Password protected galleries and URLs

arjunrc

Hi, here is my situation:
I've created a private gallery. Let's call it myprivate. I want an easy to share URL I can pass on to family and friends. I am facing the following issues:

a) I am being forced to pre-fix a category. Example, I have to do arjunrc.smugmug.com/personal/myprivate instead of just a nicer virtual URL of arjunrc.smugmug.com/myprivate. Any way I can have a URL like the latter? Many of the visitors for this gallery do not bookmark - they just type it in by memory

b) Worse, it looks like even if I convince them to enter (and remember) arjunrc.smugmug.com/personal/myprivate it doesn't work! They need to add my album id etc - which is a garble of numbers. Its impossible for them to remember this and bookmarking is the only option

So what options do I have to keep the gallery password protected, and yet, offer a easy to remember (not bookmark) URL?

jhofker

Have you considered using an Event instead? Although I don't think I'd ever depend on someone to remember a URL...that's the whole point of bookmarks/favorites. :-)

arjunrc

jhofker, I am currently a paid power user (not pro) - I don't think its available to power users. I also don't think by the description that is what I need.
Yes, I know if you bookmark you don't need to remember, but I know the people who visit never bookmark based on past experience.

In general, I find the smugmug approach of enforcing keys & album ids to solve the issue of galleries moving later to not be efficient - I may be wrong as I am new to smugmug. I would have thought a better approach is simply to create virtual URLs that map to real URLs irrespective of where they move (arjunrc.smugmug.com/landscapes maps to my landscapes album irrespective of where I move it in the future). This of course mandates unique gallery names. Maybe smugmug has a different design philosophy here and I am just a newbie getting used to the smugmug world :-).

denisegoldberg

you might try using a Vanity URL.

--- Denise

arjunrc

Thanks Denise. thats quite some javascript jugglery there :-)
Yes, I will have to resort to that hack, it seems. Thank you.
The only issue is that this forces me to list my private & unlisted gallery URLs for everyone to see if they do a view->source, which defeats the purpose of an unlisted gallery, but if thats the only way, thats the only way!

jfriend

arjunrc wrote: »

Hi, here is my situation:
I've created a private gallery. Let's call it myprivate. I want an easy to share URL I can pass on to family and friends. I am facing the following issues:

a) I am being forced to pre-fix a category. Example, I have to do arjunrc.smugmug.com/personal/myprivate instead of just a nicer virtual URL of arjunrc.smugmug.com/myprivate. Any way I can have a URL like the latter? Many of the visitors for this gallery do not bookmark - they just type it in by memory

b) Worse, it looks like even if I convince them to enter (and remember) arjunrc.smugmug.com/personal/myprivate it doesn't work! They need to add my album id etc - which is a garble of numbers. Its impossible for them to remember this and bookmarking is the only option

So what options do I have to keep the gallery password protected, and yet, offer a easy to remember (not bookmark) URL?

Unlisted URLs can be created with no category in them like this:

http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/9183002_77rfNW

You take the original URL:

http://jfriend.smugmug.com/Other2/Galley-Name-Parsing-Test/9183002_77rfNW#!i=613143783&k=oWV5A

and grab the part in red and add it to the end of this (obviously, you put in your own domain):

http://jfriend.smugmug.com/gallery/9183002_77rfNW

to make a new URL that does not have the category in it.

arjunrc

Ah ok, I see. So the main URL locator is that number set. Okay,
so now I am down to:
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/myprivate/2342423_212xx

That's an improvement. I think I'll now just add an alias mapping to my DNS manager to map myprivate to myprivate/2342423_212xx. Then I'll be down to just inspire.roychowdhury.org/myprivate. Fortunately, I only have one private gallery for which I am fretting so much about and won't bother with work arounds for other private galleries.

Technically speaking, I still think this is not the right way to implement URL virtualization by smugmug, but hey, that's just my opinion.

Thank you.

jfriend

arjunrc wrote: »

Ah ok, I see. So the main URL locator is that number set. Okay,
so now I am down to:
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/myprivate/2342423_212xx

That's an improvement. I think I'll now just add an alias mapping to my DNS manager to map myprivate to myprivate/2342423_212xx. Then I'll be down to just inspire.roychowdhury.org/myprivate. Fortunately, I only have one private gallery for which I am fretting so much about and won't bother with work arounds for other private galleries.

Technically speaking, I still think this is not the right way to implement URL virtualization by smugmug, but hey, that's just my opinion.

Thank you.

At the smugmug level, it should be:

http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/gallery/2342423_212xx

not

http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/myprivate/2342423_212xx

It is the "gallery" keyword that tells it to look just for the gallery number.

arjunrc

John, that does not seem to be the case here. (i.e. gallery keyword)
Based on what I read about how/why Smugmug introduced this album id/key pair in the URL, it is by itself a sufficient mechanism to locate the gallery irrespective of the hierarchy specified in the URL. That seems to be consistent with what I am seeing.

All of these links redirect to the same pblogtest gallery, for example

http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/Other/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (real URL)
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (without category just gallery name)
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/gallery/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (with gallery keyword and no category)
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/gobbledegook/yepyepmartiens/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (complete gobbledegook hierarchy)

jfriend

arjunrc wrote: »

John, that does not seem to be the case here. (i.e. gallery keyword)
Based on what I read about how/why Smugmug introduced this album id/key pair in the URL, it is by itself a sufficient mechanism to locate the gallery irrespective of the hierarchy specified in the URL. That seems to be consistent with what I am seeing.

All of these links redirect to the same pblogtest gallery, for example

http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/Other/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (real URL)
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (without category just gallery name)
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/gallery/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (with gallery keyword and no category)
http://inspire.roychowdhury.org/gobbledegook/yepyepmartiens/pblogtest/24110482_8SpPJH (complete gobbledegook hierarchy)

I know it works sometimes. I'm not sure it always works. If it suits your needs, go for it.