Unpublished TREE of galleries/folders
Ferguson
Registered Users Posts: 1,345 Major grins
I was trying to solve a minor need and ran across unexpected, but probably reasonable behavior that is blocking me, and wondering if there are other alternatives.
One can have "unlisted" galleries, but it appears you cannot have unlisted trees (folders of folders/galleries), at least not in a practical sense.
Consider a need like this: You do photos for your family, or a group of friends, who want to see and share. The level of "unlisted" is appropriate (they won't want to create logins here, or keep track of passwords, but can pass around links, and if they get out it's not a big deal).
If you have just one gallery this works perfectly, but if you have several galleries (say family events), it requires you to have separate links (with the little cryptic ending) on all.
I THOUGHT what I would do is create an unlisted folder, then underneath make everything public but not searchable, effectively hiding it inside the unlisted folder which had all the URL's. Make sure there are no menu links (etc.) and what it would do (thought I) was protect all the underlying galleries with the single folder cryptic URL.
First unexpected problem (a bug I think) is that the Lightroom Smugmug PLugin lets you set this up, but it will not "take". You can set these lower galleries to "pubic" but it is just ignored. It appears that Smugmug enforces a rule that the parent of a public gallery must be public. If you go into the web Organize tool it won't let you choose public at all.
So... does that make sense? I'm not sure. Maybe it is a safety check. But it kind of killed what I wanted to do.
So I think the closest you can get it leave them all public AND make them not-searchable. This lacks the link cryptic suffix, but (I think, hopefully, maybe) won't show up in any search tools.
Is there a better way?
How "not there" is being not-searchable? For example, if someone posts a link on Facebook to a not-searchable gallery, does it suddenly start being searchable because Google (et al) saw the link somewhere and found it?
So I tried password: the whole "password" feature is confusing in inheritance as well. For example, I created a top level folder "Unlisted, Anyone with the link" and access "People with password". Then two folders underneath are set to "inherited". Except... if you go to the folder and enter the password, you CANNOT SEE THE GALLERIES. While the inheritance is there (and forced -- you can't make the galleries public) it doesn't seem to inherit access.
So trying to fix this I made the top level folder Public with password, and the galleries inherit that. I go into the folder, enter the password and --- nothing. The public, password protected galleries are not visible. Public. Inserited.
This just seems to be a mess -- there appears to be no good way to provide a somewhat obscured set of galleries to someone to review.
Am I missing something?
PS. And no -- please do not tell me to have them to use the private invites via the new sharing. I think that's really cool it was done, but it means I have to manage the access, and people have to share their identity with Smugmug. That's not acceptable for what I want to do among friends and family.
One can have "unlisted" galleries, but it appears you cannot have unlisted trees (folders of folders/galleries), at least not in a practical sense.
Consider a need like this: You do photos for your family, or a group of friends, who want to see and share. The level of "unlisted" is appropriate (they won't want to create logins here, or keep track of passwords, but can pass around links, and if they get out it's not a big deal).
If you have just one gallery this works perfectly, but if you have several galleries (say family events), it requires you to have separate links (with the little cryptic ending) on all.
I THOUGHT what I would do is create an unlisted folder, then underneath make everything public but not searchable, effectively hiding it inside the unlisted folder which had all the URL's. Make sure there are no menu links (etc.) and what it would do (thought I) was protect all the underlying galleries with the single folder cryptic URL.
First unexpected problem (a bug I think) is that the Lightroom Smugmug PLugin lets you set this up, but it will not "take". You can set these lower galleries to "pubic" but it is just ignored. It appears that Smugmug enforces a rule that the parent of a public gallery must be public. If you go into the web Organize tool it won't let you choose public at all.
So... does that make sense? I'm not sure. Maybe it is a safety check. But it kind of killed what I wanted to do.
So I think the closest you can get it leave them all public AND make them not-searchable. This lacks the link cryptic suffix, but (I think, hopefully, maybe) won't show up in any search tools.
Is there a better way?
How "not there" is being not-searchable? For example, if someone posts a link on Facebook to a not-searchable gallery, does it suddenly start being searchable because Google (et al) saw the link somewhere and found it?
So I tried password: the whole "password" feature is confusing in inheritance as well. For example, I created a top level folder "Unlisted, Anyone with the link" and access "People with password". Then two folders underneath are set to "inherited". Except... if you go to the folder and enter the password, you CANNOT SEE THE GALLERIES. While the inheritance is there (and forced -- you can't make the galleries public) it doesn't seem to inherit access.
So trying to fix this I made the top level folder Public with password, and the galleries inherit that. I go into the folder, enter the password and --- nothing. The public, password protected galleries are not visible. Public. Inserited.
This just seems to be a mess -- there appears to be no good way to provide a somewhat obscured set of galleries to someone to review.
Am I missing something?
PS. And no -- please do not tell me to have them to use the private invites via the new sharing. I think that's really cool it was done, but it means I have to manage the access, and people have to share their identity with Smugmug. That's not acceptable for what I want to do among friends and family.
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enter the tree anywhere and put in the PW once and browse anywhere. Every family folder and gallery is completely set
to public (everything) but the PW prevents intrusion. Only those that enter the PW have any search capabilities.
In other words my whole tree is completely set to public with a single password at the top level which is inherited down thru the tree.
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Thanks.
I wish it would work that with the unlisted aspect (i.e. a way to make them not individually, separately unlisted but unlisted as part of a whole), but I guess i can work with passwords.
The only other thing I can think of is do unlisted galleries and then create a page of links to them, but that's kind of painful.
I am pretty convinced that the LR Plugin, which I was using to do my initial test, messed this up. I tested what it had created, and it LOOKED right, but it would not work (select the folder from a browser where I am not logged in, enter the folder PW and have no visibility of the underlying, inherited galleries), but this might come from starting one way and then changing them as opposed to creating new ones. I also let LR delete the original tree and it said it was gone, but in organizer the top folder was still there. So there are some disconnects I think. But not relevant to this discussion.
So Thanks Allen, I can work with this I think.