Links in the New SM

LJ2b2c · September 30, 2013

In the Old SM, the link to a Gallery appeared to have the Category as part of the URL. However, if I moved the Gallery to another Category, the old link still got the user to the same place.

Is this still the case after migration to the New SM? Just trying to prepare.

Thanks

richpepp · September 30, 2013

As far as I can see that answer to that is no if you are referring to complete galleries as the gallery no longer appears to use the special code that they put on the end so it only uses the category name and changing that name breaks the link.

Photos however do appear to be okay as when you pick up a link for a photo it contains this code so you can mess with whatever is before and it still works. e.g.

www.petermclarenfineart.com/Cyclist/i-xt2h7Vq/1/S/IMG_0004-S.jpg

is the photo in it's original gallery, but

www.petermclarenfineart.com/lovelybicycles/i-xt2h7Vq/1/S/IMG_0004-S.jpg

will also work

Rich

LJ2b2c · September 30, 2013

Ouch, that hurts. I've given out links to Galleries for a long time, and then moved them later between Categories and Sub-Categories, without concern.

I understand with the New SM, you can customize the Link Not Found page. Is this a global for the site type change, or can it be link specific???

richpepp · September 30, 2013

LJ2b2c wrote: »

I understand with the New SM, you can customize the Link Not Found page. Is this a global for the site type change, or can it be link specific???

It's global - there is only one 404 page. I had this recently where someone changed a gallery name after someone else had released a URL onto facebook. So what I did was just to create a smugmug 'page' with the original name and hence URL and then put a big message on that saying that sorry the gallery had moved and it was now here and link to the new gallery.

The only gotya with that technique is that the page can't be unlisted as if you make something unlisted you get another magic code at the end of the gallery to make it difficult to guess. As long as it's a page you make it is probably ok as I don't have anywhere where I list all of the pages and hence normal visitors shouldn't find the redirect page. The only unfortunate exception is 'Folders'. In my case someone had renamed a top level folder so I had to create a new folder to put my 'redirect' pages in. Unfortunately that folder can't be unlisted so it appears in places I would rather it wasn't. What I'm doing at the moment is tracking hits on that folder and once they die down it's going.

Wish there was a better solution. I used to love the fact that you had a gallery URL that was permanent

Rich

LJ2b2c · September 30, 2013

FYI, it appears;

http://www.petermclarenfineart.com/lovelybicycles/i-xt2h7Vq/1/S/i-xt2h7Vq-S.jpg

Will also still work... This is the old SM format for that photo (did not have the image name ie. IMG_0004). It uses the ID for the jpg as well.

richpepp · September 30, 2013

LJ2b2c wrote: »

FYI, it appears;

http://www.petermclarenfineart.com/lovelybicycles/i-xt2h7Vq/1/S/i-xt2h7Vq-S.jpg

Will also still work... This is the old SM format for that photo (did not have the image name ie. IMG_0004). It uses the ID for the jpg as well.

Even nicer - thanks & well spotted

Rich

rnrjosh · September 30, 2013

There is also a way to (sort of) get a "permalink" in the New SmugMug, so that a gallery link will continue to work, even you move a gallery to another place. To do this, you must enable the shopping cart and external embedding in the gallery settings (at least temporarily). Then, click the Share icon in the gallery > Get a Link > Gallery Links. Copy the Batch Buy link. Then, change the /buy/ in the URL to /gallery/. That link will contain the gallery ID and key, which will allow the link to properly redirect, even if you move the gallery to another folder. Yes, it's a bit hacky

I would love to have a true "permalink" option myself as well, and I've filed a feature request for this, so hopefully this will be something we can allow you to generate more easily in the future. Hope this helps for now!

richpepp · October 1, 2013

Thanks for that Josh. I had tried a similar trick using hideowner but your trick is better. Hacks are fine by me

tx

Rich

LJ2b2c · October 1, 2013

rnrjosh wrote: »

There is also a way to (sort of) get a "permalink" in the New SmugMug, so that a gallery link will continue to work, even you move a gallery to another place. To do this, you must enable the shopping cart and external embedding in the gallery settings (at least temporarily). Then, click the Share icon in the gallery > Get a Link > Gallery Links. Copy the Batch Buy link. Then, change the /buy/ in the URL to /gallery/. That link will contain the gallery ID and key, which will allow the link to properly redirect, even if you move the gallery to another folder. Yes, it's a bit hacky

I would love to have a true "permalink" option myself as well, and I've filed a feature request for this, so hopefully this will be something we can allow you to generate more easily in the future. Hope this helps for now!

So if the links I have already given out with the old SM already have the Gallery Key, would they not still work in the new SM??? Sounds like the Key is the key?

Allen · October 1, 2013

LJ2b2c wrote: »

So if the links I have already given out with the old SM already have the Gallery Key, would they not still work in the new SM??? Sounds like the Key is the key?

If you gave out a gallery link with the XXXXXXXX_xxxxxxx at the end it will work.

These also work in NewSmug as I have them all over the place.

GRBlizz · October 18, 2013

This problem is killing me as a blogger.

I use SmugMug as the photo site for an active community blog, and I have 2-3 galleries a week that get shared in blogs and newsletters.

In the past, I could just select the gallery permalink from the URL window to share, and the gallery could still be findable after multiple reorganizations. Now, I have to do all the steps of

1. Click on a photo
2. Select Get a Link
3. Copy the gallery ID from the Buy link
4. Return to Gallery
5. Paste the link to the end of the gallery URL
6. Copy the new longer URL
7. Paste in blog (or shorten in smu.gs and then paste).

So basically, a 2 step process (copy link from URL block, paste in blog) has gone to 7 steps.

Of course, today someone else composed a newsletter for me and I forgot to "safeguard" the link using the 7 steps. Sure enough I'd made a mistake and uploaded the gallery to the wrong category. So now 5000+ emails have gone out with the link to the wrong place.

I've written support, and hopefully can get this fixed as a one-off. But I identified this issue two months ago, and I have seen nothing about a fix on the way. This is just unacceptable!

pbandj · October 18, 2013

In another thread someone mentioned that if you use the "Gallery List" Tool on this page, it will generate a list of URLs for all of your galleries that include the album ID / Key. I haven't tried it yet, but if it works it might be shorter than the 7 steps:
http://smugroom.com/tools/

I have also reported this problem (I reported it as a bug, since it seems like this broke the "get a link --> gallery link" functionality.) But as usual, it was one of those things that Smugmug never acknowledged, except for the one bit where I pointed out that the slideshow gallery link goes to the "legacy" version of the slideshow.

I saw it as a bug since Smugmug has always told us to use gallery links that contain the album ID/key so that reorgnization wouldn't break our published links, and now they've made it very difficult to do so.

GRBlizz · October 19, 2013

Yep, thanks pb, I saw it yesterday, and have that tool pinned in my browser. I've already used it several times today, in fact.

I agree, it's very odd that SM has not acknowledged this as either a bug or a feature request. I have had two different support conversations in which I was told it had been "submitted to the product development team," but I'm not seeing a lot of noise on dgrin about it.

I wondered if the lack of complaint is because the permalink feature isn't important to people. I don't think that's the case. I think the truth is that most people don't realize that reorganization breaks all their previously-published or shared links.

With the ease of reorganization in New Site, this is going to bite more and more people in the posterior.

Anyway, I am very happy to have the new tool. Not sure who to thank, but I thank them for developing it!

Links in the New SM

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