Popular Photos

MWWeston

How is my Popular Photos page populated now that the option for viewers to "thumbs up"/like a photograph has been removed.

http://www.markwweston.com/Popular

It does not look like any of the photographs on this page have changed since that feature was removed.

Thank you,

MWWeston

Any Updates on How Popular Photographs Are Updated
I have not seen any changes to my Popular Photographs since the option to like was removed. Is it coming back?

http://www.markwweston.com/Popular

leftquark

In the future you'll see a big push for Engagement. We want SmugMug to be a place where your photos thrive, not die. Stay tuned.

denisegoldberg

It's been a year since this thread was posted and 10 months since the "stay tuned" reply.

The /popular page still exists on our sites but it appears that nothing is populating the entries on the page (entries appear, but they appear to not change at all). There used to be a "like" button that no longer exists - but we were always told that the button was only one way of populating the /popular photos.

Can we get an update on adding the option of the "like" button back to our galleries as well as a status on the other methods of populating the page (that no longer seem to be doing anything)? (Perhaps comments on photos still play into this; I don't have that on but I would hope that there are other methods to populate popular.)

--- Denise

leftquark

There are a number of items that factor into Popularity, though liking and the legacy thumbs up/down also played into it. No update on new items to play into it.

MWWeston

What are the "number of items that factor into Popularity"? My popular photos page http://www.markwweston.com/Popular has been 100% unchanged since the thumbs up/down option was removed. It looks like that was the only factor. My account expires in March 2017 and it is beginning to look like our Popular photographs pages will not be addressed before then.

salobaas

Is there anything happening concerning this subject?

Cheers, Fons.

pilotdave

Bumping this thread for an update. My popular photos smart gallery for 2017 was completely empty, meaning this feature is completely broken. We've been staying tuned for an awfully long time now. Has smugmug given up on this?

Dave

rainforest1155

Hi Dave,
Do you have commenting enabled in your galleries? A person leaving a comment on a photo should contribute to adding that photo to your popular photos. If you've tried that already, could you post a link to a photo in question that has a comment but doesn't show up in the populars?

denisegoldberg

@rainforest1155 said:
Do you have commenting enabled in your galleries? A person leaving a comment on a photo should contribute to adding that photo to your popular photos.

I don't have commenting enabled but that shouldn't be the only criteria. As far as I can tell the popular photos on my site haven't been updated in a couple of years.

@leftquark said:
There are a number of items that factor into Popularity, though liking and the legacy thumbs up/down also played into it. No update on new items to play into it.

It's been a long time... can you detail these items? I would hope that commenting isn't the only factor.

pilotdave

@rainforest1155 said:
Hi Dave,
Do you have commenting enabled in your galleries? A person leaving a comment on a photo should contribute to adding that photo to your popular photos. If you've tried that already, could you post a link to a photo in question that has a comment but doesn't show up in the populars?

Commenting is turned on, but nobody has left a comment in years since they were required to log in. Also comments are pretty well hidden away so even though I have encouraged commenting and even enabled it on the mobile site, I'm not sure any visitors even realize it's possible. This was supposed to be fixed with the "big push for engagement" over the last couple years that never seemed to happen.

I've asked before and never got a real answer. Why was the thumbs up button removed before any sort of replacement was available? Smugmug has kept the criteria for popularity secret since the thumbs up button was removed. Like Denise said, I sure hope commenting isn't the only factor.

And don't get me started on the other smart gallery features... Very frustrating.

Dave

pilotdave

It's that time of year again. Creating my 2018 Popular Photos gallery using smart rules. Zero results based on "popular." This feature is broken and a fix was promised years ago. Even photos with comments don't appear. Based on the product news forum and lack of email communications, it hardly looks like smugmug is still even being developed at all. Is everyone working on flickr now??

Dave

leftquark

@pilotdave said:
It's that time of year again. Creating my 2018 Popular Photos gallery using smart rules. Zero results based on "popular." This feature is broken and a fix was promised years ago.

I've spoken openly about how I've wanted to work on fixing popular in the future and that's still the case. These are no "promises" because priorities, trends, and other things change, but it's absolutely something we want to give some focus on in the future. I have some thoughts on a few things that could greatly influence popularity but there's been some pressing needs that require our attention before we focus on things that might improve popularity.

@pilotdave said:
Based on the product news forum and lack of email communications, it hardly looks like smugmug is still even being developed at all. Is everyone working on flickr now??

We're still extremely active on improving SmugMug, and last year we pushed over 1,300 updates to SmugMug. I outlined a number of them in our recent blog post . I've also been extremely focused on a number of things we're excited for and that's meant my time to post here on DGrin has diminished. Going forward I'll be posting monthly "Release Notes" over on our blog, so keep looking there for updates.

pilotdave

Annual bump. Popular photos from 2019 is blank again. Thumbs up button used to work so well...

Dave

Allen

First thing is cut down the number of photos in the Popular gallery, one thousand is a ridiculous number.