Site Designs - Save Personal Versions?

Darter02

Under Settings in the Customizer I see where you can name your design theme. I've named my first, experimental, design and used a number to denote the version. I've been working on this Design, just learning the ins & outs of the interface.

I'd like to make various Designs, and see what I really can do. I'd hoped I'd be able to swap between different looks with ease, and go back to an earlier design if needed.

In order to test out if I could do this, I renamed my design with, hit done, and then reloaded the Choose a New Design page. It has my new renamed Design at the top, but I don't see the earlier version.

How do I save Designs, and then load them so I can experiment and not worry about loosing hours of work on one design? It would be great to be able to try a whole lot of different things, and if I don't like something, reload an older design.

And just to be specific, I am not talking about Themes, which I sorted out how to make.

Darter02

So I am guessing there isn't a means to do this...

billw

Darter02 wrote: »

So I am guessing there isn't a means to do this...

As far as I can tell, if you want to try a different design, or a variation on a design, you have to start over by choosing the base design again.

I think what you're asking is this: to be able to hover over a design under "My Designs" and have a "Duplicate" option (in addition to the "Edit" and "Delete" options).

That sounds like a feature request.

Darter02

Yeah, I think it'd be really useful to be able to save your complete design and be able to go back to it if you try a new design. I would enjoy simply building a variety of site designs, playing with the various elements, and see which design works the best for me. Right now if I do that I'll loose my current design and would have to build it from scratch if I didn't like my next design.

phaserbeam

Darter02 wrote: »

Yeah, I think it'd be really useful to be able to save your complete design and be able to go back to it if you try a new design.

+1
I would like to play with small corrections to my default design but i fear to loose all my previous work. Make a copy of the "working" design and start playing with the copy might be really useful.

Please add "Make a copy" when hover the current design.

LPC

See here for the difference between Publish and Unveil -

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=237540

You can have as many 'in progress' designs as you want.

billw

LPC wrote: »

See here for the difference between Publish and Unveil -

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=237540

You can have as many 'in progress' designs as you want.

Yes, but ...

Let's say I've got a design based on "Ludwig". I've customized it quite a bit. I'd like to keep those customizations but also tweak them some more. So I'd like to make a copy of my current design and work on the copy. That way I can flip between the two designs, perhaps publishing one and then the other and gauging reactions. Or if I really screw up the copy, I can revert to the original.

Darter02

From that thread you linked to:

I have PUBLISHED half a dozen design choices so far and deleted a few of my initial attempts completely but the public are still only seeing my Legacy site because I am yet to UNVEIL. You can continue to work on or delete as many PUBLISHED designs as you like before deciding on the best one. Once you have more than one PUBLISHED design you can either click on the wrench to continue to edit it or the bin to delete it.

I've been trying to make copies by renaming my design. That didn't work. I'm going to go in and see if I can publish multiple copies and will post later if this does the trick.

phaserbeam

LPC wrote: »

You can have as many 'in progress' designs as you want.

Yes... but if i want to make a design that looks like my current one with just a few changes and keep the old one as backup i have to start from scratch (select some other design and make all changes that i did before again...).

Mike55YU

From the SmugMug instructions:

Step 4. Click publish!


"Love it? Hit Done! We'll publish your new site so that it's on view to the world. Congratulations! "

This makes me wary to try anything in the new site.

Darter02

Ok, here are some screen caps of what I am talking about. Note: this is not about saving Themes.

I've the most recent design I've created. I enter a name for my Design in the Setting menu. I hit Done & Publish.



If I go to the Choose a new Site Design I can see my Design that I just named & published.





OK, I then went back in the Customizer and made a few changes to my design, and then renamed it to "LutzR2 002." I hit Done, and Publish. When I go back to Choose a New Site Design window I only see the most current Design.



I do not see my older "LutzR2 001" named Design is located. It would be nice to be able to have access to designs I've created and saved. That way I could really let go and play around with out having to worry about loosing something that may work better than later efforts. It's about experimenting, and not having to rebuild from scratch when I realize an earlier design worked better.

phaserbeam

Mike55YU wrote: »

This makes me wary to try anything in the new site.

Well... as long as you did not unveil your site "publish" will just update the owners view. Your visitors will still see the legacy site.

Right after the new SmugMug got unveiled live a week ago i started to play with the new smugmug designs without change/update my legacy site. In sandbox mode publish will not update your legacy site. It may affect a few things, i think there are a few bugreports open, but in my case the legacy site really did not change until i unveiled it.

This is different to what we are asking for in this thread. We want to be able to make a copy of the current design, make some changes to it, and switch between both designs to get some feedback from visitors (for example).

I think that should be pretty easy since every design you try and customize got already named like "copy of ludwig". So there does already exist a "copy" feature for the original designs. Some of us just find it helpful to start a fork/create a copy of an existing/customized design.

billw

Darter02 wrote: »

I do not see my older "LutzR2 001" named Design is located. It would be nice to be able to have access to designs I've created and saved. That way I could really let go and play around with out having to worry about loosing something that may work better than later efforts. It's about experimenting, and not having to rebuild from scratch when I realize an earlier design worked better.

What you are seeing is the correct current behaviour. Naming a design just renames it, it does not create a new version. What phaserbeam and I are asking for is a "Make a Copy" or "Duplicate" option when you hover over a design

billw

phaserbeam wrote: »

In sandbox mode publish will not update your legacy site. It may affect a few things, i think there are a few bugreports open, but in my case the legacy site really did not change until i unveiled it.

Be aware that deleting photos or galleries while in the sandbox will delete them in legacy. Adding photos to existing galleries will add them to the legacy gallery. New galleries added in the sandbox will go in a "Smug Preview" category in legacy ().

Darter02

billw wrote: »

What you are seeing is the correct current behaviour. Naming a design just renames it, it does not create a new version. What phaserbeam and I are asking for is a "Make a Copy" or "Duplicate" option when you hover over a design

What I started this thread about is asking how I can create multiple designs. When I go to "Choose a Design" I'd like to see more than my current, active one listed under "My Designs." If there another way for me to choose various saved Designs I'd love to know where to find this feature.

billw

Darter02 wrote: »

What I started this thread about is asking how I can create multiple designs. When I go to "Choose a Design" I'd like to see more than my current, active one listed under "My Designs." If there another way for me to choose various saved Designs I'd love to know where to find this feature.

As far as I can tell, at the moment there is only one way to do this.

Let's say you've started with the "Ludwig" design. You've customized it and named it "MyLudwig_01". Now scroll down and click on the "Ludwig" template, then click on "Customize", then "Done" - smugmug will create a "Copy of Ludwig" under "My Designs". You can now Edit and rename the new "Copy of Ludwig" to "My Ludwig_02" and start customizing it.

The downside is that you are starting over with a "virgin" template.

If what you want to do is save various versions of your design as it evolves -- you can't do that at the moment. That's why I think there should be a feature request to smugmug for a "Create Copy" or "Duplicate" option when you hover over one of your existing designs.

Sheaf

We will likely make a way for you to make a copy of any of your current site Designs. So using billw's example, you wouldn't have to start over with a "virgin" template. I don't know when it will be done, but it's on our plate.

billw

Sheaf wrote: »

We will likely make a way for you to make a copy of any of your current site Designs. So using billw's example, you wouldn't have to start over with a "virgin" template. I don't know when it will be done, but it's on our plate.

Thank you!

Darter02

Sheaf wrote: »

We will likely make a way for you to make a copy of any of your current site Designs. So using billw's example, you wouldn't have to start over with a "virgin" template. I don't know when it will be done, but it's on our plate.

Cool beans. I am eager to take advantage of this feature. I guess it's best it's not there now. I am WAY behind on projects from playing around with the new site. If this was implemented now I'd never get things done around here.

SmugMeg

There's also a feature you may not have used yet that can help you out in the meantime, if you want to experiment with changes without messing up your current design. If you go into the customizer and hover over the various sections of your site (Entire Site, Homepage, All Folders, etc), you will see a little curved arrow to the right:

Clicking on that will allow you to revert your changes on that section to the previously published version.

So, feel free to go in and try out whatever customizations you like -- if you don't like it, as long as you don't publish the changes, you can always go back in and revert to what is currently published.

Darter02

SmugMeg wrote: »

There's also a feature you may not have used yet that can help you out in the meantime, if you want to experiment with changes without messing up your current design. If you go into the customizer and hover over the various sections of your site (Entire Site, Homepage, All Folders, etc), you will see a little curved arrow to the right:

Clicking on that will allow you to revert your changes on that section to the previously published version.

So, feel free to go in and try out whatever customizations you like -- if you don't like it, as long as you don't publish the changes, you can always go back in and revert to what is currently published.

I've used that while doing small changes. What I'd like to to be able to do complete overhauls. Since this ability is in the works, I'm happy.

Darter02

Would the moderator please move this thread to SmugMug Feature Requests?

Thanks!

Darter02

Again, can this be moved to the Feature Request forum? Thanks.

flyingwolf

Sheaf wrote: »

We will likely make a way for you to make a copy of any of your current site Designs. So using billw's example, you wouldn't have to start over with a "virgin" template. I don't know when it will be done, but it's on our plate.

So now that it has been 2 years I can assume that plate has been through the dishwasher a few times, is this ever going to be setup?

I would love to have the ability for my wife or second shooter to go through and mock up a number of designs based off my current one without having to make a gigantic amount of changes.

leftquark

While we're not necessarily working on making copies of designs, we are looking at improving the way Customization and Designs are done, making it easier for you to tweak changes without having to go through an intensive amount of work.