Site review...transition from photo sharing to a true Pro site.

System

When I joined smugmug I never really had any intention of selling images, but slowly that's been changing. Not that I'm selling a ton of images, but rather I'm taking this a bit more seriously and exploring photography as a business. My site was originally set up to display my images, a ton of them, to share with friends, family and the forums. Now I feel I need to pair down the images that are seen by the public and even more so the images that are available for printing / purchase. I've been struggling with this task for a few weeks now, somewhat frozen in taking the first steps. I have a domain and have been working on a splash page with a flash gallery and other such fancy gimmicks, but need a strategy for organizing my current smugmug collection.

I think a bit more customization is also in order and would love to hear some thoughts on that as well.

Thanks,

Chad

richW

Chad,
You can set up your site for business and still keep it family and friends friendly. Take a look at devbobo’s hack to hide categories on the home page. I tried it and it works real nice. It enables you to hide your family categories from public view and still let your family browse your pictures and use the breadcrumbs without any problems. All I did was make the family galleries public and applied the same password for all the family galleries, so they only have to enter it once. This might be one useful tool for you to consider. Another great tool is devbobo’s sub-page hack. I’m sure others will chime in with their thoughts. Good luck……