Preventing link back from forums

EcoJam · January 8, 2007

Does smugmug have the capability to prevent someone from linking back to your entire gallery from a smugmug hosted pic on another forum?

I know you can password protect a gallery, I would assume that would prevent link back, but what if you don't want to PW protect the gallery & you just want to disable a person's ability to link from other forums?

Thks !

Pupator · January 8, 2007

Click on "customize" for each gallery and you'll see the option "easy sharing" at the very bottom.

I think that's what you're looking for?

Andy · January 8, 2007

EcoJam wrote:

Does smugmug have the capability to prevent someone from linking back to your entire gallery from a smugmug hosted pic on another forum?

I know you can password protect a gallery, I would assume that would prevent link back, but what if you don't want to PW protect the gallery & you just want to disable a person's ability to link from other forums?

Thks !

Gallery tools>customize gallery>disable external links will do this.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/picture-storage

Holler if you need more help?

jfriend · January 8, 2007

Could this be what you want?

EcoJam wrote:

Does smugmug have the capability to prevent someone from linking back to your entire gallery from a smugmug hosted pic on another forum?

I know you can password protect a gallery, I would assume that would prevent link back, but what if you don't want to PW protect the gallery & you just want to disable a person's ability to link from other forums?

Thks !

I'm not sure I fully understand what you are asking for, but here's what I do in case this is what you want.

I want to post lots of photos in other forums, but I don't want someone browsing the gallery that those photos are hosted in. I only want them to see those photos in the context of the forum thread that they're in.

So, I create a private gallery (one that is not linked anywhere from my Smugmug homepage) and I only post images from that gallery. Then, when I link a photo into a forum, the link will look something like this: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/119276769-M.jpg. From this link, a viewer could figure out how to get to my public Smugmug site, but this link does not tell them how to get to the whole non-public gallery that contains all my other forum posted images. This also keeps me from linking directly to any images in my public galleries so I'm free to reorganize, delete, password protect, etc... any of my public galleries without ever breaking a forum posting image.

Allen · January 8, 2007

jfriend wrote:

I'm not sure I fully understand what you are asking for, but here's what I do in case this is what you want.

I want to post lots of photos in other forums, but I don't want someone browsing the gallery that those photos are hosted in. I only want them to see those photos in the context of the forum thread that they're in.

So, I create a private gallery (one that is not linked anywhere from my Smugmug homepage) and I only post images from that gallery. Then, when I link a photo into a forum, the link will look something like this: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/photos/119276769-M.jpg. From this link, a viewer could figure out how to get to my public Smugmug site, but this link does not tell them how to get to the whole non-public gallery that contains all my other forum posted images. This also keeps me from linking directly to any images in my public galleries so I'm free to reorganize, delete, password protect, etc... any of my public galleries without ever breaking a forum posting image.

Try putting all the linked photos is a private gallery and "hide the owner".
Your site will not show in the address I think.
Al

See if you can get to this?
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/1848843-L.jpg
From private, hide the owner gallery

EcoJam · January 8, 2007

clarification
thks for the help.

I was unclear.

A) I want to use the "share a single photo" to post a single pic (from a non-private gallery on smugmug) to another forum (eg. Advrider.com). I want that single photo to show embedded in my text comments (without requiring a viewer to click) -- this far every thing work great. I post the pic, it looks great to readers of the other unrelated forum (might be big or small), but the pic appears to anyone looking at the thread in that other forum.

Now, someone (anyone) looking at that thread can link back to my smugmug gallery, look at that gallery and navigate to everything I have on smugmug.

I want to retain "A" (without making others who know my smugmug site enter a password) and continue to post pics on others site ---- but want to stop/prevent/disable strangers from the other site doing "B"

Is that possible?

Thanks again!

jfriend · January 8, 2007

It can't be public and invisible

EcoJam wrote:

thks for the help.

I was unclear.

A) I want to use the "share a single photo" to post a single pic (from a non-private gallery on smugmug) to another forum (eg. Advrider.com). I want that single photo to show embedded in my text comments (without requiring a viewer to click) -- this far every thing work great. I post the pic, it looks great to readers of the other unrelated forum (might be big or small), but the pic appears to anyone looking at the thread in that other forum.

Now, someone (anyone) looking at that thread can link back to my smugmug gallery, look at that gallery and navigate to everything I have on smugmug.

I want to retain "A" (without making others who know my smugmug site enter a password) and continue to post pics on others site ---- but want to stop/prevent/disable strangers from the other site doing "B"

Is that possible?

Thanks again!

If you follow the advice that Al and I provided, nobody will be able to find the gallery that you linked from to see the other images. If you're only linking a few photos, it should be no big deal to use make 2nd copy and them move the copy to the unlisted gallery and link to that one. No new uploads required.

If you want to link from a public gallery, not from a private gallery, then you can't prevent people from finding that gallery. After all, it's public, it's browsable through your home page and it's indexed by both smugmug and Google so it's going to be findable by anyone who wants to look for it.

You also can't link to your own photos AND prevent someone else from linking to the same photo. Smugmug has no way of knowing which external links are good vs. bad so external linking is all or nothing (on or off).

But, if you use the unlisted (e.g. private) gallery technique combined with hide owner and link from there, all your viewers will be able to find is that single image to which you gave them the URL.

Andy · January 8, 2007

You can also link a photo this way:

http://nickname.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg

and when you use the latter, the link will embed and nobody will know where the photo resides in a gallery .

Like this:

jfriend · January 9, 2007

Andy wrote:

You can also link a photo this way:

http://nickname.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg

and when you use the latter, the link will embed and nobody will know where the photo resides in a gallery .

That's cool to know! Same URL as hide owner would produce I guess, but you don't have to use hide owner on the gallery.

3rdPlanetPhotography · January 9, 2007

Very good info Andy, Shanks!

So I'm guessing that I can put images on my website (my own domain hosted at a different company) by putting them in my smugmug then using the URL for the IMG SRC in my code....

Scott

Andy wrote:

You can also link a photo this way:

http://nickname.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg

and when you use the latter, the link will embed and nobody will know where the photo resides in a gallery .

Like this:

bwg · January 9, 2007

jfriend wrote:

That's cool to know! Same URL as hide owner would produce I guess, but you don't have to use hide owner on the gallery.

yabbut, if someone replaces the www with anything, the url will result in the proper owner. example:

http://mysteryphotographer.smugmug.com/photos/108167120-M.jpg

will end up as

http://williams.smugmug.com/photos/108167120-M.jpg

Only Hide Owner will totally anonymize the url.

jfriend · January 9, 2007

bigwebguy wrote:

yabbut, if someone replaces the www with anything, the url will result in the proper owner. example:

http://mysteryphotographer.smugmug.com/photos/108167120-M.jpg

will end up as

http://williams.smugmug.com/photos/108167120-M.jpg

Only Hide Owner will totally anonymize the url.

Which just illustrates to the original poster that if it's a public gallery, there are lots of ways for it to be found. If you don't want it easily found, don't make it public in the first place.

EcoJam · January 10, 2007

Hide owner or no

Andy wrote:

You can also link a photo this way:

http://nickname.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXX-L.jpg

and when you use the latter, the link will embed and nobody will know where the photo resides in a gallery .

Like this:

Wow, great support and insights!

OK, so I can see how linking only to a private gallery and "hiding owner" will achieve my objective. Under that approach, I could copy any pic from a public gallery to a private & hide owner. Then, a stranger could not right -click and look at properties or otherwise find my public galleries -- they would see "smugmug", but not my specific public galleries.

I don't quite understand this option - is this option for public galleries? Specifically, what are the steps to use this option (right now I have only public galleries).

Andy · January 10, 2007

EcoJam wrote:

I don't quite understand this option - is this option for public galleries? Specifically, what are the steps to use this option (right now I have only public galleries).

Public or private. Give it a try! Link a photo right here

EcoJam · January 10, 2007

Humm

Andy wrote:

Public or private. Give it a try! Link a photo right here

sorry, I usually get these things -- prob something quite obvious I'm missing

... put in a link and xxxx'd the pic # (or was that just a generic ref)? I was trying to prevent link back to any public gallery of mine (so the "hide owner" makes sense to me). Since my nickname ID's where those public galleries are -- seems like hide owner on a dup private gallery will accomplish that ......... I guess I just missed what the example (girl & car) is showing / telling me and what the actions and result are.

sorry, I need to spend more time probably.

Allen · January 10, 2007

EcoJam wrote:

sorry, I usually get these things -- prob something quite obvious I'm missing

... put in a link and xxxx'd the pic # (or was that just a generic ref)? I was trying to prevent link back to any public gallery of mine (so the "hide owner" makes sense to me). Since my nickname ID's where those public galleries are -- seems like hide owner on a dup private gallery will accomplish that ......... I guess I just missed what the example (girl & car) is showing / telling me and what the actions and result are.

sorry, I need to spend more time probably.

I think this is what Andy's saying.
Use this link with your photo number and all you'll get is the photo with no
reference to your site.
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/1234567-M.jpg

Al

EcoJam · January 10, 2007

[/IMG]

Allen wrote:

I think this is what Andy's saying.
Use this link with your photo number and all you'll get is the photo with no
reference to your site.
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/1234567-M.jpg

Al

Ah, what I was missing was that my Pic ID is unique across all of smugmug - or at least works that way with this link -- I'll test that

my test

EcoJam · January 10, 2007

EcoJam wrote:

[/IMG]

Ah, what I was missing was that my Pic ID is unique across all of smugmug - or at least works that way with this link -- I'll test that

my test

let's try that again

EcoJam · January 10, 2007

Thks Allen

Allen wrote:

I think this is what Andy's saying.
Use this link with your photo number and all you'll get is the photo with no
reference to your site.
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/1234567-M.jpg

Al

Wow, that Pic ID does not look big enough to be unique... I guess it is - it grows obviuosly and is not fixed

cool deal

PBolchover · January 10, 2007

Unfortunately, it is actually very easy to go from an image URL to the gallery that contains that image.

As an example, the picture above of the car is at
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/2096287/1/108167120
while the shark is at
http://ecojam.smugmug.com/gallery/178905/1/6748632

I don't believe that either of these galleries are marked as private, but am pretty sure that the same technique could be used to locate private galleries...

PBolchover · January 10, 2007

In fact a quick test on one of my own photos while logged out shows that it IS possible to go straight from a photo ID to a private gallery containing that photo.

ivar · January 10, 2007

PBolchover wrote:

In fact a quick test on one of my own photos while logged out shows that it IS possible to go straight from a photo ID to a private gallery containing that photo.

Sure, but that doesn't always work. I think this photo doesn't tell you what account it came from:

PBolchover · January 10, 2007

That picture comes from
http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1426590/1/67741179

I'll agree that it doesn't show the name of the user, but it is possible to view the gallery...

ivar · January 10, 2007

PBolchover wrote:

That picture comes from
http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1426590/1/67741179

yabbut, that is not what I asked for. It gives you no information on who it belongs to, or what other photos are available.

Allen · January 10, 2007

ivar wrote:

yabbut, that is not what I asked for. It gives you no information on who it belongs to, or what other photos are available.

:hide You're comments give you away on this.:D

PBolchover · January 10, 2007

ivar wrote:

yabbut, that is not what I asked for. It gives you no information on who it belongs to, or what other photos are available.

True, but the original poster was asking about being able to access galleries...

Being able to access a (possibly private) gallery simply from a direct link to the photo URL is undesirable... (For example, I can now see all of the other Hurricane Charlie photos)

ivar · January 10, 2007

Allen wrote:

:hide You're comments give you away on this.:D

No, it's not the one you think it is

Allen · January 10, 2007

ivar wrote:

No, it's not the one you think it is

The gallery comments, not here. You have comments on that gallery that
links to your homepage.
Al

jfriend · January 10, 2007

How did you do that?

PBolchover wrote:

That picture comes from
http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1426590/1/67741179

I'll agree that it doesn't show the name of the user, but it is possible to view the gallery...

How did you find the gallery http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1426590/1/67741179 from the plain picture URL http://www.smugmug.com/photos/67741179-S.jpg?

jfriend · January 10, 2007

Hmmm

jfriend wrote:

How did you find the gallery http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1426590/1/67741179 from the plain picture URL http://www.smugmug.com/photos/67741179-S.jpg?

Never mind. Smugmug is too smart for it's own good in this regard.

EcoJam · January 11, 2007

Thks all
Some great discussions about smugmug features.

Given all the great info, I think simply linking with "hide owner" provides enough trouble for a casual snoop (thats probably unfamliar with smugmug) to not link back and browse all my other galleries.

It would be tough to prevent those with some technical savvy from finding the other galleries from a forum link, but this might work for the average forum reader. Think so, some minimun hurdle?

so a link like this:

Preventing link back from forums

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