guest account with less priveleges...?

ashsimmonds

hi, i have a few friends who i'd like to offer a basic area to put their pics in, but it seems i have to give them a guest password. i tried out the guest feature, and well clicking on the control panel i noticed it has way too many priveleges... like cancel/delete account in 2 clicks etc!

not that i wouldn't trust the people i'd give guest accounts to, but really i'd like to just give them a category of their own to do the absolute basics of uploading and managing their own pics. if it got to the point where they wanted more control and multiple galleries and stuff, then i'd suggest they get their own account.

at the moment i'm in the midst of implementing the email-to-post feature, which will be awesome for those folk who every week or so post me a couple pics, but there's some people who go to car shows and take 50 photos that they'd like me to post for them...

sorry, i *did* lots of searching, but guest/user/member/gallery are all kinda generic keywords with too many unrelevant results.

jfriend

ashsimmonds wrote:

hi, i have a few friends who i'd like to offer a basic area to put their pics in, but it seems i have to give them a guest password. i tried out the guest feature, and well clicking on the control panel i noticed it has way too many priveleges... like cancel/delete account in 2 clicks etc!

not that i wouldn't trust the people i'd give guest accounts to, but really i'd like to just give them a category of their own to do the absolute basics of uploading and managing their own pics. if it got to the point where they wanted more control and multiple galleries and stuff, then i'd suggest they get their own account.

at the moment i'm in the midst of implementing the email-to-post feature, which will be awesome for those folk who every week or so post me a couple pics, but there's some people who go to car shows and take 50 photos that they'd like me to post for them...

sorry, i *did* lots of searching, but guest/user/member/gallery are all kinda generic keywords with too many unrelevant results.

Here's what smugmug help has to say about the guest login: http://www.smugmug.com/help/guest-passwords. It doesn't sound like the guest is supposed to be able to do anything destructive.

ivar

jfriend wrote:

Here's what smugmug help has to say about the guess login: http://www.smugmug.com/help/guest-passwords. It doesn't sound like the guest is supposed to be able to do anything destructive.

Hi Ash,

Even though you can get access to the control panel, you can't change any of the important settings, including canceling the account. You can also not do any deleting under a guest account, such as deleting a photo or gallery.

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions!

ashsimmonds

ok that sounds a bit better, phew!

it's just i went in under the guest account and all those options were still there, i clicked on the cancel account option, and it went to the next screen saying "are you sure" and stuff!

can this be fully verified that this isn't possible please?

also, as much as i trust the few folk i'd give the guest account to, i still think they have too much control... being able to change the names of galleries and changing categories and seeing personal address/account details etc.

ivar

ashsimmonds wrote:

ok that sounds a bit better, phew!

it's just i went in under the guest account and all those options were still there, i clicked on the cancel account option, and it went to the next screen saying "are you sure" and stuff!

can this be fully verified that this isn't possible please?

also, as much as i trust the few folk i'd give the guest account to, i still think they have too much control... being able to change the names of galleries and changing categories and seeing personal address/account details etc.

You shouldn't even be seeing the options to cancel the account now that I think about it. Are you sure you were logged in under your guest password? Did the link on the top of the page say "your photos" or "guest photos"?

I just tried it with a test account, and I can't see the cancel link.

ashsimmonds

ivar wrote:

You shouldn't even be seeing the options to cancel the account now that I think about it.

that's what i thought, hence the thread.... i'll try again.

"if i'm not back in 5 minutes, just wait longer."

ashsimmonds

this answer your question?

ashsimmonds

and then when i click cancel account......

you can understand why i'd like a guest account with somewhat lower priveleges...

Andy

ashsimmonds wrote:

and then when i click cancel account......

you can understand why i'd like a guest account with somewhat lower priveleges...

Guests can't actually close the account, fear not. I know it looks that way, but they can't.

ashsimmonds

Andy wrote:

Guests can't actually close the account, fear not. I know it looks that way, but they can't.

well, as much as i trust you, i still don't want to click that button that says will delete all my albums and photos...

at some stage can we have a guest account which is more like an overnight friend than some feral cousin that parks up on your sofa for a few months? frankly i don't see any need to let the guest even see the control panel at all, i guess for commercial applications it might be useful, but many of us are just hobby snappers and just want to let a few mates a little deeper into the gallery.

Andy

ashsimmonds wrote:

but many of us are just hobby snappers and just want to let a few mates a little deeper into the gallery.

The guest account was created for pros who have assistants, and need to access the system in nearly the same way that the pro does.


Thanks for the post and the suggestion.

Tim Kirkwood

I too would whole heartedly would agree that a "no control panel access guest login" would be outstanding. Would be even GREATER if I could specify them to only the galleries that I would like for them to be able to access. I would like to be able to create a gallery for a person that they could upload to with there own password but not be able to access any other gallery.


Tim

ivar

Just for the record, I have tried canceling an account, while logged in under the guest password, and even though it says it's deleted, nothing happens.

jfriend

An "upload login" feature

Andy wrote:

The guest account was created for pros who have assistants, and need to access the system in nearly the same way that the pro does.


Thanks for the post and the suggestion.

The ideal feature, in this regard would be to make a different type of login called an "upload" login. The features of the "upload" login would be:

• User is optionally allowed to create galleries and categories
• User is allowed to upload pictures to those galleries
• User is allowed to arrange or modify pictures in the galleries they uploaded to (but only the ones they uploaded to)
• Extra credit: the ability to modify your upload galleries would expire after some time period like a week
• User is not even allowed to see the control panel or do any other customizing

The problem I think we're trying to solve is that you want to temporarily grant someone the ability to upload pictures to your account (three of you all took pictures at an event, for example and you all want to put your pictures in the same Smugmug account). You don't want to give these other people any ability to muck with anything else in your Smugmug account. You intend for this right to be temporal (e.g. it stops after some short time period) and it only lasts for some reasonable time period associated with some event. In some cases, you might want to pre-create the galleries for them and give them upload rights only to certain galleries. In other cases, you may want to let them create their own galleries.

Daly

Hello,
I'm new to Smug Mug. I'm still in my 2 week trial period. Trying to determine if I will want to stay with the Pro Level (may be more bells and whistles than what I really need) or go with the power level.

Let me explain...
I'm in a homeschool group of about 60 families. We decided a few months ago to produce a 'Yearbook' of all the events of the past year. I'm an avid digital scrapbooker (not a great photographer though...lol) so I have much experience with paint shop pro (poor man's photoshop).

When I began collecting photos from everyone, it quickly got out of hand and time consuming to manage all the yahoo albums, picasa albums, individual emails, burned photo CDs etc.

So I began trying to find a way that everyone could upload to one account and put all the photos in the the different galleries. I have all the events (field trips etc) each assigned to a separate gallery.

It seems like the pro level of Smug Mug meets most of my needs, but I'm not really planning on using it for a professional photography business...I just want an account where several families can share the photos.

Is there a better way I could be doing this? Perhaps less expensive than the pro level of Smug Mug.

BTW, I will still sign up for at least the mid-level Smug Mug account because I really like the service. But is there another way for many individuals to photo-share to one account?

ivar

Daly wrote:

Hello,
I'm new to Smug Mug. I'm still in my 2 week trial period. Trying to determine if I will want to stay with the Pro Level (may be more bells and whistles than what I really need) or go with the power level.

Let me explain...
I'm in a homeschool group of about 60 families. We decided a few months ago to produce a 'Yearbook' of all the events of the past year. I'm an avid digital scrapbooker (not a great photographer though...lol) so I have much experience with paint shop pro (poor man's photoshop).

When I began collecting photos from everyone, it quickly got out of hand and time consuming to manage all the yahoo albums, picasa albums, individual emails, burned photo CDs etc.

So I began trying to find a way that everyone could upload to one account and put all the photos in the the different galleries. I have all the events (field trips etc) each assigned to a separate gallery.

It seems like the pro level of Smug Mug meets most of my needs, but I'm not really planning on using it for a professional photography business...I just want an account where several families can share the photos.

Is there a better way I could be doing this? Perhaps less expensive than the pro level of Smug Mug.

BTW, I will still sign up for at least the mid-level Smug Mug account because I really like the service. But is there another way for many individuals to photo-share to one account?

Hi Daly

I think that you are looking for ways for others to upload to the account as well, correct?

The Pro account has the 'guest account', which allows others to access all your galleries, and upload to them as well. It doesn't allow them to access the account settings.

You, and others, can also use email uploading. The only thing is, that it will always upload to the same gallery, so you will have to move them to the appropriate gallery afterwards. It's easy to do though.

If you are not planning on selling images for a profit, I think the Power account and the email uploading will suit you just fine. If you decide you need the Pro account, you can later always upgrade!

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions.

rainforest1155

Daly wrote:

BTW, I will still sign up for at least the mid-level Smug Mug account because I really like the service. But is there another way for many individuals to photo-share to one account?

You could have your people mail the photos to your smugmug account. That works with every account level.

Hope this helps,
Sebastian

EDIT: Ivar beat me to it - he's getting the new Andy as it appears. ;-)

Daly

Thanks Ivar for such a speedy reply!

Yes, I want all the families to be able to upload to the different galleries. It would be nice if I could choose which galleries the 'guest uploader' on the pro level has access to since I will have my personal family snapshots and possibly my mom's wedding cakes on the the account as well.

But when one emails photos, isn't there a maximum they can send? Some of the families take a dozen or more shots at an event. They can't email all at once (high resolution photos for print) can they?

ivar

Daly wrote:

Thanks Ivar for such a speedy reply!

Yes, I want all the families to be able to upload to the different galleries. It would be nice if I could choose which galleries the 'guest uploader' on the pro level has access too since I will probably have my personal family snapshots and possibly my mom's wedding cakes on the the account as well.

But when one emails photos, isn't there a maximum they can send? Some of the families take a dozen or more shots at an event. They can't email all at once (high resolution photos for print) can they?

Hi again

Yes, they can upload a dozen photos with the email. It takes a little while for it to actually completely send, but it shouldn't really take any longer as opposed to uploading them.

I've uploaded 15, 3MB photos successfully before. I didn't try more, but if you want me to, I'll give it a try.

Daly

Oh, cool to know! I'll try this method on my own. Perhaps I've gotten the 'exceeds limit' error message when trying to email several photos to someone's email address because they (or I ) have the email account configured to a maximum...? And Smug Mug does not limit the maximum file size...?

jfriend

Daly wrote:

Oh, cool to know! I'll try this method on my own. Perhaps I've gotten the 'exceeds limit' error message when trying to email several photos to someone's email address because they (or I ) have the email account configured to a maximum...? And Smug Mug does not limit the maximum file size...?

That is one of the challenges with using email as the means for uploading. Many email systems limit the max size of a message or attachment. Some do not (or their limits are really high), so if you have one of those, then you are in luck. Others limit to a few MB which can really get in the way of sharing full resolution photos.

ivar

Daly wrote:

Oh, cool to know! I'll try this method on my own. Perhaps I've gotten the 'exceeds limit' error message when trying to email several photos to someone's email address because they (or I ) have the email account configured to a maximum...? And Smug Mug does not limit the maximum file size...?

Our limits are the same as for other methods for uploading. 8MB per file for the Power account.

Your outgoing mail server, or email software may have a limit set, I am not sure about that, but as far as we are concerned, there is no limit!

Daly

Well, I got an error message when I tried to send 15 photos at once...

"The size of message you are trying to send exceeds the global size limit (20971520 bytes) of the server. The message was not sent. Try to reduce the message size and send again."

I'll go see if I can find out about my global size limit....can it be bigger? I'll call my husband and ask him. He may know if this is something we can adjust or not.

ivar

Daly wrote:

Well, I got an error message when I tried to send 15 photos at once...

"The size of message you are trying to send exceeds the global size limit (20971520 bytes) of the server. The message was not sent. Try to reduce the message size and send again."

I'll go see if I can find out about my global size limit....can it be bigger? I'll call my husband and ask him. He may know if this is something we can adjust or not.

It seems that your email limit is 20 mb on your server. I don't think you can change it, unfortunately. Try photos totalling just under 20mb, see if that works?