hidden family photos gallery???

jchin

Is there a way to setup a group of galleries that is viewable only via a URL and not visable from the main smugmug page?

Something like a private category with several galleries where something like http://jchin.smugmug.com/familygalleries
will contain a bunch of galleries only visable from this URL and not linked on the http://jchin.smugmug.com/ page.

Is this possible? Thanks.

jfriend

Private galleries and sharegroups

jchin wrote:

Is there a way to setup a group of galleries that is viewable only via a URL and not visable from the main smugmug page?

Something like a private category with several galleries where something like http://jchin.smugmug.com/familygalleries
will contain a bunch of galleries only visable from this URL and not linked on the http://jchin.smugmug.com/ page.

Is this possible? Thanks.

Yes, you can do this. Read about private galleries and sharegroups:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/private-albums
http://www.smugmug.com/help/share-groups

BeachBill

jchin wrote:

Is there a way to setup a group of galleries that is viewable only via a URL and not visable from the main smugmug page?

Something like a private category with several galleries where something like http://jchin.smugmug.com/familygalleries
will contain a bunch of galleries only visable from this URL and not linked on the http://jchin.smugmug.com/ page.

Is this possible? Thanks.

Private categories and passworded categories would be two useful features.

For now, one way to do what you want is to create an HTML only gallery (make it private) with links to the other private galleries.

Something similar to my recent galleries page. It's an HTML only gallery that somewhat replicates the smugmug gallery look with links to other galleries.

jfriend

BeachBill wrote:

Private categories and passworded categories would be two useful features.

For now, one way to do what you want is to create an HTML only gallery (make it private) with links to the other private galleries.

Something similar to my recent galleries page. It's an HTML only gallery that somewhat replicates the smugmug gallery look with links to other galleries.

Why don't private galleries combined together into a sharegroup solve this exact problem without any need to make anything custom? A sharegroup is essentially a private category and you get to decide which galleries go into it.

jchin

OK ... let me see if I understand this.

Take all of my current Family and Friends galleries ... make them "private".
Then create a ShareGroup which contains all of them.

Will accessing that ShareGroup show all of the galleries or will they also be still "private" thus hidden?

I am tring to setup a simple URL so my family members can all use to access our family photos (and hopefully without having to use passwords, or maybe just one password).

Thanks again.

jfriend

jchin wrote:

OK ... let me see if I understand this.

Take all of my current Family and Friends galleries ... make them "private".
Then create a ShareGroup which contains all of them.

Will accessing that ShareGroup show all of the galleries or will they also be still "private" thus hidden?

I am tring to setup a simple URL so my family members can all use to access our family photos (and hopefully without having to use passwords, or maybe just one password).

Thanks again.

You have the idea and steps right. A private gallery just doesn't show on your smugmug home page. Private galleries do show in sharegroups and do show for anyone who actually knows the link.

The ONLY way a private gallery is actually different from a regular gallery is that it doesn't show on your homepage. It's kind of like an unlisted phone number. It's not in the directory for people to discover by browsing, but anybody who knows it or finds it by accident can use it.

The only drawback to this method that I'm aware of is that a sharegroup URL has a numeric code in it so your family members won't be able to remember it and type it from scratch. They will have to bookmark it or click it from an email. But, other than that drawback, it delivers what I think you asked for.

The other implementation possibility is to leave your friends/family galleries as public and password protect them all with the same password. That means that the gallery names and categories will show on your homepage, but entry to the galleries will require a password.

If you give them all the same password, then your family members will only ever have to remember one password and they will only have to enter it for the first gallery they view. Subsequent galleries they open that have the same password wil just open automatically. It's kind of like having a "category password" except that viewers can see the names of the galleries without a password.

I use this technique for a lot of my event photography. I create a category for the event. I put 20-30 galleries in that category and give them all the same password. I then upload the images. I then assign a thumb image to each password protected gallery so my visitors don't have to see the padlock icon. I then send out an email with a link to the category and the event password. My viewers are prompted to enter the password for the first gallery they open, but then not asked for the password again for other galleries. The drawback to this approach is that the names of the galleries in the event (and optionally a thumbnail for the gallery) are visible to all, but the images are still protected. The advantage to this method is that the images are fully protected with a password.

I hope one of these two methods will work for you.

Rando

Be aware that when you make a gallery private/password protected, you lose the keywording functionality. You can't search private/passworded galleries.

denverdad

John,

It is interesting you brought this up just as I was trying to figure it out too! Actually, I'm a brand new user - still testing out smugmug by creating galleries and seeing how it all works together. But one of the main features I wanted to be able to have was pretty much what you were asking for - to set up all my family pictures in private galleries, accessible from one link which I could provide family and friends, yet have these NOT appear on my main page. After a lot of messing around I finally "discovered" this idea of creating a sharegroup of my private galleries.

Basically it works - when someone opens the sharegroup link, they only see those particular galleries which are included. But I am going crazy trying to troubleshoot some problems with this. Can someone help?

The main issue is that navigation seems to suffer with this approach. When someone clicks on one of the sharegroup galleries and peruses the images, they find that there is no simple way to go back to the rest of the shared galleries. Other than by hitting the browser's back button multiple times, that is. Not very friendly navigation.

There are other problems too, but I will leave it at that for now. I would like to know if this is a known bug, or if I am just missing something here (either way, I'm sure John would like to know too).

Thanks,

Jeff

jchin wrote:

OK ... let me see if I understand this.

Take all of my current Family and Friends galleries ... make them "private".
Then create a ShareGroup which contains all of them.

Will accessing that ShareGroup show all of the galleries or will they also be still "private" thus hidden?

I am tring to setup a simple URL so my family members can all use to access our family photos (and hopefully without having to use passwords, or maybe just one password).

Thanks again.

jfriend

denverdad wrote:

The main issue is that navigation seems to suffer with this approach. When someone clicks on one of the sharegroup galleries and peruses the images, they find that there is no simple way to go back to the rest of the shared galleries. Other than by hitting the browser's back button multiple times, that is. Not very friendly navigation.

There are other problems too, but I will leave it at that for now. I would like to know if this is a known bug, or if I am just missing something here (either way, I'm sure John would like to know too).

I should start by saying, I'm just a Smugmug customer trying to help out here. You're now asking some questions that we probably need someone from Smugmug to weigh in on.

As to the navigation issue that you raised with sharegroups, I certainly see your point and don't have any easy suggestions for how to work around it.

The only thing I know you could do is to put a link to the sharegroup in the gallery description so each gallery would then have a link back to the master sharegroup page. That would give your users something to click on, but you'd have to put the link manually into each gallery. If you're interested in trying that out, you would put the following into each gallery description:

<html><a href="sharegroup URL">Return to Top</a></html>

If you really wanted to get advanced, you could add CSS styling info to this so that it only displays on the gallery page, not on any other screens.

For reference, I use the "multiple galleries with the same password in a common category" option myself which doesn't have this navigation challenge, but leaves the gallery names public.

Andy

denverdad wrote:

I would like to know if this is a known bug, or if I am just missing something here (either way, I'm sure John would like to know too).

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi, it's not a bug but a design constraint of the share groups. {JT}'s addressed it before, I'll try and find the post.

denverdad

thanks.

Andy wrote:

Hi, it's not a bug but a design constraint of the share groups. {JT}'s addressed it before, I'll try and find the post.

BeachBill

jfriend wrote:

Why don't private galleries combined together into a sharegroup solve this exact problem without any need to make anything custom? A sharegroup is essentially a private category and you get to decide which galleries go into it.

I'm now getting around to trying to make use of sharegroups instead of going the custom route and just discovered one big problem for me. Sharegroups don't have the notion of sub-categories, so all of my categorized galleries (in two sub-categories) are lumped together in one big page.

Time to ask for the option of private categories again...