is the one I uploaded. All I did was upload the picture. The first picture now was somewhere in the middle before the upload. You can do what you want to that gallery as it is already screwed up. I will wait to hear from you before I rearrange it.

dennismullen · March 7, 2011

So have you made any progress on this?

rnrjosh · March 7, 2011

dennismullen wrote: »

So have you made any progress on this?

Hi Dennis,

I've been testing a little in this gallery, and with some galleries on my own site, and I thought I had this issue reproduced, but then I couldn't reproduce it any more. From what I'm seeing, I think there is something going on, but I'm having a hard time finding out exactly what might be at the root cause of the problem. My gut instinct is that the autosort sort direction setting in the gallery settings is having some kind of unintended effect on the arrangement of the photos in the gallery, but I haven't been able to find any hard evidence to support this claim as of yet. I did collect my findings into a bug report, and we'll continue to investigate further for you. Sorry I don't have a definitive answer for you, but we'll keep researching this problem and see what we can find out.

dennismullen · March 7, 2011

rnrjosh wrote: »

Hi Dennis,

I've been testing a little in this gallery, and with some galleries on my own site, and I thought I had this issue reproduced, but then I couldn't reproduce it any more. From what I'm seeing, I think there is something going on, but I'm having a hard time finding out exactly what might be at the root cause of the problem. My gut instinct is that the autosort sort direction setting in the gallery settings is having some kind of unintended effect on the arrangement of the photos in the gallery, but I haven't been able to find any hard evidence to support this claim as of yet. I did collect my findings into a bug report, and we'll continue to investigate further for you. Sorry I don't have a definitive answer for you, but we'll keep researching this problem and see what we can find out.

Can I remind you this problem of pictures rearranging themselves has a long history. It is very tedious to have to try and recreate the order of a gallery with hundreds of pictures. As to the autosort direction there is no chronological order to the chaos that was created. With autosort set to off the autosort direction should only define whether a newly uploaded file should be put at the top or bottom of the gallery.

Thanks,

dawn5282 · March 7, 2011

I'm having the same problem with photos rearranging themselves

rnrjosh wrote: »

Hi Dennis,

I've been testing a little in this gallery, and with some galleries on my own site, and I thought I had this issue reproduced, but then I couldn't reproduce it any more. From what I'm seeing, I think there is something going on, but I'm having a hard time finding out exactly what might be at the root cause of the problem. My gut instinct is that the autosort sort direction setting in the gallery settings is having some kind of unintended effect on the arrangement of the photos in the gallery, but I haven't been able to find any hard evidence to support this claim as of yet. I did collect my findings into a bug report, and we'll continue to investigate further for you. Sorry I don't have a definitive answer for you, but we'll keep researching this problem and see what we can find out.

Hi, I just wanted to say I've been having the same problem over the last few days. I rearrange photos in the order I want them (using either the Arrange Photo tool or the Drag to Arrange tool - problem occurs either way) and they stay that way for awhile, and then anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours later, they are in a different order. Very frustrating! I thought there must be some auto-sort gallery setting that was overriding my manual sort, but the settings say "Auto Sort: None."

Here's a link to one photo in the gallery: http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#P-17-12

... that I have repeatedly put next to this photo: http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1191481880_SUd2i

... with the intention of comparing and deleting one. But it just won't stick.

This is a problem with multiple photos within both galleries I'm working on right now, the one above just makes an easy example because the two photos are nearly identical and thus it's obvious when they move.

julian · March 7, 2011

dawn5282 wrote: »

Hi, I just wanted to say I've been having the same problem over the last few days. I rearrange photos in the order I want them (using either the Arrange Photo tool or the Drag to Arrange tool - problem occurs either way) and they stay that way for awhile, and then anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours later, they are in a different order. Very frustrating! I thought there must be some auto-sort gallery setting that was overriding my manual sort, but the settings say "Auto Sort: None."

Here's a link to one photo in the gallery: http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#P-17-12

... that I have repeatedly put next to this photo: http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1191481880_SUd2i

... with the intention of comparing and deleting one. But it just won't stick.

This is a problem with multiple photos within both galleries I'm working on right now, the one above just makes an easy example because the two photos are nearly identical and thus it's obvious when they move.

I just moved this image http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1191481880_SUd2i after this one http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1208373590_R38uW and after 15 minutes it is still there. Please, if possible, don't touch this gallery as I'm trying to reproduce your problem.

Thanks!

dennismullen · March 8, 2011

Well I can not upload a picture to any gallery without tho order changing!
This is screwing up all my hard work.
It all started after the so called fix recently.

capturingimages · March 8, 2011

I'm having a similar problem. I've been uploading new files, using the Arrange function to move them to certain locations in a gallery, saving, and then when I log out, the files automatically move to the last page/spot in the gallery again as though they've just been freshly uploaded. I have to log back in, and they usually stick the second time, but have had to do it 3 times in a row for one file.. very tedious. Is there a fix for this in the works?

Andy · March 8, 2011

capturingimages wrote: »

I'm having a similar problem. I've been uploading new files, using the Arrange function to move them to certain locations in a gallery, saving, and then when I log out, the files automatically move to the last page/spot in the gallery again as though they've just been freshly uploaded. I have to log back in, and they usually stick the second time, but have had to do it 3 times in a row for one file.. very tedious. Is there a fix for this in the works?

Julian, that posted just above, is our Sorcerer in charge of this. We thank you for your patience while he looks into it.

lizzard_nyc · March 8, 2011

photos won't stay in arranged order
I just saw a similar post, so I'm guessing it's an issue but I figured you should know it's happening to me as well.
I have tried to arrange by clicking on the "arrange" box on a single page, that didnt' work. Then I arranged several different shots in the same album, by either dragging them and saving and then when that didn't work, by selecting them and moving them with an arrow to the position I want and it still won't stay. It's time consuming to keep trying it and not having it saved.

This is the album I've tried it on for the last couple of days. Kind of frustrating.
http://lizzardnyc.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Miami-2011/16080208_kRgjE#1206380873_eS6PT

Thanks for your help.

jfriend · March 8, 2011

Did you turn auto-sort off in the gallery settings?

lizzard_nyc · March 8, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

Did you turn auto-sort off in the gallery settings?

I will check this--thank you. I don't usually mess with the settings and use the default. I just saw that others were having similar issues.
Will check when I get home. Gracias.

julian · March 8, 2011

julian wrote: »

I just moved this image http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1191481880_SUd2i after this one http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1208373590_R38uW and after 15 minutes it is still there. Please, if possible, don't touch this gallery as I'm trying to reproduce your problem.

Thanks!

After 19 hours those two photos remain where i put them. I also notice that one image was uploaded after that and it got placed at the end.

I'm wondering if this particular case is a connection issue. How is your internet connection? Do you see a "Saving Position" small message sliding down from the top left corner of the screen after you drag&drop the photo to its new position? It could be the case that your connection is slow and even though you see the photo in the place you dropped it, the request to change the position is not making it to our database. Then when you refresh the page or look at the gallery later on, you will see the photo in its original place.

I'm going to make sure we give a proper message when a request doesn't make it to our database.

Thanks for your patience while we figure out what is going on.

dennismullen · March 8, 2011

julian wrote: »

After 19 hours those two photos remain where i put them. I also notice that one image was uploaded after that and it got placed at the end.

I'm wondering if this particular case is a connection issue. How is your internet connection? Do you see a "Saving Position" small message sliding down from the top left corner of the screen after you drag&drop the photo to its new position? It could be the case that your connection is slow and even though you see the photo in the place you dropped it, the request to change the position is not making it to our database. Then when you refresh the page or look at the gallery later on, you will see the photo in its original place.

I'm going to make sure we give a proper message when a request doesn't make it to our database.

Thanks for your patience while we figure out what is going on.

It happens right away after an upload or arrange. Once set they usually stay where they are.

Maybe there is more than one issue going on, but this does not explain how an uploaded picture goes to the bottom instead of the top like it's supposed to.
And pictures that have stayed in the same place for months suddenly rearrange themselves. Do a search of the messages for arrange problems and you will find plenty of posts complaining.

This problem has been around for years and only went dormant recently to reappear again now.

dennismullen · March 8, 2011

julian wrote: »

I'm wondering if this particular case is a connection issue. How is your internet connection? Do you see a "Saving Position" small message sliding down from the top left corner of the screen after you drag&drop the photo to its new position? It could be the case that your connection is slow and even though you see the photo in the place you dropped it, the request to change the position is not making it to our database. Then when you refresh the page or look at the gallery later on, you will see the photo in its original place.

.

The more I think about it this could be the problem. I have moved a picture over one position and it appears to be saved but the next time I look it's back where it was. Could this broken connection somehow corrupt the database causing the random file rearranging? Can a more secure handshaking process be made?

jfriend · March 8, 2011

julian wrote: »

After 19 hours those two photos remain where i put them. I also notice that one image was uploaded after that and it got placed at the end.

I'm wondering if this particular case is a connection issue. How is your internet connection? Do you see a "Saving Position" small message sliding down from the top left corner of the screen after you drag&drop the photo to its new position? It could be the case that your connection is slow and even though you see the photo in the place you dropped it, the request to change the position is not making it to our database. Then when you refresh the page or look at the gallery later on, you will see the photo in its original place.

I'm going to make sure we give a proper message when a request doesn't make it to our database.

Thanks for your patience while we figure out what is going on.

Julian, last time I looked at a number of client ajax calls, there was no error handling on many ajax calls from the client. So, if someone goes to arrange, it fires the ajax call to commit that change to the server and the ajax call doesn't work - the user is never told anything and the client just merrily continues along thinking it succeeded until later when the data is retrieved fresh from the server and the move never happened. I know this isn't the most critical type of data operation there is, but if you suspect connection issues, then shouldn't the client code inform the user when there are connection issues?

julian · March 8, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

Julian, last time I looked at a number of client ajax calls, there was no error handling on many ajax calls from the client. So, if someone goes to arrange, it fires the ajax call to commit that change to the server and the ajax call doesn't work - the user is never told anything and the client just merrily continues along thinking it succeeded until later when the data is retrieved fresh from the server and the move never happened. I know this isn't the most critical type of data operation there is, but if you suspect connection issues, then shouldn't the client code inform the user when there are connection issues?

I think you are right John. This could explain some of the problems, but not all of them. I'm still working to get to the bottom of this. Thanks for your feedback!.

lizzard_nyc · March 8, 2011

I feel like I'm losing my mind!
I came home changed the settings on my gallery to smugmug default. Arranged my shots--saved my shots and went back to the gallery to find my arrangement had not saved once again.
I posted here on dgrin about it--went back to the gallery and it was there--all neatly arranged-- so I deleted my comment. Came back to the gallery later and processed another shot on picnik, when my edit saved, I looked and noticed my shots were once again out of order :bash:bash:bash

by the way the gallery settings did not save either--I changed it to smugmug default and it's back to "set everything manually".

dawn5282 · March 9, 2011

Still having problems

julian wrote: »

I just moved this image http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1191481880_SUd2i after this one http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Africa/15866679_bBbmw#1208373590_R38uW and after 15 minutes it is still there. Please, if possible, don't touch this gallery as I'm trying to reproduce your problem.

Thanks!

Hi, just wanted to let you know this continues to be a problem with both new galleries I'm currently working on (other one is http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Rwanda-February-2011/16092652_7ug6c). In fact I saw the photo order change in front of my eyes this evening while I was viewing with someone else!

Both gallery settings are definitely set to Auto Sort: Off. Also, someone was hypothesizing this might be due to an Internet connection problem. I have tried rearranging photos on both my work and home computers, with the same result; both locations have strong Internet connections and I've not had a problem with this before.

Hope this is helpful as you continue investigating. Thanks again.

lizzard_nyc · March 9, 2011

lizzard_nyc wrote: »

I feel like I'm losing my mind!
I came home changed the settings on my gallery to smugmug default. Arranged my shots--saved my shots and went back to the gallery to find my arrangement had not saved once again.
I posted here on dgrin about it--went back to the gallery and it was there--all neatly arranged-- so I deleted my comment. Came back to the gallery later and processed another shot on picnik, when my edit saved, I looked and noticed my shots were once again out of order :bash:bash:bash

by the way the gallery settings did not save either--I changed it to smugmug default and it's back to "set everything manually".

Can someone please address the above issue or just tell me if there is a timeline to fix the glitch. I would like to send this album out in an order that makes sense to the viewers as the shots were taken over a week period and the gallery as is has no flow. It is not a paid gig, but still I want the album complete and in order prior to sending it.
If there is no timeline I will go ahead and send it as is and just grit my teeth.

julian · March 9, 2011

lizzard_nyc wrote: »

Can someone please address the above issue or just tell me if there is a timeline to fix the glitch. I would like to send this album out in an order that makes sense to the viewers as the shots were taken over a week period and the gallery as is has no flow. It is not a paid gig, but still I want the album complete and in order prior to sending it.
If there is no timeline I will go ahead and send it as is and just grit my teeth.

Liz, we're working on it and have some ideas on what's going on how to solve it. It's hard because only a portion of our users are experiencing the problems and we have not been able to reproduce it consistently on our test environments.

In the mean time, please try the following:

1. go to "Tools/Arrange/Drag to Arrange"
2. move the last photo to the beginning
3. wait for the "Saving Positions" message (on the top left corner) to disappear
3. move the first photo back to the end
4. press the done button

after doing these, you should be able to rearrange without any problems.

If you continue having issues, please let us know with as much detail as possible what steps are you taking and which galleries you're having issues with.

Thanks!

julian · March 9, 2011

dawn5282 wrote: »

Hi, just wanted to let you know this continues to be a problem with both new galleries I'm currently working on (other one is http://janik.smugmug.com/Travel-Diving/Rwanda-February-2011/16092652_7ug6c). In fact I saw the photo order change in front of my eyes this evening while I was viewing with someone else!

Can you elaborate a little on how this happened? Which view were you on when you saw the photos changing order? was it just one photo moving to the next positon? or moving a few positions over?

dawn5282 wrote: »

Both gallery settings are definitely set to Auto Sort: Off. Also, someone was hypothesizing this might be due to an Internet connection problem. I have tried rearranging photos on both my work and home computers, with the same result; both locations have strong Internet connections and I've not had a problem with this before.

I just noticed that the photos I moved next to each other 2 days ago are now appart again as you described in an earlier post. This is very strange (unless you moved them appart). The only scenario I can see this happening is for the photos being arranged on 2 different computers (or even on the same computer but on different browser windows or tabs) at the same time. Could this be the case?

Thanks for your feedback. It's really helpful.

wayne861 · March 9, 2011

julian wrote: »

Can you elaborate a little on how this happened? Which view were you on when you saw the photos changing order? was it just one photo moving to the next positon? or moving a few positions over?

I just noticed that the photos I moved next to each other 2 days ago are now appart again as you described in an earlier post. This is very strange (unless you moved them appart). The only scenario I can see this happening is for the photos being arranged on 2 different computers (or even on the same computer but on different browser windows or tabs) at the same time. Could this be the case?

Thanks for your feedback. It's really helpful.

Well, it is nice that hitting save changes takes us back to the gallery instead of the gallery doesn't exist message. Not so nice that everything looks fine, just the way you arranged it, and then a day later everything is back to the way it was before arranging the photos, or many photos have randomly moved around. Is this effecting only recently created galleries, or do we need to start going through all of our galleries looking for damage?

All of this seems to have started with the update a couple of weeks ago. How about rolling Smugmug back to an earlier version so we don't have to be beta testers for the current version?

Wayne

"Arrange Photos" not saving the arrangement

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