Realigning hierarchy without affecting OLD site

BigRedBigRed Registered Users Posts: 288 Major grins
edited September 30, 2015 in SmugMug Support
To take advantage of NEW Smugmug's flexible file structure and privacy options, I'd like to realign my migrated hierarchy (Organizer) before building out my new navigation menus & folder pages (Customizer). Are there any gotchas about doing this before Publishing? The Help doc says that moving folders & galleries won't affect my OLD site, but moving individual images will.

Per Help Page:
What happens in the sandbox stays in the sandbox—with one big exception. If you change any gallery settings or rearrange photos, your visitors will see those changes on your old site, too.
This is to make sure if you mark something as private in one place, for example, it becomes private everywhere. And if you move photos around, you don’t suddenly have to keep track of two differently sorted photo libraries.

Here are a few special things to consider while you’re working in Preview Mode: ... While your visitors will see changes to photos you might move around, they won’t see any rearranging of your folders or galleries while you’re in Preview Mode.
http://www.janicebrowne.com - Janice Browne Nature Art & Photography

Comments

  • RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,967 moderator
    edited September 19, 2015
    I've been working on this stuff for only about a week or so, so I'm far from an expert. But FWIW, it does seem to work pretty much as advertised regarding the hierarchy. I did notice one change in the display of the folders in one category (which went from being two by two to a single vertical column--I'm not sure what I did to cause this, but I suspect it was some setting I mistakenly applied to "All folders." Not a big deal for me. If you create new galleries in preview, make sure to set them to unlisted for now. Otherwise, they will appear on your live site in a Smug Preview category.
    My Pics
  • BigRedBigRed Registered Users Posts: 288 Major grins
    edited September 19, 2015
    Richard wrote: »
    [SNIP]
    I did notice one change in the display of the folders in one category (which went from being two by two to a single vertical column--I'm not sure what I did to cause this, but I suspect it was some setting I mistakenly applied to "All folders."
    [SNIP]

    That's exactly the kind of thing I'm concerned about, and need to know how to avoid.
    http://www.janicebrowne.com - Janice Browne Nature Art & Photography
  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins
    edited September 19, 2015
    Any galleries created in New SmugMug will show up in the "SmugPreview" category in Old SmugMug. You can go into the Gallery Settings in Old SmugMug and set it to point to the proper Folder (in both) if you'd like. For example, if I had a "Galleries" category in Old SmugMug it becomes a "Galleries" folder in New SmugMug. If I use the Organizer to create a "Example1" gallery in New SmugMug, it gets put in "Smug Preview" category in Old SmugMug. I can then go to the Example1 gallery settings, and set its category back to "Galleries". Then both New Smugmug and Old SmugMug will display it in '/Galleries".

    Unless you have a custom navigation menu in Old SmugMug that points to a specific url, you should be able to move items just fine in the Organizer. Galleries in Old SmugMug contain a gallery Id or Gallery Key ... which is used to point to the gallery in New SmugMug, regardless of where in your hierarchy you've moved it in the Organizer.
    dGrin Afficionado
    Former SmugMug Product Team
    aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
    Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
    My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
  • BigRedBigRed Registered Users Posts: 288 Major grins
    edited September 20, 2015
    leftquark, your explanation is much appreciated. Can you confirm that moving folders & galleries in NEW also won't affect the specific content on my OLD Category/Subcategory pages? For example, if I have this in OLD...
    > Cat1 > Subcat1 > Gal1
> Cat1 > Subcat1 > Gal2
> Cat1 > Subcat2 > Gal3
> Cat2 > Gal4
    ...then OLD will remain exactly the same (until I Publish) even if I do something like the following in NEW?
    > Folder-Cat1    > Folder-Subcat1 > Folder-New1 > Gal1
> Folder-Cat1    > Gal2
> Folder-Subcat2 > Folder-New2 > Gal3
> Folder-New3    > Gal4
> Folder-Cat2    > Page-New
    Also, is there any impact on OLD Smugmug if I rename galleries in NEW?
    http://www.janicebrowne.com - Janice Browne Nature Art & Photography
  • leftquarkleftquark Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins
    edited September 20, 2015
    1. Moving Gal1 into "Folder-New1" will continue to work. Old SM still see's Gal1 as being in Subcat1, so all your old links continue to work. When you publish, the link to Gal1 will redirect to the Folder-New1 proper location. All is OK
    2. Moving Gal2 into "Folder-Cat1" will continue to work. Old SM still see's Gal2 as in Subcat1, so all your old links continue to work. When you publish, the link to Gal2 will redirect to the Folder-Cat1. All is OK.
    3. Moving Subcat2 will continue to work. Old SM still see's Gal2 as in Cat1 > Subcat2, so all your old links continue to work. When you public, the link to Gal3 will redirect to Folder-Subcat2 > Folder-New2 > Gal3
    4. Same as above.
    5. Same as above.

    In other words, everything works.

    The one thing that you may want to be careful of is anything in your custom navigation menu. Those might need quick updates with the links, though I'm mostly certain those links should stay OK too.

    Renaming a gallery in New SmugMug will also rename it in Old SmugMug. However, remember that the URL "NiceName" of the gallery and the name of the gallery can be different. Renaming the Gallery does NOT update the nicename, so links should continue to work.
    dGrin Afficionado
    Former SmugMug Product Team
    aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
    Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
    My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
  • BigRedBigRed Registered Users Posts: 288 Major grins
    edited September 20, 2015
    leftquark wrote: »
    1. Moving Gal1 into "Folder-New1" will continue to work. Old SM still see's Gal1 as being in Subcat1, so all your old links continue to work. When you publish, the link to Gal1 will redirect to the Folder-New1 proper location. All is OK
    2. Moving Gal2 into "Folder-Cat1" will continue to work. Old SM still see's Gal2 as in Subcat1, so all your old links continue to work. When you publish, the link to Gal2 will redirect to the Folder-Cat1. All is OK.
    3. Moving Subcat2 will continue to work. Old SM still see's Gal3 as in Cat1 > Subcat2, so all your old links continue to work. When you public, the link to Gal3 will redirect to Folder-Subcat2 > Folder-New2 > Gal3
    4. Same as above.
    5. Same as above.

    In other words, everything works.

    That's VERY good news; I'm feeling like I'm standing on solid ground now. Thanks for taking the time to get into that and answering so completely.
    leftquark wrote: »
    Unless you have a custom navigation menu in Old SmugMug that points to a specific url, you should be able to move items just fine in the Organizer. Galleries in Old SmugMug contain a gallery Id or Gallery Key ... which is used to point to the gallery in New SmugMug, regardless of where in your hierarchy you've moved it in the Organizer.
    [SNIP]
    The one thing that you may want to be careful of is anything in your custom navigation menu. Those might need quick updates with the links, though I'm mostly certain those links should stay OK too.

    I also appreciate your admitting to a bit of uncertainty about the OLD Menu links. I'll be sure to check them and I'll try to remember to post back here when I see what actually happens. Updating them within OLD won't be a big deal.
    http://www.janicebrowne.com - Janice Browne Nature Art & Photography
  • pbandjpbandj Registered Users Posts: 237 Major grins
    edited September 29, 2015
    Perhaps this should be a separate thread, because my question doesn't really apply to my "OLD" site since I've unveiled my new one.

    But I'm a little confused about something. I know we can create a "custom URL" in the gallery settings. But it appears that this URL is only used at the end of the URL built from the hierarchy. For example, if I have a hierarchy with these Custom URLs:
    FolderA
    FolderB
    GalleryA

    Smugmug builds a URL like http://mysite.com/FolderA/FolderB/GalleryA

    This URL no longer contains an album ID like Old Smug did. So, as far as I can tell, if I've published the link to this gallery as shown above, and I move GalleryA to a different folder, the old link will break.

    Isn't that a step backwards? Smugmug touts how easy the organizer is to use (which I agree with), but doesn't the lack of an album ID force me to live with the hierarchy I've built once I start publishing links?

    Or am I missing something?
  • ChancyRatChancyRat Registered Users Posts: 2,141 Major grins
    edited September 30, 2015
    pbandj, before I unveiled (long time ago), I tried to get the hierarchy perfect, because I realized the loss of permalinks would cause the issue you describe. Mostly there were no issues, until now, as I face a need to do some serious reorganization. It's going to take me a few months before I put the reorg to public, but in the meantime I'm using the permalinks to distribute links. I get the codes using Nicholas Sherlock's Chrome tool:

    http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=240752

    I use the tool 1 of 2 ways:
    a. From inside a gallery, click the "get a permalink" in the tool dropdown list, and it pops up for copy/paste. Useful to grab one gallery at a time.
    b. Run the "list galleries" tool. This awesome tool lets me export csv or html for any type of content: with or without permalinks, titles, private versus public, etc. The image attached shows the variations available. I use the full list in 2 ways: (1) The CSV gives me Excel, where I have a quick reference for copy/paste of any gallery without having to go into a gallery one at a time, and (2) For a visitor Sitemap (for the HTML/CSS option).

    So for now I'm only handing out the permalinks. I figure, after I unveil, I'll wait awhile, thinking about whether/how to stop issuing them. For all the non-permalinks that I shared over the last (2 years?) long time, I hope enough time will have gone by that the breaking pages won't be that much of an issue.
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