I'm glad to see it's been rolled back. However, we still need an official and supported checkbox, for at least Portfolio and Business levels. That would keep you inline with competitors. At bare minimum, the footer needs to NOT be a link, immediately. Putting a way in there to just leave our site is totally unacceptable.
And, not to be confrontational, but as aschendel said above. If someone explained it to you as a "fix" that accidentally broke the CSS hack, that is a blatant lie, and you should follow up with your engineering team.. Anyone who looked at the NEW code for the footer can see the CSS was specifically targeted. Even if you didn't know CSS, frankly, just the plain English of the code made it obvious. It was deliberate, and done in a very crude and unprofessional way. It added scrollbars to everyone's site, just to force the footer.
[edit] And Baldy, I'm glad to see you finally comment here. Look, I know you're busy, and DGrin is one of many places to communicate. But this has been a crisis level thread, honestly, and to me (and I think most in this thread) it feels like SM is just on autopilot. It feels like engineers/whoever are just deciding things for themselves, and are frankly people who have not much of a clue about the particulars of this business. There have been some seriously terrible design decisions. I was a manager for nearly 20 years, and I occasionally had to have full staff meetings to just say "OK, you're losing it, time to get back on track. Stop doing stupid things." . Might be time for that
Since we don't provide an official way in the system to remove the footer, like a setting in a control panel, or an option you pay for, a number of you came to depend on css to hide it....
Thanks,
Baldy
Pardon me, I do pay exactly for what you advertise. I am officially asking and directing my request to you as the CEO of the company: call it "footer", header" ,"sider", "shmider" or a "chair" - do not display your company's branding on the pages and services I pay you for! If you insist on displaying your branding on the services and pages I pay you for then stop advertising false facts about services that you sell.
True confession: I've only read through the last two pages of this thread and, unless my memory fails me (very possible), I don't remember talking to a customer about the footer in all the years I've worked here.
I have known there were requests and threads about it but, for better or worse, I didn't focus on it because it felt like I should focus on issues that affect millions and in my mind this didn't feel like one of those.
You really need to read the thread from post #1, then maybe you'll understand that the issue of "unhiding" the footer link/ad is only one symptom of the underlying issues of how SM treats us with contempt.
Honestly, my understanding of what happened a few days ago is an engineer made a fix that caused the css you use to hide the footer to not work anymore.
So, was that engineer doing what he was told (and hence someone else who planned the change should be held to account) or was that engineer working without a remit? Why wasn't that engineer fixing some of the things that have always been broken in New SM? Hell, there are enough bugs to draw up a list longer than the "trophy list" that MB posted (post #96).
Oh, and I notice that you use the word "fix" even though MB reckons it wasn't a feature or a bug (post #22). "Fix" implies that something was "broken". Would you care to tell us what that was?
I'm with Mishenka here, but from a different PoV. If you really don't know about these sorts of issues until MB "approaches" you about them, then your finger really isn't on the pulse and you'll never know how the heart of SM is failing.
I'm with Mishenka here, but from a different PoV. If you really don't know about these sorts of issues until MB "approaches" you about them, then your finger really isn't on the pulse and you'll never know how the heart of SM is failing.
Regards,
BG
Bearded and Michael. It is not Baldy's responsibility to come into DGrin everyday and read up on the situations. That's what I was hired for. Every day, he is the first one in HQ and the last one to leave. He works 18 hour days doing a billion critical things for us. It is MY job to report to him (and others) the pulse of the DGrin community. So I have failed, not Baldy. Blame is solely on me for everything that has happened in this thread. Not Baldy, not the developer. Me. Please let's keep it to that.
Bearded and Michael. It is not Baldy's responsibility to come into DGrin everyday and read up on the situations. That's what I was hired for. Every day, he is the first one in HQ and the last one to leave. He works 18 hour days doing a billion critical things for us. It is MY job to report to him (and others) the pulse of the DGrin community. So I have failed, not Baldy. Blame is solely on me for everything that has happened in this thread. Not Baldy, not the developer. Me. Please let's keep it to that.
It's pretty easy to take a blame (I do it pretty often, even when not deserved:), to deescalate the situation). Michael, I do NOT blame you for the footer issue. Yes, I made a funny remark about prioritizing issues, but it is far from blaming you. Sure no one else is blaming you for the footer issue. It started looong before you were hired. The issue is between customers and SmugMug, Inc. Ultimately, the CEO is the one to blame regardless of number of hours he spends in his own business.
The fact remains unchanged - customers are NOT getting what they were advertised and what they have paid for. If you can answer and clarify this situation - please, do. Otherwise, please stop by your boss' office and relay my question.
Bearded and Michael. It is not Baldy's responsibility to come into DGrin everyday and read up on the situations. That's what I was hired for. Every day, he is the first one in HQ and the last one to leave. He works 18 hour days doing a billion critical things for us. It is MY job to report to him (and others) the pulse of the DGrin community. So I have failed, not Baldy. Blame is solely on me for everything that has happened in this thread. Not Baldy, not the developer. Me. Please let's keep it to that.
I knew this was coming, that's why I preempted it with my reply a while back
No, actually, it's not your fault. I agree it's not entirely Baldy's either. But it is MOST certainly the developer/engineer's fault who made the change. The way Baldy put it, it was just some random fix that accidentally broke the footer CSS hack. Anyone who has about 5 minutes experience with CSS could immediately see it was a targeted, crude, and very harsh effort to stop the hack. It was the sole purpose of that CSS addition.
So... if this engineer/developer just did this on his own... well, you have a very serious employee problem that needs to be addressed. If that's what happened, he essentially attacked the site of every SM customer... that's not good. And (as seems more likely) he made the change on the orders of his superiors... then those superiors should stop lying about it being unintentional.
Bearded and Michael. It is not Baldy's responsibility to come into DGrin everyday and read up on the situations. That's what I was hired for. Every day, he is the first one in HQ and the last one to leave. He works 18 hour days doing a billion critical things for us. It is MY job to report to him (and others) the pulse of the DGrin community. So I have failed, not Baldy. Blame is solely on me for everything that has happened in this thread. Not Baldy, not the developer. Me. Please let's keep it to that.
M, I don't blame you for any of the issues. But as a SM customer for several years I do remember a time not so long ago when the head cheese moderator (that would be you now) was frequenting these forums much more often. I certainly do not know all your duties w/ SM, but he who shall remain nameless in this conversation ALWAYS seemed to be online answering questions or leading me/ us to answers in/on the forums. Yes he did have to adhere to the "party line" in some of responses, but I/ we could ALWAYS count on a quick response.
Just sayin'
Bearded and Michael. It is not Baldy's responsibility to come into DGrin everyday and read up on the situations. That's what I was hired for. Every day, he is the first one in HQ and the last one to leave. He works 18 hour days doing a billion critical things for us. It is MY job to report to him (and others) the pulse of the DGrin community. So I have failed, not Baldy. Blame is solely on me for everything that has happened in this thread. Not Baldy, not the developer. Me. Please let's keep it to that.
Sorry, no dice.
I don't doubt Baldy's commitment to SM, I do doubt SM's commitment to us users. The attitude of SM, not of DGrin, is the problem.
I am sorry this is not the answer you were hoping for. I wish I could give you a better answer, but at this time, I just cannot.
This is all SM needs to know. This footer thing is just a symptom of it. Until this is taken seriously, and seriously adjusted, it's not going to matter. I know it's hard from the inside to tell, sometimes, that your company attitude has gone off the rails. Trust me. Trust everyone in this thread. It has. Spend a day or two reading these forums and you will see just how dire things have gotten.
I know it seems like I come into threads like this and post negative things a lot. But I actually do care about SM. I like it, for the most part, and I at least used to respect how it was run. I want it to change back to the way it was, the old attitudes, the old "family" feel. I don't think staying silent will accomplish that. I also don't think heaping thanks and praise on SM for fixing bugs or adding basic features is helpful. That's your job. This isn't some open source project. It's a service we pay significant money for. SM is not hosting my site as a favor, and I am not handing them money for a favor.
Please, God, someone find the old SM company and bring them back.
Baldy or Michael
What was being fixed ???
Sounds like ...
:bigbs
I always wanted to use that flag!
If the problem was the result of a "random fix" gone sour, how does one explain away the wording change meant to quell the rising tide? Me thinks there is a rather strange odor in the air.
In my opinion, a Pro user should not have any other branding on their site but their own. I can go into detail about why I feel strongly about that, but would prefer to do it via PM or Email rather than discussing it here. Again, I am a "happy camper" and hope to be a member when my sales hit 20,000 and beyond.
Thanks, Rich. Yes, I'd love to hear more via PM.
My perspective has been, for better or worse, that best practice for webhosts is to have attribution in the footer because it seems I always hear about it from companies we deal with. For example, SmugMug uses Wordpress to host our blog, Desk.com to host our help pages, and vBulletin to power this forum&38212;and they all have it in their terms of service that we must display their footer. I don't think it would have occurred to me that we would want to remove them, because if one of our customers has a problem they need help with, or they have a login, it's to their benefit to know it's a Wordpress blog.
Naturally, there are business motivations for those companies and for us to have attribution in the footer. For us, we can help if they (your customers and ours) are having problems with the cart or questions about print finishes or whatever, and we feel that both us and our sellers make more sales and have less customer confusion if the footer is there. I have always understood this to be best practice for usability of websites. And lawyers advise us that attribution helps provide protection for any parts of the page that represent our intellectual property.
I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that another business motivation is the very strong correlation between the success of hosts like us and Wordpress with attribution in the footer. There aren't many hosts who have succeeded without it.
Disclaimer: I heard there's a lot of responses to my post from this a.m. but the only one I've read so far is Rich's. This post is really a follow-up to my post this morning that got cut short by me running to a meeting. I'll read through the others later tonight.
My perspective has been, for better or worse, that best practice for webhosts is to have attribution in the footer because it seems I always hear about it from companies we deal with.
I have been hosting websites since 1992, with dozens of web hosting companies. Not one of them has ever had any attribution or mention of their company anywhere on my site. Unless you are talking about free hosts. I've never even HEARD of a paid webhost putting footers on customer pages. If they did, there would be mass mutiny.
For example, SmugMug uses Wordpress to host our blog, Desk.com to host our help pages, and vBulletin to power this forum&38212;and they all have it in their terms of service that we must display their footer.
So much wrong here I'm going to have to just be brief. Wordpress (.org) absolutely allows removal of the footer text, and you can find how to do it all over their own codex and forums. If you're talking about .com , then that is a FREE service, and has nothing to do with this issue. I've run VBulletin forums for 20 years. Note I haven't used VB4+. However, VB3 and back has allowed footer removal with a paid fee. And, the footer that VB puts there is NOT A LINK, not something that takes visitors away from your own site. You can see the proof of that at the bottom of this very forum.
Naturally, there are business motivations for those companies and for us to have attribution in the footer. For us, we can help if they (your customers and ours) are having problems with the cart or questions about print finishes or whatever, and we feel that both us and our sellers make more sales and have less customer confusion if the footer is there. I have always understood this to be best practice for usability of websites.
This might really be a fundamental part of the problem. These websites are NOT your websites. They are OUR websites. We pay you to host them. If a customer of mine has a problem, I want them contacting me. I most certainly don't want them contacting some company they probably don't even know. It IS best practice for usability. That's why you give us a nice contact form block. So they can contact US. Not you.
I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that another business motivation is the very strong correlation between the success of hosts like us and Wordpress with attribution in the footer. There aren't many hosts who have succeeded without it.
Um... just no. Again, Wordpress (.com) is a free service. No one complains about Facebook having branding or ads either. It's FREE.
Disclaimer: I heard there's a lot of responses to my post from this a.m. but the only one I've read so far is Rich's. This post is really a follow-up to my post this morning that got cut short by me running to a meeting. I'll read through the others later tonight.
Thanks,
Baldy
There certainly are. And I hope you take them all, including this one, to be helpful. We really are trying. But the communication and facts divides here are so wide, it's very hard not to get angry once in a while.
Adam, Is there a smugmug attribution on your site at this moment?
Yes, there is, I don't have the old CSS to remove it there right now. I don't see the point of putting it back since this is clearly a temporary way to placate people, until a real decision is made. Baldy said as much.
And this really misses the entire overall point of this thread. I shouldn't have to hide it with CSS. I should go to "customize site" and click the box that says "remove SM footer". No one pays this much money a year to advertise for the company they are paying. My webhosting for my main site certainly doesn't, and it costs far less a year, while using more bandwidth, more storage, and more processor time.
It also misses the point of the overall attitude problem at SM, that I and so many have pointed out. If you guys keep having tunnel vision on every small thing, you're never going to see the real problem.
SM footer link no longer hidden
Adam, I understand. But I we have heard your side (and all others). We love your feedback and will always listen to it. I just think going around in circles isn't the best use of any of our time. We heard you guys and will let you know if anything changes
Adam, I understand. But I we have heard your side (and all others). We love your feedback and will always listen to it. I just think going around in circles isn't the best use of any of our time. We heard you guys and will let you know if anything changes
A circle isn't complete without answers. A situation like this, that is clearly so critical to so many people, can't be resolved with the usual SM "we'll let you know". And the fact that SM advertises "no ads, no spam" is a directly false advertisement, that is a legal issue if not dealt with.
Mr. McAskill,
You are the owner of the corporation and free to decide what services and at what price to provide. Your justification, explanation, and reasoning for SmugMug branding on customers pages is really irrelevant. As Michael once said - it is a Freudian discussion now. You are the owner and do not need to justify why you do what you do with your business.
However you do business in a society that is governed by law. You are not providing currently services that you advertise on your website. Please, explain this.
I'm new here, so maybe some of you would say I'm naive. But I have been in software development for over 30 years. First, I am impressed that Baldy stopped by to address the situation. And instead of dismissing everyone's concerns, he addressed them. I may not agree with everything he wrote, but there are a whole lot of companies that wouldn't even address issues like this. As for the idea that this was some sort of intentional act on the part of SM, well I'm very disinclined to believe that. If you've ever worked on a large software system with thousands of lines of code, then you know these things happen. A fix of one thing often breaks something else.
Michael - I might also be so bold as to add, that until you became a member of the 'party', you has not Smugmug on your site either, if memory serves me correctly?
Baldy - I also agree that you need to go through this entire thread to understand the seriousness of complaints here.
There are two questions that I have: Who decided on the clever term "Photo Sharing By Smugmug"? Where do I go to see that I have agreed not to remove your (now) "Powered By Smugmug"? We have been told time and time again (not only in this post, but in others) that you don't allow it. Where is this stated?
Having looked through this thread, etc., I just want to throw out there what I'd like to see. Some of what I've said might already be in place but this is what I'm wanting to have.
I'd like to see for all paying users preferably (which is everyone), an easy removal of the proper Smugmug Footer (the one consisting of 'Photo Sharing', 'About Smugmug', etc.).
All users should be able to also hide the 'Powered By Smugmug' text (or at least higher tiers given the price of them).
But that's what I'd like to see, with an emphasis on the higher paid tiers being able to remove entirely.
Oh, and if there was some form of site similar to the Status site where we could literally see the change log as it's updated, that would be much better.
- Dan, Studying At College To Enter Science or Programming Field.
I'm new here, so maybe some of you would say I'm naive. But I have been in software development for over 30 years. First, I am impressed that Baldy stopped by to address the situation. And instead of dismissing everyone's concerns, he addressed them. I may not agree with everything he wrote, but there are a whole lot of companies that wouldn't even address issues like this. As for the idea that this was some sort of intentional act on the part of SM, well I'm very disinclined to believe that. If you've ever worked on a large software system with thousands of lines of code, then you know these things happen. A fix of one thing often breaks something else.
Did anyone keep a copy of the CSS that was added? I wish I had. It is very obvious that it was intentional. There was no other purpose for the CSS.
I mean, did anyone keep a copy of the CSS SM added to force the footer to show? Just to show those doubting it was intentional that it obviously was designed exactly for that purpose.
I mean, did anyone keep a copy of the CSS SM added to force the footer to show? Just to show those doubting it was intentional that it obviously was designed exactly for that purpose.
Never mind, I found it, got to love Google caching.
Can anyone seriously say that this was not an intentional act?
I'm new here, so maybe some of you would say I'm naive. But I have been in software development for over 30 years. First, I am impressed that Baldy stopped by to address the situation. And instead of dismissing everyone's concerns, he addressed them. I may not agree with everything he wrote, but there are a whole lot of companies that wouldn't even address issues like this. As for the idea that this was some sort of intentional act on the part of SM, well I'm very disinclined to believe that. If you've ever worked on a large software system with thousands of lines of code, then you know these things happen. A fix of one thing often breaks something else.
Indeed I would agree with thousands of lines of code, things can break when they're worked on. Hell can't count how many time I broke my new site developing it only to have a blank white screen. But I'm hard pressed to believe that was the case here. When code goes from Photo Sharing by sm to Powered by sm after customer complaints to completely gone again after more customer complaints, well that was just plain intentional anyway you slice it. Code is not intelligent and cannot add/correct itself, man has to do that...
All sm does is provide a service, just like Paypal, BayPhoto (that I can order from w/o sm if I so desired which I don't) or eCommerce third parties or statistical code, etc. You don't own paypal, bayphoto or I don't think the shopping cart here, etc. Yet their branding isn't anywhere to be found. SM put together the code for customers to use to help those that don't know code out and all that code can be found for me to use, as I have with my new site. In fact when I thought about paying a third party for their shopping cart code ($30/mo.), they didn't require I use their branding! Glad I dumped them after the trial and found out how to create a free cart that again doesn't require me to use their branding either. Though all I did use can be found in my new site code!!!! And now I pay a whopping $7 a mo. for my site!
FYI, BlueHost is my web hosting that I pay for. I had to have them to have my direct personal url here w/o sm in it. Thus sm is NOT my web host nor anyone's that pays for an outside web host for their own url. With my new site/store I've developed, BlueHost doesn't require I put them anywhere on my site! Nor does Wordpress require it! Not only that, but I can completely change a free WP theme and call it my own; they are ok with that. Hundreds have done just that over the years. All I have to do is give credit in the code of the theme I based my new theme off of.
Hell there are a lot of big corps. that use WP and you don't see any outside branding on them! SM you intentionally placed your branding on our sites, you screwed up and should own it! Many may buy your explanation, but that's only because they either wish to stay loyal though I haven't a clue why or they simply are unaware of the reality... You went against your agreement of no ads! With this debacle, your search and from what I understand under the shopping cart.
I've never even HEARD of a paid webhost putting footers on customer pages. If they did, there would be mass mutiny.
I promised I would come back to read the additional comments, and I have. I'd love nothing more than to say I understand, but the only honest thing I can say is I that know there is a very passionate subset of our customers for whom removing the footer is incredibly important. I'm trying very hard to respect that.
But the other things I'm hearing like Adam's quote above...I simply don't know what to do with statements like that because I'm just unable to understand. Like millions of other Wordpress customers, we pay for Wordpress hosting, and this is what their terms say:
Attribution. Automattic reserves the right to display attribution links such as ‘Blog at WordPress.com,’ theme author, and font attribution in your blog footer or toolbar. Footer credits and the WordPress.com toolbar may not be altered or removed regardless of upgrades purchased.
And so I think we're lost in debates where you see it one way, I see it another, and we could go on forever.
I'm trying to be responsible and focus on issues that affect a lot of customers, like the gallery password guessing issue last week. I'm pretty sure I can speak for 99% of our customers who tell us they don't care about the footer, or they like having it as I like having the Wordpress, vBulletin and Desk.com footers our our sites, and if they knew I was spending time on this they'd wonder why I'm not focused on issues that are important to them.
So maybe the best thing is to focus on what it is you need that isn't done right now with regard to our footer.
Comments
And, not to be confrontational, but as aschendel said above. If someone explained it to you as a "fix" that accidentally broke the CSS hack, that is a blatant lie, and you should follow up with your engineering team.. Anyone who looked at the NEW code for the footer can see the CSS was specifically targeted. Even if you didn't know CSS, frankly, just the plain English of the code made it obvious. It was deliberate, and done in a very crude and unprofessional way. It added scrollbars to everyone's site, just to force the footer.
[edit] And Baldy, I'm glad to see you finally comment here. Look, I know you're busy, and DGrin is one of many places to communicate. But this has been a crisis level thread, honestly, and to me (and I think most in this thread) it feels like SM is just on autopilot. It feels like engineers/whoever are just deciding things for themselves, and are frankly people who have not much of a clue about the particulars of this business. There have been some seriously terrible design decisions. I was a manager for nearly 20 years, and I occasionally had to have full staff meetings to just say "OK, you're losing it, time to get back on track. Stop doing stupid things."
Pardon me, I do pay exactly for what you advertise. I am officially asking and directing my request to you as the CEO of the company: call it "footer", header" ,"sider", "shmider" or a "chair" - do not display your company's branding on the pages and services I pay you for! If you insist on displaying your branding on the services and pages I pay you for then stop advertising false facts about services that you sell.
"yesterday"?
I was reluctant to post again in this thread but, having read your post, I feel the need to chime in again...
You really need to read the thread from post #1, then maybe you'll understand that the issue of "unhiding" the footer link/ad is only one symptom of the underlying issues of how SM treats us with contempt.
So, was that engineer doing what he was told (and hence someone else who planned the change should be held to account) or was that engineer working without a remit? Why wasn't that engineer fixing some of the things that have always been broken in New SM? Hell, there are enough bugs to draw up a list longer than the "trophy list" that MB posted (post #96).
Oh, and I notice that you use the word "fix" even though MB reckons it wasn't a feature or a bug (post #22). "Fix" implies that something was "broken". Would you care to tell us what that was?
I'm with Mishenka here, but from a different PoV. If you really don't know about these sorts of issues until MB "approaches" you about them, then your finger really isn't on the pulse and you'll never know how the heart of SM is failing.
Regards,
BG
Bearded and Michael. It is not Baldy's responsibility to come into DGrin everyday and read up on the situations. That's what I was hired for. Every day, he is the first one in HQ and the last one to leave. He works 18 hour days doing a billion critical things for us. It is MY job to report to him (and others) the pulse of the DGrin community. So I have failed, not Baldy. Blame is solely on me for everything that has happened in this thread. Not Baldy, not the developer. Me. Please let's keep it to that.
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It's pretty easy to take a blame (I do it pretty often, even when not deserved:), to deescalate the situation). Michael, I do NOT blame you for the footer issue. Yes, I made a funny remark about prioritizing issues, but it is far from blaming you. Sure no one else is blaming you for the footer issue. It started looong before you were hired. The issue is between customers and SmugMug, Inc. Ultimately, the CEO is the one to blame regardless of number of hours he spends in his own business.
The fact remains unchanged - customers are NOT getting what they were advertised and what they have paid for. If you can answer and clarify this situation - please, do. Otherwise, please stop by your boss' office and relay my question.
Thank you.
I knew this was coming, that's why I preempted it with my reply a while back
No, actually, it's not your fault. I agree it's not entirely Baldy's either. But it is MOST certainly the developer/engineer's fault who made the change. The way Baldy put it, it was just some random fix that accidentally broke the footer CSS hack. Anyone who has about 5 minutes experience with CSS could immediately see it was a targeted, crude, and very harsh effort to stop the hack. It was the sole purpose of that CSS addition.
So... if this engineer/developer just did this on his own... well, you have a very serious employee problem that needs to be addressed. If that's what happened, he essentially attacked the site of every SM customer... that's not good. And (as seems more likely) he made the change on the orders of his superiors... then those superiors should stop lying about it being unintentional.
M, I don't blame you for any of the issues. But as a SM customer for several years I do remember a time not so long ago when the head cheese moderator (that would be you now) was frequenting these forums much more often. I certainly do not know all your duties w/ SM, but he who shall remain nameless in this conversation ALWAYS seemed to be online answering questions or leading me/ us to answers in/on the forums. Yes he did have to adhere to the "party line" in some of responses, but I/ we could ALWAYS count on a quick response.
Just sayin'
I don't doubt Baldy's commitment to SM, I do doubt SM's commitment to us users. The attitude of SM, not of DGrin, is the problem.
I am sorry this is not the answer you were hoping for. I wish I could give you a better answer, but at this time, I just cannot.
This is all SM needs to know. This footer thing is just a symptom of it. Until this is taken seriously, and seriously adjusted, it's not going to matter. I know it's hard from the inside to tell, sometimes, that your company attitude has gone off the rails. Trust me. Trust everyone in this thread. It has. Spend a day or two reading these forums and you will see just how dire things have gotten.
I know it seems like I come into threads like this and post negative things a lot. But I actually do care about SM. I like it, for the most part, and I at least used to respect how it was run. I want it to change back to the way it was, the old attitudes, the old "family" feel. I don't think staying silent will accomplish that. I also don't think heaping thanks and praise on SM for fixing bugs or adding basic features is helpful. That's your job. This isn't some open source project. It's a service we pay significant money for. SM is not hosting my site as a favor, and I am not handing them money for a favor.
Please, God, someone find the old SM company and bring them back.
If the problem was the result of a "random fix" gone sour, how does one explain away the wording change meant to quell the rising tide? Me thinks there is a rather strange odor in the air.
Phil
www.sunglophoto.com
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My perspective has been, for better or worse, that best practice for webhosts is to have attribution in the footer because it seems I always hear about it from companies we deal with. For example, SmugMug uses Wordpress to host our blog, Desk.com to host our help pages, and vBulletin to power this forum&38212;and they all have it in their terms of service that we must display their footer. I don't think it would have occurred to me that we would want to remove them, because if one of our customers has a problem they need help with, or they have a login, it's to their benefit to know it's a Wordpress blog.
Naturally, there are business motivations for those companies and for us to have attribution in the footer. For us, we can help if they (your customers and ours) are having problems with the cart or questions about print finishes or whatever, and we feel that both us and our sellers make more sales and have less customer confusion if the footer is there. I have always understood this to be best practice for usability of websites. And lawyers advise us that attribution helps provide protection for any parts of the page that represent our intellectual property.
I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say that another business motivation is the very strong correlation between the success of hosts like us and Wordpress with attribution in the footer. There aren't many hosts who have succeeded without it.
Disclaimer: I heard there's a lot of responses to my post from this a.m. but the only one I've read so far is Rich's. This post is really a follow-up to my post this morning that got cut short by me running to a meeting. I'll read through the others later tonight.
Thanks,
Baldy
I have been hosting websites since 1992, with dozens of web hosting companies. Not one of them has ever had any attribution or mention of their company anywhere on my site. Unless you are talking about free hosts. I've never even HEARD of a paid webhost putting footers on customer pages. If they did, there would be mass mutiny.
So much wrong here I'm going to have to just be brief. Wordpress (.org) absolutely allows removal of the footer text, and you can find how to do it all over their own codex and forums. If you're talking about .com , then that is a FREE service, and has nothing to do with this issue. I've run VBulletin forums for 20 years. Note I haven't used VB4+. However, VB3 and back has allowed footer removal with a paid fee. And, the footer that VB puts there is NOT A LINK, not something that takes visitors away from your own site. You can see the proof of that at the bottom of this very forum.
This might really be a fundamental part of the problem. These websites are NOT your websites. They are OUR websites. We pay you to host them. If a customer of mine has a problem, I want them contacting me. I most certainly don't want them contacting some company they probably don't even know. It IS best practice for usability. That's why you give us a nice contact form block. So they can contact US. Not you.
This is just complete nonsense. If this is the case, go back to "Portions Copyright Smugmug" and delink the text.
Um... just no. Again, Wordpress (.com) is a free service. No one complains about Facebook having branding or ads either. It's FREE.
There certainly are. And I hope you take them all, including this one, to be helpful. We really are trying. But the communication and facts divides here are so wide, it's very hard not to get angry once in a while.
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Yes, there is, I don't have the old CSS to remove it there right now. I don't see the point of putting it back since this is clearly a temporary way to placate people, until a real decision is made. Baldy said as much.
And this really misses the entire overall point of this thread. I shouldn't have to hide it with CSS. I should go to "customize site" and click the box that says "remove SM footer". No one pays this much money a year to advertise for the company they are paying. My webhosting for my main site certainly doesn't, and it costs far less a year, while using more bandwidth, more storage, and more processor time.
It also misses the point of the overall attitude problem at SM, that I and so many have pointed out. If you guys keep having tunnel vision on every small thing, you're never going to see the real problem.
Adam, I understand. But I we have heard your side (and all others). We love your feedback and will always listen to it. I just think going around in circles isn't the best use of any of our time. We heard you guys and will let you know if anything changes
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A circle isn't complete without answers. A situation like this, that is clearly so critical to so many people, can't be resolved with the usual SM "we'll let you know". And the fact that SM advertises "no ads, no spam" is a directly false advertisement, that is a legal issue if not dealt with.
You are the owner of the corporation and free to decide what services and at what price to provide. Your justification, explanation, and reasoning for SmugMug branding on customers pages is really irrelevant. As Michael once said - it is a Freudian discussion now. You are the owner and do not need to justify why you do what you do with your business.
However you do business in a society that is governed by law. You are not providing currently services that you advertise on your website. Please, explain this.
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Baldy - I also agree that you need to go through this entire thread to understand the seriousness of complaints here.
There are two questions that I have: Who decided on the clever term "Photo Sharing By Smugmug"? Where do I go to see that I have agreed not to remove your (now) "Powered By Smugmug"? We have been told time and time again (not only in this post, but in others) that you don't allow it. Where is this stated?
I'd like to see for all paying users preferably (which is everyone), an easy removal of the proper Smugmug Footer (the one consisting of 'Photo Sharing', 'About Smugmug', etc.).
All users should be able to also hide the 'Powered By Smugmug' text (or at least higher tiers given the price of them).
If that is an absolute no-no, then there should be a way for at least some users to edit the 'Powered By Smugmug' text that appears. Turn it into a 'Reserved Content Block' perhaps that we can move around? Give us options so that we can modify the text between say "Photo Sharing by Smugmug", "Powered By Smugmug" and "Hosting © Smugmug, Inc." or similar. Perhaps the 'Hosting' Part could be a tooltip? If it's about copyright issues, then that shouldn't be a problem.
But that's what I'd like to see, with an emphasis on the higher paid tiers being able to remove entirely.
Oh, and if there was some form of site similar to the Status site where we could literally see the change log as it's updated, that would be much better.
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Cheers,
Did anyone keep a copy of the CSS that was added? I wish I had. It is very obvious that it was intentional. There was no other purpose for the CSS.
.sm-page-powered-by a { display: none; }--- DeniseMusings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Thanks Denise, not quite what I meant though
I mean, did anyone keep a copy of the CSS SM added to force the footer to show? Just to show those doubting it was intentional that it obviously was designed exactly for that purpose.
Never mind, I found it, got to love Google caching.
Can anyone seriously say that this was not an intentional act?
[edit] Actually, the code right under that is maybe more relevant, however similar, and just as incriminating.
<a href="http://www.smugmug.com" class="sm-muted" style="display:inline!important;opacity:1!important;visibility:visible!important;"> Powered by SmugMug </a>Indeed I would agree with thousands of lines of code, things can break when they're worked on. Hell can't count how many time I broke my new site developing it only to have a blank white screen. But I'm hard pressed to believe that was the case here. When code goes from Photo Sharing by sm to Powered by sm after customer complaints to completely gone again after more customer complaints, well that was just plain intentional anyway you slice it. Code is not intelligent and cannot add/correct itself, man has to do that...
All sm does is provide a service, just like Paypal, BayPhoto (that I can order from w/o sm if I so desired which I don't) or eCommerce third parties or statistical code, etc. You don't own paypal, bayphoto or I don't think the shopping cart here, etc. Yet their branding isn't anywhere to be found. SM put together the code for customers to use to help those that don't know code out and all that code can be found for me to use, as I have with my new site. In fact when I thought about paying a third party for their shopping cart code ($30/mo.), they didn't require I use their branding! Glad I dumped them after the trial and found out how to create a free cart that again doesn't require me to use their branding either. Though all I did use can be found in my new site code!!!! And now I pay a whopping $7 a mo. for my site!
FYI, BlueHost is my web hosting that I pay for. I had to have them to have my direct personal url here w/o sm in it. Thus sm is NOT my web host nor anyone's that pays for an outside web host for their own url. With my new site/store I've developed, BlueHost doesn't require I put them anywhere on my site! Nor does Wordpress require it! Not only that, but I can completely change a free WP theme and call it my own; they are ok with that. Hundreds have done just that over the years. All I have to do is give credit in the code of the theme I based my new theme off of.
Hell there are a lot of big corps. that use WP and you don't see any outside branding on them! SM you intentionally placed your branding on our sites, you screwed up and should own it! Many may buy your explanation, but that's only because they either wish to stay loyal though I haven't a clue why or they simply are unaware of the reality... You went against your agreement of no ads! With this debacle, your search and from what I understand under the shopping cart.
But the other things I'm hearing like Adam's quote above...I simply don't know what to do with statements like that because I'm just unable to understand. Like millions of other Wordpress customers, we pay for Wordpress hosting, and this is what their terms say:
Attribution. Automattic reserves the right to display attribution links such as ‘Blog at WordPress.com,’ theme author, and font attribution in your blog footer or toolbar. Footer credits and the WordPress.com toolbar may not be altered or removed regardless of upgrades purchased.
And so I think we're lost in debates where you see it one way, I see it another, and we could go on forever.
I'm trying to be responsible and focus on issues that affect a lot of customers, like the gallery password guessing issue last week. I'm pretty sure I can speak for 99% of our customers who tell us they don't care about the footer, or they like having it as I like having the Wordpress, vBulletin and Desk.com footers our our sites, and if they knew I was spending time on this they'd wonder why I'm not focused on issues that are important to them.
So maybe the best thing is to focus on what it is you need that isn't done right now with regard to our footer.