Newbie

Baggy

Hi all

This seems a friendly place so I am going to dive right in :-)

I will be joining smugmug soon (when work gives me a free moment) I plan to start with a power user account with a view to upgrading to a pro account soon(ish). I had considered zenfolio but it seems a bit restricted.

It seems to me that careful planning could save problems down the the line so I would appreciate and tips or warnings of pitfalls.

How I plan to use the site...

I see the site in two parts, a pulic portfolio and a client area.
The public area will be a showcase for my work.

The client area is more tricky, I see the structure as
client area/client name/job name
I am assuming that I can password protect the "client name" folder and that all sub (job) folders wil also be locked?
I wondered if I should use a client name or a client code as many of my clients are competitors or can I hide folders?

I also see a workflow problem...
If I do a shoot I will upload images to a clients job folder, at this stage I do not want to spot and fully retouch the images as that could take ages.
I just want a client to see the images and then make a selection.
Once the selection is made I will "finish" the images and upload them to the cients job folder and unlock them for downloading.
Will all this work? or am I missing something.
As some clients have a lot of small jobs I also wondered about the best folder strategy for future proofing?


I also need to integrate smugmug with my website I will add a link to smugmug, ie "galleries" but will keep info pages on my site (I assume I cannot put info pages on smugmug?
I would, ideally like to have a link back to my site in the smugmug pages.
I am HTML savvy and can edit existing CSS files a little bit.

Best wishes
Mark

Allen

Baggy wrote:

Hi all

This seems a friendly place so I am going to dive right in :-)

I will be joining smugmug soon (when work gives me a free moment) I plan to start with a power user account with a view to upgrading to a pro account soon(ish). I had considered zenfolio but it seems a bit restricted.

It seems to me that careful planning could save problems down the the line so I would appreciate and tips or warnings of pitfalls.

How I plan to use the site...

I see the site in two parts, a pulic portfolio and a client area.
The public area will be a showcase for my work.

The client area is more tricky, I see the structure as
client area/client name/job name
I am assuming that I can password protect the "client name" folder and that all sub (job) folders wil also be locked?
I wondered if I should use a client name or a client code as many of my clients are competitors or can I hide folders?

I also see a workflow problem...
If I do a shoot I will upload images to a clients job folder, at this stage I do not want to spot and fully retouch the images as that could take ages.
I just want a client to see the images and then make a selection.
Once the selection is made I will "finish" the images and upload them to the cients job folder and unlock them for downloading.
Will all this work? or am I missing something.
As some clients have a lot of small jobs I also wondered about the best folder strategy for future proofing?


I also need to integrate smugmug with my website I will add a link to smugmug, ie "galleries" but will keep info pages on my site (I assume I cannot put info pages on smugmug?
I would, ideally like to have a link back to my site in the smugmug pages.
I am HTML savvy and can edit existing CSS files a little bit.

Best wishes
Mark

Welcome to Dgrin.

Would you be directing each client from your website to their photos on
Smugmug? Then I would create a category for each client.

You could set it up this way maybe. This should give you the levels
needed.

category ... sub-cat .... gallery
portfolio .................... gallery1
................................ gallery2
client1
................. job1
............................... proofs
................................ final
................. job2
client2
................. job1
............................... proofs
................................ final
................. job2

You can put info pages on Smugmug, just create a new gallery and only
have html on the page. Then you could directly link from your site to say
a pricing page. You can also have links back and forth from any gallery
page.

Anyway, just a few ideas, but just about any design can be achieved.

Baggy

Thanks Allen, that is exactly what I wanted, I will have a play.

Allen wrote:

Welcome to Dgrin.

Would you be directing each client from your website to their photos on
Smugmug? Then I would create a category for each client.

You could set it up this way maybe. This should give you the levels
needed.

category ... sub-cat .... gallery
portfolio .................... gallery1
................................ gallery2
client1
................. job1
............................... proofs
................................ final
................. job2
client2
................. job1
............................... proofs
................................ final
................. job2

You can put info pages on Smugmug, just create a new gallery and only
have html on the page. Then you could directly link from your site to say
a pricing page. You can also have links back and forth from any gallery
page.

Anyway, just a few ideas, but just about any design can be achieved.