My wish wish for Smugmug - a win-win idea?
kbevphoto
Registered Users Posts: 110 Major grins
Smugmug idea
CONTEXT:
*First let me say, I am a huge fan of smugmug. I recommend it to anyone that will listen. Over the years, I have used the site every day to share my pix with anyone that it interested.
That said, I also use the site as an offsite backup in conjunction with my other physical backups. Once I remove the junk from a shoot, I upload all the unprocessed pictures to a private gallery before I do any processing. This way I know I have a clean (albeit not RAW) copy of every picture in case disaster strikes. Smugmug isn't a cheap way to restore my pix after a disaster, but if push came to shove, I'd pay to have it all back.
Once I am done processing and have picked the ones that are worthy of public consumption, I upload those to a public gallery. Every gallery on my site has at least one "shadow gallery"of the full shoot. I generally share about 10-20% of my photos from any given shoot.
ISSUES FOR ME:
the shadow galleries add massive amount of clutter to the site from a management POV. When I try to set up a sharegroup, I have to go through hundreds of galleries. If I am using any of the features to move photos around, I have to sort through and endless list of galleries to find the single one I need. Remember, for me, the shadow galleries are purely failsafe backups. There is really nothing I need to access on a regular basis in there. I can always find what I need in a well organized Lightroom catalog on my local machine.
ISSUE FOR SMUGMUG:
Although the cost of storage continues to get cheaper, my account has more than doubled in size once or twice, and I still pay the same fee, years after opening my account. Furthermore, I have no intention of ever going back through the shadow galleries, so my account will only grow over time -- and Smugmug has to pay for the ever-growing amount of storage I use. Smugmug pays for space that is pure waste - and in my case, a LOT of it.
THE FLAW (as I see it):
I have galleries that have literally not been seen or used in years. From what I see, Smugmug takes my uploaded pix and creates several copies of each of them, one for each size that is viewable. Then it stores my original and it's lesser clones forever. That means that the total size of my footprint is higher (possibly much higher) than it needs to be.
THE IDEA:
simply put: "mothballing" ( or just plain "archiving")
I would really like to see an option to mothball galleries. A mothballed gallery would have these characteristics:
* it would only store the original and a thumbnail. Other copies would be purged
* would be proactively identified by Smugmug if a fixed period has gone by and a gallery has not gotten any traffic. Eg after a hitless year, smugmug would email me to let me know that "the following galleries are scheduled to be mothballed"
* mothballed galleries would be excluded from general views/lists, and potentially relegated to an entire section where mothballed galleries reside. [The easiest way to do this from a technical POV might be to create a separate, linked account type. I call elaborate, but I'm sure the geeks can think of several ways.]
* they would have an option to be "restored" which would generate the full set of photos again for easier viewing and put it back in the site as a "full" gallery
THE WIN-WIN:
To me: I get to keep all my stuff without suffering from the ever-growing amount of clutter
To the smug: they get to reduce my storage footprint by a fair amount
I would actually pay to do this, even though it save Smugmug money. They clutter on my site is a lot. I am fairly organized, so it isn't too debilitating.
I realize there may be something on the site that allows me to do this and I'm just a fool, but I figured I would out this out there in case it hasn't been discussed in this forum before. I recently published my workflow in another forum if you are curious how I manage my pics.
Keith
CONTEXT:
*First let me say, I am a huge fan of smugmug. I recommend it to anyone that will listen. Over the years, I have used the site every day to share my pix with anyone that it interested.
That said, I also use the site as an offsite backup in conjunction with my other physical backups. Once I remove the junk from a shoot, I upload all the unprocessed pictures to a private gallery before I do any processing. This way I know I have a clean (albeit not RAW) copy of every picture in case disaster strikes. Smugmug isn't a cheap way to restore my pix after a disaster, but if push came to shove, I'd pay to have it all back.
Once I am done processing and have picked the ones that are worthy of public consumption, I upload those to a public gallery. Every gallery on my site has at least one "shadow gallery"of the full shoot. I generally share about 10-20% of my photos from any given shoot.
ISSUES FOR ME:
the shadow galleries add massive amount of clutter to the site from a management POV. When I try to set up a sharegroup, I have to go through hundreds of galleries. If I am using any of the features to move photos around, I have to sort through and endless list of galleries to find the single one I need. Remember, for me, the shadow galleries are purely failsafe backups. There is really nothing I need to access on a regular basis in there. I can always find what I need in a well organized Lightroom catalog on my local machine.
ISSUE FOR SMUGMUG:
Although the cost of storage continues to get cheaper, my account has more than doubled in size once or twice, and I still pay the same fee, years after opening my account. Furthermore, I have no intention of ever going back through the shadow galleries, so my account will only grow over time -- and Smugmug has to pay for the ever-growing amount of storage I use. Smugmug pays for space that is pure waste - and in my case, a LOT of it.
THE FLAW (as I see it):
I have galleries that have literally not been seen or used in years. From what I see, Smugmug takes my uploaded pix and creates several copies of each of them, one for each size that is viewable. Then it stores my original and it's lesser clones forever. That means that the total size of my footprint is higher (possibly much higher) than it needs to be.
THE IDEA:
simply put: "mothballing" ( or just plain "archiving")
I would really like to see an option to mothball galleries. A mothballed gallery would have these characteristics:
* it would only store the original and a thumbnail. Other copies would be purged
* would be proactively identified by Smugmug if a fixed period has gone by and a gallery has not gotten any traffic. Eg after a hitless year, smugmug would email me to let me know that "the following galleries are scheduled to be mothballed"
* mothballed galleries would be excluded from general views/lists, and potentially relegated to an entire section where mothballed galleries reside. [The easiest way to do this from a technical POV might be to create a separate, linked account type. I call elaborate, but I'm sure the geeks can think of several ways.]
* they would have an option to be "restored" which would generate the full set of photos again for easier viewing and put it back in the site as a "full" gallery
THE WIN-WIN:
To me: I get to keep all my stuff without suffering from the ever-growing amount of clutter
To the smug: they get to reduce my storage footprint by a fair amount
I would actually pay to do this, even though it save Smugmug money. They clutter on my site is a lot. I am fairly organized, so it isn't too debilitating.
I realize there may be something on the site that allows me to do this and I'm just a fool, but I figured I would out this out there in case it hasn't been discussed in this forum before. I recently published my workflow in another forum if you are curious how I manage my pics.
Keith
0
Comments
So my account runs across the same issue as yours where there's a lot of galleries that aren't accessed for years. I've actually given up on any feature that requires a dropdown of galleries since it shows a 'slow script' message on even my fastest machine, and is such a pain to go through even when loaded that it's just better to figure out how to live without it or manually use the API.
It would be nice to be able to exclude galleries, but frankly, I don't see this happening. It's a lot of development work to create something like this, and the storage costs from Amazon are more when data is moved via upload/download versus just stored. I don't see the development costs offsetting the storage cost savings.
If it's really becoming a problem to navigate these galleries and you really need to do so, an easy solution would be to get a basic SM account in addition to your current one. Then, you have multiple accounts and they don't interfere with each other.
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This is a good answer, and the money certainly won't break the bank. It still seem technically fairly easy to make this type of change. Not "simple", but not impossible either. Would certainly be curious if the Powers that Be have ever considered this.
I know the business model is strained a little with the current buffet they serve for $40/year
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The drop-down situation is the most challenging for me. I shoot weddings, and haven't found an ideal way for organization. Let me try to explain...
Category > Sub-Category > Galleries
maps to:
Weddings > [Bride & Groom Name] > [All Images (hidden like the original post), Highlights, Ceremony, Reception, etc, etc.]
Each bride and groom have the same galleries in the sub-category, so if I ever need to select a gallery from a drop down, I see a long list with multiple "All Images" or "Highlights", etc. Of course one solution would be to name the gallery with something like "All Images BG" and "Highlights BG" (Bride & Grooms initials), but that just makes for a messy naming convention where it seems unneeded...
So, bottom line, I agree. It'd be nice.
I recently took to the manual clean-up function by creating a Category named "Archive" and using the move-gallery function to move masses of galleries into that new archive Category. It cleans up my page view, but doesn't handle the issue of drop-down menus.
And my post may be best suited for a different thread all together so we don't diffuse the importance of the original post, but I thought I'd toss my experiences into the ring too.
Cheers!
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No bribery needed. Would love it if you guys could get this into our feedback system http://feedback.smugmug.com thanks!
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