Creating a secret Category/Subcategory?

dvdmon

I've seen this before and am trying to create something like this on a site I'm developing: (http://portraitplaytime.smugmug.com). Basically what I want to do is have a page devoted to clients albums. The home page shows the gallery view (not the category view), so if I make the clients galleries public then they show up on the home page, which I don't want. I want them only visible in a category or subcategory url - this seems to work when I'm logged in, but only then. I suppose clients will need to log in to buy their photos, but I'd rather allow them to view their photos before needing to register, et al. I created a category called Clients and when I access this url at http://portraitplaytime.smugmug.com/Clients, it says there are no albums unless I'm logged in. I tried this also with a subcategory accessible at http://portraitplaytime.smugmug.com/Clients/144586 with the same results. Where I saw this implemented it looked like this was how it worked according to the urls (and I wasn't logged in), but this doesn't seem to work. What am I doing wrong, or is there some trick to this that I'm just not finding? Thanks!

Allen

Try creating a "share group" named clients and put their
galleries in it. They will need the direct link to the share
group to see it.
AL

Ed: make all the galleries private

dvdmon

Allen wrote:

Try creating a "share group" named clients and put their
galleries in it. They will need the direct link to the share
group to see it.
AL

Thanks Allen, I am familiar with sharegroups, but I hoping to do this another way. This way clients wouldn't have to remember a randomly generated url and I wouldn't have to look it up myself every time I needed to tell them. Rather I'd love to be able to just say go to myURL\Clients and then they can just scroll through the various galleries. Or I could even deliniate it more and Create a \Clients\Jones, a \Clients\Smith, etc. by creating assigning the Clients cateogory and the given subcategory... Thing is I know that I've seen this done, but can't figure out why it won't work from me...

Allen

How bout adding the word clients on your home page somewhat
hidden and have it link to the sharegroup? Or maybe link
it to another page with links to the individual client sharegroup
galleries. You could also add simple passwords for each client.
Just a few more thoughts.
AL

dvdmon

Allen wrote:

How bout adding the word clients on your home page somewhat
hidden and have it link to the sharegroup? Or maybe link
it to another page with links to the individual client sharegroup
galleries. You could also add simple passwords for each client.
Just a few more thoughts.
AL

Yeah, that works, but again doesn't allow for a simpler url for the client and myself to understand.

Also, as I just tried it, the Sharegroup seems to have a different stylesheet applied to it than the home page, and so I would have to add some additional styles to deal with it. Not a big deal, but the documentation in the help file doesn't address sharegroups. It's hopefully posted somewhere on this forum, but again, I'd rather avoid the whole issue and do something simply with categories and subcategories if at all possible...

dvdmon

I thought I could trick it into displaying it if I created one non-private directory, that didn't work. It now displays that one, but doesn't display the private ones. I wonder, maybe there's a way to filter the home page so that only non-passworded galleries are visible? That might be a workaround, so that they would only be viewable in a category page?

Anyway, what I did discover is something very odd. I set up a sharegroup as suggested, which of course worked, but then I went back to the url for the category and all of a sudden that worked! So I went to a seperate computer and tried looking at the same url and it still gave me nothing. So I came back and deleted the cookies in my browser and then it wouldn't show again. I'm not sure if this is intended or not, but if you gain access to a sharegroup on a site, it seems to set cookies so that those shared galleries are no longer private for you - at least in that their thumbnails now show up on the category url, and also on the home page too! They are still password protected, but accessing that sharegroup url makes them visible througout a given smugmug site for that user...

Andy

dvdmon wrote:

I suppose clients will need to log in to buy their photos,

:nono Nobody needs to log in to buy photos or view photos. You may require a password - but that's not logging in ...

I'm still trying to understand what you're trying to accomplish though

dvdmon

Andy wrote:

:nono Nobody needs to log in to buy photos or view photos. You may require a password - but that's not logging in ...

I'm still trying to understand what you're trying to accomplish though

Ok, here is the site that I'm looking at which seems to show it's possible:

http://sweetpeapics.smugmug.com/

Her home page uses the standard galleries list, not categories.

Ok, so if you click on the link "Clients may access their galleries here" it brings you to:

http://sweetpeapics.smugmug.com/Professional/71120

which to me appears to be a subcategory listing page which shows numerous password-protected galleries. All of these galleries are visible on this page despite my not being logged into anything. And none of these galleries appear on her general list of galleries on her home page. That's all I'm trying to do. Have a home page that only displays certain galleries and a seperate category (and/or subcategory) url that displays other galleries (specifically galleries that I also password protect for clients.

Does that make more sense?

Allen

dvdmon wrote:

... it seems to set cookies so that those shared galleries are
no longer private for you - at least in that their thumbnails now show up on
the category url,

Any private galleries in sharegroups that you/clients visit will be visible from
the home page, at least for a short? time period. If you view in a different
broswer they won't show. That and the resently visited sharegroups nav
would be convienent to your clients when returning.
AL

Andy

dvdmon wrote:

Does that make more sense?

I love Sweet Pea's site. The reason they show, is that they are Public yet still password protected. On your site, your galleries are private.

I hope this helps.

All the best,

Allen

I think she created a sub-category with all private galleries.
It does not show on her home page so she has a link to it.
Al

Andy

Allen wrote:

I think she created a sub-category with all private galleries.
It does not show on her home page so she has a link to it.
Al

:nono Allen, they are public galleries but password protected. Thanks. Notice, she's only got "Featured Galleries" on her homepage? No gallery categories showing on the homepage

Allen

Ahh Featured is what explains it. I tried viewing by galleries and all
the plubic ones, even password protected showed.
Thanks for the clarifacation. Yo the man! (ya getting good at this stuff)
AL

dvdmon

Andy wrote:

:nono Allen, they are public galleries but password protected. Thanks. Notice, she's only got "Featured Galleries" on her homepage? No gallery categories showing on the homepage

I tried making the galleries public and when I do so, they show up on my home page. I don't want that, I only want the password protected ones to show up on the category/subcategory page. If you look at sweetpea, none of those password-protected galleries show up on her home page, but only on her category or subcategory page. That's what I'm trying to accomplish...

I've left those galleries as public for now to show you how they show up on my home page.

Maybe the issue is that she's showing her featured galleries rather than just plain galleries as I'm doing. I have a feeling that's the problem, so I'll go try changing that and see what happens...

Andy

dvdmon wrote:

I tried making the galleries public and when I do so, they show up on my home page. I don't want that, I only want the password protected ones to show up on the category/subcategory page. If you look at sweetpea, none of those password-protected galleries show up on her home page, but only on her category or subcategory page. That's what I'm trying to accomplish...

I've left those galleries as public for now to show you how they show up on my home page.

Maybe the issue is that she's showing her featured galleries rather than just plain galleries as I'm doing. I have a feeling that's the problem, so I'll go try changing that and see what happens...

You want your cake and eat it too
They won't show on the home page if you use "featured galleries" like Sweet Pea did. Let me know if you need more help I'll be happy to explain further

dvdmon

Andy, I figured it out! Thanks to you and Allen for all your help. While you didn't exactly give me the answer per se, you helped me understand and play with things more to where something jogged in my brain to try something that worked. Basically, here's what I had to do:

• Make the regular gallery display on the home page hidden
• Make the feature gallery area visible on the home page(it hadn't been)
• Make sure the password protected galleries were public
• Assign them to the Category and subcategory I wanted: specifically I was able to create a Clients category and then I created subcategories under Clients for each client. Then I can just asign that category and subcategory to a public, password protected gallery, or multiple ones in case we do multiple jobs for a single client.

Ok, so, it seems to work now! A quick follow-up to this is - does this kind of setup make sense to you? I'm sure you've seen it all, so I thought I'd ask in case I'm doing something that doesn't really make sense!

Oh, my other question is, since this relies on the featured gallery feature, and since that only allows for four featured galleries, what would you suggest if I want to display more than those four on the home page. Am I simply out of luck, or could there be some trick for displaying more? Just hoping... Not an issue at the moment, but it would be great to have a little more flexibility in how many galleries could be displayed if the time comes to expand our "categories"...

Andy

dvdmon wrote:

Andy, I figured it out!

Well done. I think it's a fine way to setup...