I Need Help in Customizing my Smugmug Site

rpcrowe

I need help with customizing smugmug.com; since I am being forced to convert away from the Legacy format which I have used for over five years and which I loved.

I have not found any instructions on how to customize my smugmug.com format to get it like I want it.

I have tentatively selected the ISIS format and want to do the following. However, I am not wedded to the ISIS format and will be happy to use virtually any format…


1. HOME PAGE: I actually like the look of the Home Page because it displays images in their native format. Rectangular formatted images are shown as rectangles and horizontal and vertical formatted images are shown in the formats in which I have saved them to smugmug.com.







I would like to limit or choose the various images that are displayed on this page. I may not want to display certain images. The images that appear on my ISIS Home Page are the most recent images I have uploaded to smugmug. I also have what look like duplicates of certain images saved in my galleries appearing on the Home Page but these are they are not actually duplicates. They could be slightly different crops or processing choices that I have used to link to on various digital photo forums. As an example, the riverboat and polo images above. I would like to select which of these seemingly dupes to display and which not to display.


2. BROWSE: I would like any photos to appear in the format in which I have saved the images and not be forced into a square format. This correct format is displayed in the Home Page but, they are all crammed into square formats on the browse page.






In reality, I like the look of the home page except for the choice of images because it displays the images in the format in which they were saved to smugmug.com but, I think that the browse pages look terrible with the images forced into a square format. I have noticed that many of the smugmug.com pages in various configurations try to stick rectangular images into a square format. This gives new meaning to “a square peg in a round hole”.


3. I would like a place to list my galleries individually, not in groupings like “Pets”, “Travel”, etc. I don’t like having to go the extra step from Home page, to browse page, and then to gallery list page to finally choose a gallery that I want to examine.


4. When I get to the page listing the individual galleries under the groupings, these are again forced into square formats and IMO look absolutely horrible.







I could live with the browse just showing a text listing of gallery types and within the gallery types show text listing of the various galleries…


5. Once I am off the Home page and off the browse pages, my smugmug.com galleries look just about what they looked like in the Legacy version. I am quite happy with this because I always liked the smugmug.com setup.






One problem is that I don't seem to find the arrow which directs me to the last image or first image. The Legacy individual gallery format has single arrows > or < which will advance the selections one at a time. However there are double arrows >> or << which will advance the images to the last or back to the first. I cannot seem to find the double arrows << or >> and navigating through a hundred or so images individually is a lot of work.


If I could find a written tutorial on how to modify this site, I could probably do much of this customization myself. However, since I have not been able to find directions and the site is not particularly intuitive for me, I am asking for help...

However, I do wish that the Smugmug.com "GODS" had deemed it feasible to include the Legacy style as one of the display options...

Allen

rpcrowe wrote: »

...

One problem is that I don't seem to find the arrow which directs me to the last image or first image. The Legacy individual gallery format has single arrows > or < which will advance the selections one at a time. However there are double arrows >> or << which will advance the images to the last or back to the first. I cannot seem to find the double arrows << or >> and navigating through a hundred or so images individually is a lot of work.
...

The new page nav, which I think is absolutely ridiculous, is missing the first and last page double arrows.
I use these all the time in legacy and really miss them.

I especially dislike those huge chevrons taking up a lot of space.

James Lyall

Allen wrote: »

The new page nav, which I think is absolutely ridiculous, is missing the first and last page double arrows.
I use these all the time in legacy and really miss them.

I especially dislike those huge chevrons taking up a lot of space.

I second that! Can't be a huge job to programme them back in.

leftquark

rpcrowe wrote: »

I need help with customizing smugmug.com; since I am being forced to convert away from the Legacy format which I have used for over five years and which I loved.

Have you tried to play around with the site at all? Based on some of your questions it seems as if you haven't even attempted to learn the New SmugMug. For example, almost all of your complaints would be fixed by noting that you can change the layout of your photos from "Grid" (Square) to "Collage Landscape". One little setting fixes pretty much all of your complaints. Additionally, there are options for which photos are displayed in each of the boxes. There's even an option for "Photos I choose" ... again, exactly what you want. These options are fairly obvious to find.

SM offers a number of video tutorials, which I found to be extremely easy to watch and more beneficial then a text instructions. They actually show you how to do the things you're asking ... without you having to stumble around looking "wait, where is that option that they say I need to choose?"

Additionally, there's really no risk in playing around because you can undo any changes that don't do what you want. Basically, if you keep your site unveiled you can make a change, and if you like it, click "Publish." Then make another change ... if you don't like it, click "Discard Changes."

With that said, I'll help you out here...

rpcrowe wrote: »

1. HOME PAGE: I actually like the look of the Home Page because it displays images in their native format. Rectangular formatted images are shown as rectangles and horizontal and vertical formatted images are shown in the formats in which I have saved them to smugmug.com.

I would like to limit or choose the various images that are displayed on this page. I may not want to display certain images. The images that appear on my ISIS Home Page are the most recent images I have uploaded to smugmug. I also have what look like duplicates of certain images saved in my galleries appearing on the Home Page but these are they are not actually duplicates. They could be slightly different crops or processing choices that I have used to link to on various digital photo forums. As an example, the riverboat and polo images above. I would like to select which of these seemingly dupes to display and which not to display.

You can create a unique homepage by looking at the following link: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1210651-customization-how-do-i-create-a-unique-home-page. However, to summarize:

1. Click Customize -> Customize Site.
2. On the sidebar on the right choose "Homepage".
3. Remove whatever content block is in the main part of your page. It's prob. a multi-photo content block showing your recent photos. For now the easiest thing is to delete it.
4. Instead, make sure the "Content" tab is selected and go down to the section called "Add Content Blocks", look for the one called "Photo" and under it you will see "Multiple Photos". Drag that onto your homepgae.
5. Fill out the following options:
a. Title (Make it blank, otherwise text will show up above the photos.
b. Select From: "Photos I Choose"
c. Skip Photos for now
d. Action on Click: Open Lightbox
e. Layout: Collage Landscape
f. Photo Size: Choose whichever size you want. You can edit this later and change it if you want.
g. Vary Photo Height: On
h. Now go back to Photos and click "Choose Photos". Every photo you click on will be selected. On the right side of the window you can see the # of photos selected. Re-click on a photo to un-select it. Click on the "Home" and back buttons on the top of the window to go back to the beginning of your photos. When you've selected all your photos click done. Click done again. You now have a collage landscape view of the photos you've selected.

You can edit the photos chosen at any time by making sure you're on your "Homepage" and clicking the little wrench (options) icon next to the multi-photo block.

Wallah, your homepage is just as you want!

rpcrowe wrote: »

2. BROWSE: I would like any photos to appear in the format in which I have saved the images and not be forced into a square format. This correct format is displayed in the Home Page but, they are all crammed into square formats on the browse page.

In reality, I like the look of the home page except for the choice of images because it displays the images in the format in which they were saved to smugmug.com but, I think that the browse pages look terrible with the images forced into a square format. I have noticed that many of the smugmug.com pages in various configurations try to stick rectangular images into a square format. This gives new meaning to “a square peg in a round hole”.

Navigate to your www.yourwebsite.com/browse/ in your URL. Go back to Customize -> Customize Site. You'll notice "All Folders" is selected. You will already see a content block placed in your webpage. Most likely it's a "Folders, Galleries & Pages" block. You can either continue to use that if you want or you can delete it and place in individual Folders, Galleries, and Pages blocks as you want. However, to fix the issue you're describing, just do the following:

1. Click the wrench icon (options).
The following options are under the tab called "Basic"
2. Under "Layout" change "Grid" to "Collage Landscape"
3. Under "size" select your size.
4. Under "Vary Height" select no (you could select yes if you want, but each row could be a different height. I prefer the browse page to be uniform but it's personal preference).
Now go to the "Display" tab.
5. Under "spacing" choose if you want there to be a gap between photos.
6. Under "Info Style" choose how you want the folder/gallery titles to be displayed. Bottom Bar puts a bar on the bottom (always there, covering up the bottom of hte photo), under puts the title below the photo (not covering up the photo), etc.
7. Info Hover controls what happens when the user puts their mouse over the image.
8. Pagination controls what happens when there's too many folders/galleries to display. Turning pagination on will limit the # initially displayed. It can either automatically load more (scroll) or will show a "Load More..." icon (click). Setting pagination off will display all the folders or galleries.
9. Select how you want to sort.
Click done. Your all set!

rpcrowe wrote: »

3. I would like a place to list my galleries individually, not in groupings like “Pets”, “Travel”, etc. I don’t like having to go the extra step from Home page, to browse page, and then to gallery list page to finally choose a gallery that I want to examine.

Are you talking about adding a drop-down menu with links to certain galleries? Or do you just want a page that has icons for certain galleries? I'm not sure what you're asking for here.

rpcrowe wrote: »

4. When I get to the page listing the individual galleries under the groupings, these are again forced into square formats and IMO look absolutely horrible.

I could live with the browse just showing a text listing of gallery types and within the gallery types show text listing of the various galleries…

I believe you should have fixed this by doing the fix in #2 above. However, if you had both a "Folder block" and a "gallery block" you will need to repeat the steps in #2 above for your gallery block.

rpcrowe wrote: »

One problem is that I don't seem to find the arrow which directs me to the last image or first image. The Legacy individual gallery format has single arrows > or < which will advance the selections one at a time. However there are double arrows >> or << which will advance the images to the last or back to the first. I cannot seem to find the double arrows << or >> and navigating through a hundred or so images individually is a lot of work.

Unfortunately at this time there is no way to jump to the first or last You'll have to submit a feature request. I think it's silly they took away features but oh well. There is a drop-down menu that will let you fairly quickly jump to the last page. Sure it's one more click and I know you might want to complain ... but really, 1 more click? Not worth getting upset over. Your page looks much nicer than it did before -- I'd be happy about that

rpcrowe wrote: »

If I could find a written tutorial on how to modify this site, I could probably do much of this customization myself. However, since I have not been able to find directions and the site is not particularly intuitive for me, I am asking for help...

See http://help.smugmug.com and http://school.smugmug.com. There's a number of things out there.

rpcrowe wrote: »

However, I do wish that the Smugmug.com "GODS" had deemed it feasible to include the Legacy style as one of the display options...

They actually did ... see http://school.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Tips/Get-the-Legacy-Look

Hope that helps

James Lyall

Aaron, I take off my hat to you for taking the time and effort to respond in such a detailed and helpful fashion. I am sure that there will be many of us out there who will find this contribution extremely valuable.
Thank you.