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I feel your pain...
Chuxter
Registered Users Posts: 31 Big grins
I am 3 days into my 2-week trial and have only succeeded in getting everything screwed up. I have tried to start over by creating a new page and moving my galleries into it, but it seems to "remember" all the old stuff I did [wrong] and I'm about to try what you did...TOTALLY throw everything away. It's disappointing to hear even THAT doesn't work. Has anything gotten better since you first posted?
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It would help if you could point the support folks to your SmugMug site so that they can help out. I bet between SmugMug's Heroes and yourself, you can get it all sorted out. If you need help faster, you can always email your question to "help@smugmug.com".
I have been on a marathon e-mail quest with many SM Heroes since I signed up for a trial. My first problems started on day 2. I was pointed to this site by one of those SM Heroes and I have posted several times. That suggestion came from Tristan Tom at 6:51 PM. It's now 12:05 AM and I haven't gotten in contact w/ my next SM Hero. Tristan said it might take 48 hours. Meanwhile, I'm stuck...
In the former, you just need to remember to save before quitting for that session. If it's the latter, you would first save your session then unveil it. Of course, I'm just guessing what's happening. If you haven't already, take a couple of minutes to look at this tutorial. My apologies if it's something you've done already-if not, it is pretty helpful and just takes a moment to go through.
If your issue is with gallery organization, one thought I have is to create an unlisted gallery at the top level and move all other galleries into it. Then create what you want with respect to structure at the same level you created the unlisted gallery. Then move the things you want to an organizational structure you want in the new top level.
There are a ton of great video tutorials for customization. You'll find them in the menu bar at the top of that tutorial I linked earlier-under Videos & Tutorials link. Most of them are fairly long but worth it.
If my suggestions haven't helped, please post your question here and someone will try and help. Just give it a bit of time.
I'm sure I HAVE failed to save my creations in the past, but I think I have that one down as a habit now.
There are actually two things I have to do: 1) Save and 2) Publish. You used the term "unveil" which I assume is the same as "Publish"? If so, I wish everyone would use the same words!
About two hours ago, I threw away EVERYTHING and started over. Go look at this new try:
http://mavpcapix.smugmug.com/
It is still @#$%ed up. I can't seem to figure out how to organize the hierarchical elements! My first try had a Folder at the top level and I got the impression from someone's comments that the top element needed to be a Page. SO this try that's what I tried to do. Yet when I look at the Structure in "Organize Site" I see a Folder at the top [again]! The Page that I started with is at the BOTTOM and apparently there is no easy, graphical way to slide it to the top.
I was VERY interested in this snip from your post:
"...create an unlisted gallery at the top level and move all other galleries into it. Then create what you want with respect to structure at the same level you created the unlisted gallery. Then move the things you want to an organizational structure you want in the new top level."
First, that makes absolutely NO sense to me! Which means I don't have a clue how to organize the pieces in a SM creation and most important I don't "GET" the SM paradigm!
I went back to my SM site and created a new Page at the top level [there is also a Folder at the top level] just a few minutes ago. It now looks like this:
As you can see. there are some Galleries inside the two sub-folders. When I go to the site, I can navigate down to these folders, but none of the Galleries show up. What am I doing wrong?
From the customize page you click "Done" upper right then "Save and Apply". This essentially publishes your changes to the public.
My Website index | My Blog
It's the same thing. I came from the old to new SmugMug. Sorry for the confusion.
When I view your site's home page, I see a bunch of thumbnails that are galleries. Most of them have the AX event description. However, "browse" gives me a result that's the same as the menu.
What do you want the home page to look like?
When I launch MavPCApix I too see a bunch of thumbnails, although they are rather large for that description. I have fiddled w/ the thumbnail size and even the Small size is much too large!
Those thumbnail images are 100% of the images in the 3 Galleries I have created [so far], not just the AX Gallery. I have no clue how these images got on the Home Page! You said the thumbnails were "galleries"! I don't understand. Are you saying that EACH image is a "gallery"? It makes more sense to say that these images are FROM Galleries, so that's probably what you meant.
I also don't understand your sentence: "..."browse" gives me a result that's the same as the menu."
When I click on "Browse", I get this:
Is this what YOU get? I don't know what "menu" refers to? I don't have any "menu" that I know of.
How and why did you think that "Most of them have the AX event description."? I didn't see any way to know that...at least from the Home Page.
OK...what do I want on the Home Page? I want users to be able to navigate down to a specific set of pictures. I DON'T want All the images to show! I want the hierarchy to be visible. Perhaps have a single image for each Gallery? Perhaps have a single image [but not one of the Gallery images] for the folders that contain the Gallery sets. In that screen copy above, I don't want the "Pages" to show...not just the word, but everything below the word too. I would like the word "Folders" to go away. When I click on the words "Gallery Collection" it works right...the two sets of Galleries appear w/ a representative image from each. When I click on "Social Galleries" nothing shows. I want the two [at the moment] Social Galleries to appear w/ a representative image for each. That part is broken. Going back, when I click on one of the images, it goes to the Gallery w/ that image. What I see there is perhaps OK for the moment, but I want to hide the images on the Home Page. If I allow
Thanks for slogging through this w/ me.
Did you hear back from any of the support folks?
If not, let's try and tackle this a couple of steps at a time. To do so, it's important to understand what's in the video I referred you to.
Let's start with what you want people to see when they hit your site. From your description, it sounds like you have three or four categories. Is that correct?
I want it to look like this:
http://screencast.com/t/eWdWsCYqSc
http://screencast.com/t/76SrXVjW
I skipped over a couple of levels here...
http://screencast.com/t/ovhSINMAwo
I would accept something a bit less elegant, but there comes a point where it's not minimalist enough? So far, I haven't gotten very close to this.
Some background:
If I was to do it myself, I would NEVER consider something like SM or ZF. I would create individual galleries out of LR and then write HTML code to allow navigation. It's SO much easier to use something when it wasn't invented by some other guy. It's not so much NIH syndrome as it is simply that different people [of different generations] think and work differently. Our club is getting grey [which concerns us] and our members are not as competent as you people are. I know that SM and ZF both have target markets composed of pro photographers. We are a car club. We don't want to sell photo-related stuff; we sell car related stuff. So I DO understand that I'm trying to push a square peg in a round hole to some extent. Whatever...
Our club takes LOTS of photos and we have been struggling for years trying to get them into galleries on our website. We don't do a very good job! The photos are ugly. The galleries are ugly. The method of uploading is devilishly arcane and nobody seems to be able to work w/ it.
I'm taking the lead to select another approach. I have a small "committee" that I show stuff to and they give me feedback. So far they don't like what SM is allowing me to do.
During Customizing, on your home page, or the sections of All Folders or All Galleries (the sections at the top of the right-side black flyout, see image), in order to have clickable links in any of those sections (often described as thumbnails, because one can click the image to go into the gallery, or folder, or page), you would need to drag in Content Blocks, where you will find Galleries, Folders, or pages.
Some people might want nothing on their homepage except one image ONLY. So customizing that asks you to decide what blocks you want, where, is giving you more control over what your homepage and entire site looks like.
So in your home page, for example, you could add Blocks for Folders and Galleries.
I *think* this is what you have in the Browse section (the image you've provided in this thread). There is a thumbnail image that, when clicked, goes to the set of galleries you have so far created. The notation for "pages" is a placeholder. It tells me you haven't got any active pages, but if you had them, they would show there.
Browse is a unique URL for your site. On my site I have ALL folders and ALL galleries in one humongous pile. One can basically see the entire layout (as thumbnail images).
So, back to home page, which is where you probably want to construct a more controlled access.
I also suspect that where you say that it might be a good idea to set your very top level to be a Page, you might set that aside for now. The simple way to get started is to set up your home page as the base where you give viewers the links to click into their material.
So, there are major areas of your site: homepage, all folders, all galleries, and, you can further customize an individual folder or gallery.
In any of those sections, you add content blocks to define what people will see and how they will navigate.
Oh - and you do have a menu, it's the row of Home Browse Search at the top.
Maybe Smugmug set you up with that automatically?
That is very very customizable as well in terms of adding menu links with subfolders and so on.
Okay I probably tossed in some basil and oregano too. Hope the flavor 'works'.
You mention that you'd like to use LR to maintain you galleries. I'm not sure if you know that there is a Light Room plugin that allows you to do that. It's available in LR5 and I think at least one or two prior versions. Take a look at the link for some helpful tips.
While I termed these "subtleties", they are only subtle to people w/ little sense of style. For me, they are important minutiae. Another of them is to get the "Photo Sharing by SmugMug" line to be located at the bottom of the screen. I don't object to that line or it being a link to the SmugMug site, but it should be controllable like any other element.
Another important minutiae is the exact positions of Content Blocks. In the mock-up of the actual Gallery [the 3rd link], I moved the large image so that it lined up w/ the bottom of the Thumbnail Grid to the left. It looks nice when positioned that way. The SM default is to position the tops instead of the bottoms. Notice the huge empty space above the large image [in my real site...not the mock-ups]? I want to stick the large image up in there. Although there IS a move tool for each Content Block, they don't do diddly. The Blocks are basically stuck in ugly arrangements selected by some kid who writes code. I want the move tool to allow small, precise positioning! W/O this ability, SM layouts will generally be poor, stylistically.
BUT, I have seen some of the canned designs that look quite nice. Things line up instead of being scrambled. I don't see a path to create something like this in the next 8 days. I have no idea how these layouts were done, but it is obvious the designers used more expensive brushes.
It seems the temptation to be a cook was too strong. I think you are responding to many different posts. This thread spans 5 days, during which I learned a LOT, thanks to many helpful people.
Although I like vegetables and spices, I'll avoid backing up to discuss all this old stuff...if you don't mind.
When I looked at the two images you showed, I didn't see any lines. In fact, when I compared the two images against what you have configured, it looks pretty similar. Like you were well on the way to what you wanted. If you want to add separators, then the easy thing to do is grab one from the Content -> Design menu and place it in the region you want to see it. It's really pretty simple and the tutorial I referenced earlier gives you the detail that will get you going.
I want you to be successful but I'm not sure what to suggest you do next. Maybe look through the designs and find one that better matches what you want and modify that? I do know that all you need to make those changes in the tutorial Sean put together.
I have tried MANY times to make a Separator extend across the entire screen, but it won't. It seems to be blocked by the Menu Block? Is the order of placement of blocks significant? I'm wondering that if I drag the Menu Block last, will it go where it is, but not erase some of the Separator? Nope. This problem seems related to a rigid structure inside SmugMug?
I removed EVERYTHING from the EntireSite. Now I see 4 dotted areas [I chose to not do a screen capture, since you had difficulty seeing narrow, dark lines...which these areas are]:
When I drag a Separator out, there are 5 places where it is allowed:
None of these 5 options is what I want! I want a Separator placed at the top of the "Site Content" to extend THROUGH the "Left" area. [BTW, there is an "optional" area that didn't show up in my layout called "Right".] This implies that I should eliminate the "Left" sidebar; that raises the question, "Can I place the "Menu" block inside the "Site Content" block [I doubt it]. Perhaps there is a way to present a menu w/o using a Block? So many questions; so little time.
I played around and somehow [I don't yet understand what I did] I got this:
http://screencast.com/t/rXuh2G7ACFTH
Some good news. By making the "Bottom Margin" big, I was able to make the "Photo Sharing by SmugMug" drop down. But it's still over at the extreme left! And there is a HUGE left margin that seems uncontrollable! When I saved and published it, the "Photo Sharing by SmugMug" was so far down that it was invisible.
While I'm discussing these 5 preset areas, is there a way to make them change size? OK, I know there are parameters available to change the width of:
But there are substantial limitations. I can find no [easy] way to change the heights!
When I start out, the height of everything is much less than my screen. It looks like this:
http://screencast.com/t/jB2iZAoR
I find no method to make it fill the screen vertically in a controllable way. If I select "Stretchy" it fills horizontally. If I manually set the width to the screen width, it fills horizontally. But only adding content to the Body seems to affect its height! And even then, there is some unseen algorithm that determines the height. I don't know the algorithm or have much control of how the height is set!
Thus, there are algorithms embedded in the software that control the heights and to some extent the widths. For example, when I set the "Body" width equal to the overall width [960 px], then choose to show the "Left" sidebar, in my case [it may not be the same for everyone?] the software sets the width of that "Left" sidebar to 240 px. I can then change it if I want to. But who decided that 240 was a good default?
I see so many beautiful canned formats that don't seem to have these limitations! How did the designers of those formats breach this seeming impasse?
I'm stopping this rather long reply, Ian. I'll start another one about another issue I saw while working on this one...
Ian, when I look at one of my Galleries, I see three Blocks, but the Customize Site > Content panel on the right only lists two. Here take a look:
http://screencast.com/t/kIcKAoTClJ
When I mouse over these three blocks, they are each enclosed in a green box. The bottom Block is a SmugMug Gallery, I think. Nothing tells me that, other than, 1) I remember choosing that Theme and 2) when I click on the choices, only "SmugMug" doesn't change the layout. It would be REALLY nice if the green box ID'd the Theme, as "A SmugMug Gallery" or something. Whatever...
Why don't I see the Comment Box in the Customize Site view?
This Block has only a wrench tool, regardless of which I choose between Content, Theme, Background, or Layout. How would I change this Block?
http://screencast.com/t/EO34GTrrKJiL
I can also mouse over the Blocks on the page and it will paint a green box around the Separator. Trust me, it's there!
It seems I'm not successful at anything related to SmugMug. I have more important things to do...