Using Search in a Community yields owners customization

saguaro

Hi,

I'm new to DGrin and SmugMug and this is my first post.

I've included a few galleries in relevant communities, and I have established two communities myself. I find that if I use the search box within a community that the search results come with the community owner's customization. I see my photographs under another photographer's banner which I am not happy about.

Today I made my first attempts to customize my own headers and footers in my own website. Consequently, I find that in the communities I've created, the same issue occurs. My customization comes up for a search result within my community. Why would anyone want to join my community with my headers and footers showing above their images?

...Rob

Andy

Hi Rob, I'm sorry that's the way communities work I wish it could be different, but the community owner's CSS takes over.

I'm sorry I don't have a different, better answer for you, I really am.

BTW, welcome to Dgrin!

saguaro

Thanks for your prompt reply Andy. You'll think you have a complainer on your hands but generally I don't think I'll be too much of a nuisance. However, I'd like to carry on this discussion a bit.

It seems therefore that if I were to develop a homepage theme using my header space to promote a particular subject and gallery(ies), say "Christmas", then if someone does a search for say "box kites" within my "kites" community, then the user is going to be inundated with my Christmas promo. In the interests of keeping SmugMug searches "relevant" for SmugMug's users, I would think this would be worth addressing.

I have also visited several communities where there is no content, not even the community owner has an active gallery there. Clicking on the owner's name reveals that the owner is still active with SmugMug. I'd be curious to know why these communities have been abandoned.

For example:
http://www.smugmug.com/community/Ottawaphotographer

All there is there is owner's header and no photographic content.

This prompted me to create:
http://www.smugmug.com/community/OttawaAndArea
which is redundancy in my view but I didn't want my images to be the only images under someone else's header.

Now unlike
http://www.smugmug.com/community/Ottawaphotographer
my header does not appear on my community main page. I'm not sure how that happened. But anyway, if you do a search with either of the two search boxes at my community (even the smugmug header search)

http://www.smugmug.com/community/OttawaAndArea

then the result is a page with my stuff written all over it.

A related question: Shouldn't the smugmug header search box be for a general search outside the community? It isn't.

...Rob

Andy

SmugSearch is context aware, when you are in a community, on www.smugmug.com or on your homepage, or a category you own, or in a gallery you own

saguaro

I noticed after customizing my home page, that the category pages followed the customization, but the galleries did not.

After installing a new gallery I noticed that this new one did conform with the header and footer customization.

I tried to alter the settings in my other galleries to achieve the header and footer customization. However, the only thing that would achieve this was to use "quick settings" and set to smugmug default. This however removes linkages to "communities". I cannot seem to customize a gallery and maintain the community link.

...Rob

saguaro

Andy,

After customizing my headers and setting up my own domain, I find that in order to display my customization in my galleries I have to:
1. Set the "Look and Feel" to custom.
2. Disassociate from communities.

If I associate with communities I am able to keep my header and footer but the background turns to black. Alternatively I can participate in a community and keep my Theme, but I'm obliged to adopt the SmugMug standard headers and footers instead of my customization.

Consequently, in order to keep both my theme and my customization, I am no longer associating my galleries with any communities, not even the two communities I created "Kites" and "OttawaAndArea" which are now empty.

I still don't see how this is an workable situation. Participation in communities is being discouraged by loss of control of one's own gallery customization as soon as the linkage is created. Participation in communities is also being discouraged by obliging members to display photos under the banner of the gallery owner (as mentioned in my earlier posts).

...Rob