Soon, we hope. Keep checking back, and you can have a new trial no problem.
I'm glad you guys are implementing this feature, and I've been impressed with how much you listen to your customers -- you guys are the sort of company I want to support.
I won't need a new trial -- I was already sold on SmugMug until I started getting e-mails from my friends.
Thanks for all the hard work on the new functionality and the frequent updates.
It's 1:00 a.m. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and we're testing until our eyes bleed. This is a very complex feature under the covers... The hope is to bring the site down Thursday night and go live Friday morning.
Then we'll need all eyes on it Friday morning to see if our testing caught everything. We're hoping for a quiet launch and to monitor the site through the Monday holiday before making much noise about this.
Is this going to happen today? I look forward to testing it over the weekend.
Steve
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
edited May 25, 2007
By mid-evening last night we thought we were going to make it, but testing was still turning up some bugs so we had to abort the countdown. :
We're making another run at testing/debugging today, but to launch would mean taking the site down for several hours outside our weekly maintenance window without much advanced notice, which is very tough on many of our customers. Lots of internal debate about what to do here.
We're making another run at testing/debugging today, but to launch would mean taking the site down for several hours outside our weekly maintenance window without much advanced notice, which is very tough on many of our customers. Lots of internal debate about what to do here.
Good choice in not rushing the release, but I wouldn't be releasing it outside of the maintenance window and better wait another week. Not that it would bother me personally much at the moment, but I can already hear the outcry of all the others here and at your support desk. It's not worth it.
Maybe you can use the time until next week to put some other smaller suprises in the new release.
By mid-evening last night we thought we were going to make it, but testing was still turning up some bugs so we had to abort the countdown. :
We're making another run at testing/debugging today, but to launch would mean taking the site down for several hours outside our weekly maintenance window without much advanced notice, which is very tough on many of our customers. Lots of internal debate about what to do here.
We all have to temper anxious aniticipation with patience at times. And this appears to be one of those times. Clearly, there is a massive effort underway, and you're making progress. Your posts on Dgrin, Baldy, are the strongest evidence of that outside SmugMug's four walls...thank you.
It's the "making progress" part that is most assuring. I can wait.
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
edited May 26, 2007
Whew! Man that turned out to be a tough feature to ship. Don marshalled the troops for another late night on Friday (I was up until 5 and up again at 7...) and somehow it got out the door.
Whew! Man that turned out to be a tough feature to ship. Don marshalled the troops for another late night on Friday (I was up until 5 and up again at 7...) and somehow it got out the door.
Even though I was skeptic about the additional downtime and the possible outcry of customers I was proven wrong. Guess the read-only worked out almost perfect for everybody. Kudos to you guys for your hard work and inhuman long hours!
Go and get some rest and don't be bothered by me replying instantly all the time to the existant issues - you can't beat me and you shouldn't try and go getting to sleep instead!
Off you go I hope,
Sebastian
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
Even though I was skeptic about the additional downtime and the possible outcry of customers I was proven wrong. Guess the read-only worked out almost perfect for everybody. Kudos to you guys for your hard work and inhuman long hours!
Go and get some rest and don't be bothered by me replying instantly all the time to the existant issues - you can't beat me and you shouldn't try and go getting to sleep instead!
Off you go I hope,
Sebastian
Hahaha, thanks Sebastian. Yes, the read-only mode saved the day. Also, not re-indexing people's sites unless they do something to trigger it was the key to not hammering the servers past the point of no return.
Hahaha, thanks Sebastian. Yes, the read-only mode saved the day. Also, not re-indexing people's sites unless they do something to trigger it was the key to not hammering the servers past the point of no return.
....I was pleasantly surprised today to see that SmugIsland is up and running. I quickly tried total lockdown option, googled a keyword used in my "public" SmugMug galleries and happily discovered that google was only able to pull up the cached results from April!!!
I don't have more time, unfortunately, to explore more of the new functionality this evening, but wanted to pass along a well-deserved pat on the back to the team. Early "results" score is A+!!!!
Whew! Man that turned out to be a tough feature to ship. Don marshalled the troops for another late night on Friday (I was up until 5 and up again at 7...) and somehow it got out the door.
Thanks for all your hard work on shipping this! I just converted my account from trial to standard, and I can't wait to get back in town (uploading all my stuff over a slow VPN connection would kill me) to start sharing my photos.
I've been with smugmug for several years, and after waiting a couple of years I stopped using the site because of this reason. Just did my six monthly check and found this feature - it's perfect! You just made my day (heck month) :-)
SmugMug "Browse" question...
I monitor "activity" on my site with Statcounter, and on several past occassions was startled (read "not pleased") to see a huge spike in visits, only to find that the sudden interest on a particular day was driven by having one or more of my images pop-up as a result of SmugMug browsing all smugger's sites and posting random (I assume) selections in the "browse categories" section.
Does setting the SmugIsland to "lockdown" mode thwart SmugMug Browse as well (in addition to thwarting Google)? I'm assuming it does not (but wish it did)! Either way, can the appropriate clarifications be made in HELP so site owners know for sure what to expect?
as a result of SmugMug browsing all smugger's sites and posting random (I assume) selections in the "browse categories" section.
we don't do "random" posting. If you have photos that are public, and have not created your own private island, they'll be available in the browse pages.
Does setting the SmugIsland to "lockdown" mode thwart SmugMug Browse as well
we don't do "random" posting. If you have photos that are public, and have not created your own private island, they'll be available in the browse pages.
Sure, if you set it so
Here's our page that has all the details: http://www.smugmug.com/help/private-search-island
read the section on "Hello Smuggers," in particular #3 (or #4).
It indeed does.
I hope this helps, please let us know if you have more qeustions, okay?
Thanks Andy...YES, it helps ( a lot)!
One mantra of marketing has always been "differentiate (your product from it's competition) or die". SmugIsland applies, I realize, to a relative minority of the SmugMug user demographic...mostly non-pro's...some of whom have legitimate concerns about privacy.
Hopefully, all the hard work you guys put into the effort to address the concerns of "the few" has indeed resulted in some product differentiation that SmugMug can leverage all the way to the bank ($$$) to repay the investment.
New users who see value in the unique ability Smugmug provides to balance the competing elements of public, private, and keyword functionality to suit their needs can now flock to SmugMug's doorstep because it's the only photosharing service that provides it.
And former smuggers like sharadm will return to the flock, I hope, for the same reasons.
Thank you!
I haven't posted in this thread before, and I actually only became aware of this new feature when I saw a Digg article on it this morning.
Like some of the other people who have posted in this thread, I had become increasingly concerned about this issue. After seeing some disconcerting results from Google Analytics, I was somewhat perplexed about what to do.
But this new feature is GREAT! Thank you so much for taking the time to get this done. Smugmug is a unique service, and the customer support is just amazing. Well done.
It's really nice to see the Smugmug Islands online however there appears to be bug. I have turned off Google and smugmug searches but google still seems to find my site through the recent uploaded images.
Here is the link google found. all of these images were uploaded after I set the islands. Also it appears that the default for searches is to allow when you create a new gallery and if you save the settings as a default the search allow options are not being saved even when you have the master setting in the control panel set to not allow searches.
It's really nice to see the Smugmug Islands online however there appears to be bug. I have turned off Google and smugmug searches but google still seems to find my site through the recent uploaded images.
Here is the link google found. all of these images were uploaded after I set the islands. Also it appears that the default for searches is to allow when you create a new gallery and if you save the settings as a default the search allow options are not being saved even when you have the master setting in the control panel set to not allow searches.
This link was not showing up on google until this weekend.
The google stuff will take a while to clear. They have to re-index the page with their crawlers and discover that you no longer want it indexed. This can be weeks honestly, or it can be days. We don't have any control over when they come index it unfortunately.
I checked the details on that particular link being picked up, and it was last indexed by google on May 24th (you can see that by hitting the "cached" link and viewing details at the top). So it was indexed before SmugIslands was out and available, which just means it was bad timing. The link is to a feed of recently uploaded photos, so it will continue to show new photos until google re-indexes it and removes it from their results.
Does that make sense? I am in the same boat, I toggled mine to "no" on the world search stuff as well, and am just waiting for Google and the others to remove them from their index.
Does that make sense? I am in the same boat, I toggled mine to "no" on the world search stuff as well, and am just waiting for Google and the others to remove them from their index.
You can actually speed the process up by using the google webmaster tools. After you claim your site (you need to be Power User or Pro to do that) you've got a selection of tools to change the behaviour of the google bot and check for errors. One particular tool is to report pages for rechecking in order to remove them from the index faster.
You can actually speed the process up by using the google webmaster tools. After you claim your site (you need to be Power User or Pro to do that) you've got a selection of tools to change the behaviour of the google bot and check for errors. One particular tool is to report pages for rechecking in order to remove them from the index faster.
Sebastian
nice link, thanks (even though it is in german, I had to switch to the english version! ). I set it up and requested a removal of my whole site, which is pending. We will see how that works. It says the removal lasts 6 months, which is more than enough time... as when they index again, my settings on my site will prevent them from indexing it again.
though it should be noted for other people doing this: that affects ONLY google obviously. Yahoo, Microsoft, etc will all still be showing your site until they re-crawl it as per my previous post.
I am thrilled that Smugmug has implemented this feature! I was one of the first people to post to this thread trying to have a similar feature implemented. I am no longer a disgruntled Smugger and will again recommend Smugmug to others. THANK YOU!
I've been with smugmug for several years, and after waiting a couple of years I stopped using the site because of this reason. Just did my six monthly check and found this feature - it's perfect! You just made my day (heck month) :-)
Fantastic! Thanks to all who put their minds to solving this dilemma. I cannot think of a service that I pay for in which the notions of service and customer satisfaction are more highly regarded.
Will the "voting" work on a private island?
There are times (maybe lots of times) when it would be useful to allow only a select group to vote on the popularity of a set of photos.
It would be GREAT if the select group of folks allowed onto an island were able to vote on that island's pics. This limited-audience voting would be wonderful for camera clubs, school groups (each classroom could vote on their own pics), youth groups (scout troops, county-fair 4-H groups, etc etc), and probably lots more situations.
I could probably test this myself, but am hoping that there's an answer already known. (And, of course, if it's not possible now, it goes on my feature-wish-list!)
I'm very pleased to see something being released to address concerns. Baldy has said that my view of the internet's future differs from that of Smugmug, but perhaps there will be enough convergence that we'll both thrive.
Google is all over the news today with Google Earth now showing faces and individual license plates, so perhaps Smugmug will rather quickly find many more people becoming aware of the need for control over access to personal information....especially when children are concerned.
Two things aren't clear from Smug's help page: (1) Do "tag clouds" work on Smugisland?, and (2) does Google Map work on Smugisland?
Thanks for the effort....I'm cautiously optimistic!
Same here ... very happy that this search/keyword has been unleashed for people with password protected galleries like me
Does anyone know if there's a way to filter permanently some keywords ... for example I have a bunch of very old photos named aimage, bimage ... and those keywords are the most popular in the list and I'd like to fix this without having to rename the images.
I am thrilled that Smugmug has implemented this feature! I was one of the first people to post to this thread trying to have a similar feature implemented. I am no longer a disgruntled Smugger and will again recommend Smugmug to others. THANK YOU!
Followup on "islands" and voting/popularity
There haven't been any responses/questions about voting on private islands... I'm curious whether people have found any uses for "voting" in Smug, in addition to the very general "popularity" rankings for images?
Maybe voting could be done on islands, but only if the images were public, as with Google Maps mentioned here? That might not be as useful as a select group being able to vote on a set of images, but better than the current voting system.
It would be great if somebody with expert knowledge of the new changes could do a primer for SmugIslands. Choosing exactly which options to deploy is tricky and a page of tips would be great. I have chosen parameters based on what I think is what I want, but I haven't been able to really test everything yet.
It would be great if somebody with expert knowledge of the new changes could do a primer for SmugIslands. Choosing exactly which options to deploy is tricky and a page of tips would be great. I have chosen parameters based on what I think is what I want, but I haven't been able to really test everything yet.
Exactly what parameter do you want to see in action? What's not clear? What do you want to achieve?
Sebastian
EDIT: You've seen the help page already? For me it explains everything pretty clear.
Comments
I'm glad you guys are implementing this feature, and I've been impressed with how much you listen to your customers -- you guys are the sort of company I want to support.
I won't need a new trial -- I was already sold on SmugMug until I started getting e-mails from my friends.
Thanks for all the hard work on the new functionality and the frequent updates.
Kormac
Is this going to happen today? I look forward to testing it over the weekend.
Steve
We're making another run at testing/debugging today, but to launch would mean taking the site down for several hours outside our weekly maintenance window without much advanced notice, which is very tough on many of our customers. Lots of internal debate about what to do here.
Maybe you can use the time until next week to put some other smaller suprises in the new release.
Have a nice weekend,
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
We all have to temper anxious aniticipation with patience at times. And this appears to be one of those times. Clearly, there is a massive effort underway, and you're making progress. Your posts on Dgrin, Baldy, are the strongest evidence of that outside SmugMug's four walls...thank you.
It's the "making progress" part that is most assuring. I can wait.
Go and get some rest and don't be bothered by me replying instantly all the time to the existant issues - you can't beat me and you shouldn't try and go getting to sleep instead!
Off you go I hope,
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
I don't have more time, unfortunately, to explore more of the new functionality this evening, but wanted to pass along a well-deserved pat on the back to the team. Early "results" score is A+!!!!
Thanks for all your hard work on shipping this! I just converted my account from trial to standard, and I can't wait to get back in town (uploading all my stuff over a slow VPN connection would kill me) to start sharing my photos.
The friend of mine who turned me onto SmugMug also blogged about the new islands feature: http://www.breakitdownblog.com/2007/05/27/smugmug-rolls-out-islands-feature/
Thanks again for all the hard work! You guys SERIOUSLY rock!
Kormac
I've been with smugmug for several years, and after waiting a couple of years I stopped using the site because of this reason. Just did my six monthly check and found this feature - it's perfect! You just made my day (heck month) :-)
I monitor "activity" on my site with Statcounter, and on several past occassions was startled (read "not pleased") to see a huge spike in visits, only to find that the sudden interest on a particular day was driven by having one or more of my images pop-up as a result of SmugMug browsing all smugger's sites and posting random (I assume) selections in the "browse categories" section.
Does setting the SmugIsland to "lockdown" mode thwart SmugMug Browse as well (in addition to thwarting Google)? I'm assuming it does not (but wish it did)! Either way, can the appropriate clarifications be made in HELP so site owners know for sure what to expect?
we don't do "random" posting. If you have photos that are public, and have not created your own private island, they'll be available in the browse pages. Sure, if you set it so
Here's our page that has all the details:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/private-search-island
read the section on "Hello Smuggers," in particular #3 (or #4). It indeed does. I hope this helps, please let us know if you have more qeustions, okay?
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Thanks Andy...YES, it helps ( a lot)!
One mantra of marketing has always been "differentiate (your product from it's competition) or die". SmugIsland applies, I realize, to a relative minority of the SmugMug user demographic...mostly non-pro's...some of whom have legitimate concerns about privacy.
Hopefully, all the hard work you guys put into the effort to address the concerns of "the few" has indeed resulted in some product differentiation that SmugMug can leverage all the way to the bank ($$$) to repay the investment.
New users who see value in the unique ability Smugmug provides to balance the competing elements of public, private, and keyword functionality to suit their needs can now flock to SmugMug's doorstep because it's the only photosharing service that provides it.
And former smuggers like sharadm will return to the flock, I hope, for the same reasons.
I haven't posted in this thread before, and I actually only became aware of this new feature when I saw a Digg article on it this morning.
Like some of the other people who have posted in this thread, I had become increasingly concerned about this issue. After seeing some disconcerting results from Google Analytics, I was somewhat perplexed about what to do.
But this new feature is GREAT! Thank you so much for taking the time to get this done. Smugmug is a unique service, and the customer support is just amazing. Well done.
Here is the link google found. all of these images were uploaded after I set the islands. Also it appears that the default for searches is to allow when you create a new gallery and if you save the settings as a default the search allow options are not being saved even when you have the master setting in the control panel set to not allow searches.
http://akbdeck.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=nicknameRecentPhotos&Data=akbdeck&format=rss200
This link was not showing up on google until this weekend.
I checked the details on that particular link being picked up, and it was last indexed by google on May 24th (you can see that by hitting the "cached" link and viewing details at the top). So it was indexed before SmugIslands was out and available, which just means it was bad timing. The link is to a feed of recently uploaded photos, so it will continue to show new photos until google re-indexes it and removes it from their results.
Does that make sense? I am in the same boat, I toggled mine to "no" on the world search stuff as well, and am just waiting for Google and the others to remove them from their index.
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
though it should be noted for other people doing this: that affects ONLY google obviously. Yahoo, Microsoft, etc will all still be showing your site until they re-crawl it as per my previous post.
-J
There are times (maybe lots of times) when it would be useful to allow only a select group to vote on the popularity of a set of photos.
It would be GREAT if the select group of folks allowed onto an island were able to vote on that island's pics. This limited-audience voting would be wonderful for camera clubs, school groups (each classroom could vote on their own pics), youth groups (scout troops, county-fair 4-H groups, etc etc), and probably lots more situations.
I could probably test this myself, but am hoping that there's an answer already known. (And, of course, if it's not possible now, it goes on my feature-wish-list!)
Thanks for any thoughts and further ideas.
Google is all over the news today with Google Earth now showing faces and individual license plates, so perhaps Smugmug will rather quickly find many more people becoming aware of the need for control over access to personal information....especially when children are concerned.
Two things aren't clear from Smug's help page: (1) Do "tag clouds" work on Smugisland?, and (2) does Google Map work on Smugisland?
Thanks for the effort....I'm cautiously optimistic!
Be seeing you,
The Duck
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Does anyone know if there's a way to filter permanently some keywords ... for example I have a bunch of very old photos named aimage, bimage ... and those keywords are the most popular in the list and I'd like to fix this without having to rename the images.
Thanks
There haven't been any responses/questions about voting on private islands... I'm curious whether people have found any uses for "voting" in Smug, in addition to the very general "popularity" rankings for images?
Maybe voting could be done on islands, but only if the images were public, as with Google Maps mentioned here? That might not be as useful as a select group being able to vote on a set of images, but better than the current voting system.
Sebastian
EDIT: You've seen the help page already? For me it explains everything pretty clear.
SmugMug Support Hero
It's not so much a specific question so much as trying to figure out what situation works best with what choices. I shall read up.
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