How private is private?

epetti

I've just recently created my first private gallery. I set Hello World to No, Hello Smugmug to No, Public to No, and External Links to No in the gallery customize page. My Control Panel defaults are more public than that, but for this gallery it is meant to be private (although not password protected). I didn't get around to sending a link to the page to some friends and family until this evening, but when I checked the statistics for the gallery, I noticed way more hits than should be possible for the number of people and amount of time it's been posted. Is this truly private or are there some more flags I need to change, or some other way people might be stumbling across it?

Thanks.

Ernie

P.S.: If you need the link to the page for purposes of tracking this down, I can send it in a PM, but figured it would defeat the purpose of the page to post its link in this message.

ivar

Hi Ernie,

A 'private' album does not show up on your pages when browsing them logged out. (There is one exception; Private galleries may show up when you are logged out, but have visited a sharegroup recently which the gallery was part of.)

Hello World and Hello SmugMug are automitically set to 'no' regardless of your actual setting in the customize gallery page. (That is the same for passworded galleries).

Hits in general are usually way higher than people expect them to be. This is partly because each hit is counted. That means that if you open a 'SmugMug' style page (15 thumbs on the left, one M image on the right) you automically gain 16 hits. Go to next page? 16 more hits. If you open it on 'allthumbs' style, you get the same number of hits as there are images in that gallery.

Your hits are also counted. Each time that you look at the gallery yourself, hits get added. This is probably why it seems so much more than you thought.

Does this help and make sense?

epetti

I understand. I just posted several new galleries recently, and the hit count on the private one is higher than many of the others, and not just for thumbs, but for Medium images as well. I have not been looking in the gallery. I am comparing the count to my other galleries, which is the basis I'm using for saying that it's much higher than I expect. I.e. I posted the pictures last Thursday and was gone for the weekend and I have about 3000 thumb hits and 700 medium hits.

Ernie

ivar wrote:

Hi Ernie,

A 'private' album does not show up on your pages when browsing them logged out. (There is one exception; Private galleries may show up when you are logged out, but have visited a sharegroup recently which the gallery was part of.)

Hello World and Hello SmugMug are automitically set to 'no' regardless of your actual setting in the customize gallery page. (That is the same for passworded galleries).

Hits in general are usually way higher than people expect them to be. This is partly because each hit is counted. That means that if you open a 'SmugMug' style page (15 thumbs on the left, one M image on the right) you automically gain 16 hits. Go to next page? 16 more hits. If you open it on 'allthumbs' style, you get the same number of hits as there are images in that gallery.

Your hits are also counted. Each time that you look at the gallery yourself, hits get added. This is probably why it seems so much more than you thought.

Does this help and make sense?

ivar

epetti wrote:

I understand. I just posted several new galleries recently, and the hit count on the private one is higher than many of the others, and not just for thumbs, but for Medium images as well. I have not been looking in the gallery. I am comparing the count to my other galleries, which is the basis I'm using for saying that it's much higher than I expect. I.e. I posted the pictures last Thursday and was gone for the weekend and I have about 3000 thumb hits and 700 medium hits.

Ernie

See message

jfriend

epetti wrote:

I've just recently created my first private gallery. I set Hello World to No, Hello Smugmug to No, Public to No, and External Links to No in the gallery customize page. My Control Panel defaults are more public than that, but for this gallery it is meant to be private (although not password protected). I didn't get around to sending a link to the page to some friends and family until this evening, but when I checked the statistics for the gallery, I noticed way more hits than should be possible for the number of people and amount of time it's been posted. Is this truly private or are there some more flags I need to change, or some other way people might be stumbling across it?

Thanks.

Ernie

P.S.: If you need the link to the page for purposes of tracking this down, I can send it in a PM, but figured it would defeat the purpose of the page to post its link in this message.

Just remember that ALL the "private setting" means is that it's not listed in your home page for users to browse to. The SmugIsland settings just attempt to keep your gallery from getting indexed by search engines.

So a private gallery is really just a gallery sitting out there on the open internet without links pointing to it (unless you yourself point some links to it or tell someone about it who does). If nobody finds it, it might just sit out there undiscovered. But, it also might get discovered and then it's just a page on the internet for everyone to see.

If you really don't want people to find it or access it, then give it a password. That's the only way to truly make sure that only people you have specifically shared with can see it.