Is this possible with Word Press & Smugmug

sgrotta

Hi Guys:

It's been a while since I've been here on DGrin. No I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I just haven't needed to make too many changes to my smugmug sites for a while. That is now drastically changing.

I'm creating a new website to consolidate all my various websites into one. This includes my writing, speaking, consulting, tech sites, plus, of course, my photography galleries. I like the way Smugmug works, and I'm hoping I can keep that functionality by somehow connecting my new site with my Smugmug galleries. Here's what I envision, and I'm wondering it if is possible:

• My new site has a particular branded design that I want to keep consistent throughout, including in my photo gallery sections. This includes a banner, a Nav Bar, a sidebar sub-menu designed specifically for this section of the site (to make it easy to navigate among the various galleries), and color palettes.
• I currently have two Smugmug sites: pixels.smugmug.com and AmHands.com
• The photography section of my new site will have an initial page with two sections of thumbnails: The top section will have thumbnails for my American Hands project (AmHands.com), and the bottom section will have thumbnails from Other Projects (pixels.smugmug.com)
• Clicking on a thumbnail will open up either a slideshow of images from that album or an autoplay video
• The slideshow or video would either be a popup with full-screen option, or a new page that maintains the branded design -- Nav Bar and sidebar (which is a sub-menu), but no banner.

Essentially, I would redesign my current smugmug sites so I can use them to build these pages. In fact, I am moving the AmHands.com url to this section of the site. So that means I could possibly consolidate the two smugmug sites into one (at pixels.smugmug.com) for this purpose. And, yes, I would continue put a smugmug logo on the new site, if I am able to achieve this.

Is this possible? If so, how?

Many thanks, Sally
Sally Wiener Grota

Hikin' Mike

Yes it's possible to "integrate" WordPress to SmugMug. My "regular site" is WordPress. I created a subdomain and pointed my SmugMug site to that. So only my galleries are SM. Pretty easy to do if you have some HTML/CSS experience. If you don't, I or one of the other helpers here should be able to help you.

sgrotta

So, in other words, the galleries live on Smugmug but are embedded in the WordPress site. Is that correct?

Is it possible to have a window on the Word Press site that contains the SM galleries, so that it isn't re-directing?

Hikin' Mike

No embedding. The blog entries are uploaded to my "WordPress site". The photos on my 'Gallery' page is from SmugMug.

I don't understand the window thing.

Hikin' Mike

To add, you CAN embed images to your WordPres site by using the Share function in SmugMug. I prefer to keep them separate.

sgrotta

Thanks. I've got a lot of thinking to do about this. But I hope to make a decision in the next day.

sgrotta

Ok. I'm going to link my Smugmug site to the main site. But that means, I need the Smugmug site (pixels.smugmug.com) to look/feel/function like the main site so it appears to be part and parcel of it. I know this is possible, because I had something like that years ago with a previous site. However, I didn't create that site. So I'm going to need some handholding on probable CSS code.

For instance, I have a Nav Bar design on the site, that I will want on the smugmug pages. It should be below the banner on the smugmug home page, and at the top of the screen on the gallery pages which will have no banner.
I also want a sidebar on the left side that goes below the Nav Bar. The sidebar will be a combination of text intersperced above and between two menus. Is that possible?

Here's a screen capture of the site in development:

Thank you, Sally

Hikin' Mike

What is your "main website"? Can you post it here?

sgrotta

it's under development at present at dev.sallywienergrotta.com

Hikin' Mike

@sgrotta said:
For instance, I have a Nav Bar design on the site, that I will want on the smugmug pages. It should be below the banner on the smugmug home page, and at the top of the screen on the gallery pages which will have no banner.
I also want a sidebar on the left side that goes below the Nav Bar. The sidebar will be a combination of text intersperced above and between two menus. Is that possible?

I don't see any problems doing what you want. You'll need to add either a logo block or HTML/CSS block on the header. I personally use a HTML/CSS block. Under that you'll need to drag in a menu block under it. Fill in the menu as you see fit. I don't use a sidebar on my SM site, but there is a section for that.

Hikin' Mike

You can use CSS to hide your banner/logo on your galleries.

sgrotta

Could you please point me to instructions for where to work on CSS in the Smugmug interface? And what types of instructions go into each area? I remember in the old software, there were various areas that had different purposes.

Thank you, Sally

Hikin' Mike

Just use a 'HTML/CSS Block'. HTML goes in the HTML section and the CSS goes in the CSS section. This may help: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1210628-customization-content

sgrotta

Thanks, Mike. One further question: When do I use the CSS code section of my theme's properties?

Thank you, Sally

Hikin' Mike

I come from a WordPress background, all CSS code goes in the style.css. So I put 99% of my code into my theme's CSS section.

sgrotta

OK. Thanks.