Suggestion - "Free" accounts... Hear me out

DrDavid

I'm really liking SmugMug; it's easy to use, and very powerful. BUT, what I miss from Flickr is having all my friends/family have an account and be able to assign permissions based on that.

Now, I know the whole philosophy of SmugMug is different, but... Here's a suggestion that I think will preserve the feel and philosophy, while providing paying customers a lot more functionality.

Allow "Free" accounts (with an invitation code from registered users). Basically, I can send an invite to bob@isp.com and label him as a "Friend" or whatever (make it an open system of user groups). Bob can't post pictures or send out invites, but, what he can do is "login" and be marked as a friend, family, colleague, client, etc.. by any other smugmug'er.

I personally think it would add a ton of value--without diluting the basic "We're not free" mentality.

David

Elaine

Not that my viewpoint matters on this, but what would be the advantage of allowing a bunch of other people to login to my account? If they can't post pictures, then how is that different than being invited to view my site and post comments on my pics?

jfriend

Elaine wrote:

Not that my viewpoint matters on this, but what would be the advantage of allowing a bunch of other people to login to my account? If they can't post pictures, then how is that different than being invited to view my site and post comments on my pics?

One idea behind having viewers "login" (their own login, not to my own site) is that your site can then have access control. For example, you can specify that a properly authenticated bob@yahoo.com is allowed to see galleries A, B and C while susie@yahoo.com is allowed to see galleries A, D and E. While a different form of this can be done today with gallery passwords, it can be cleaner for a frequent viewer if they just login to their viewing identity and then they are just magically presented with all the galleries they are allowed to see and none of the ones they are not without having to manage any gallery passwords. There are clearly pros and cons to this approach. It probably works best for frequent visitors only who don't mind establishing a viewing login and who get regular benefit out of coming and not having to deal with gallery passwords (like family members, club members, etc...). It is probably not desirable for one-time visitors who would find it easier to just get a link and password in email.

Elaine

jfriend wrote:

One idea behind having viewers "login" (their own login, not to my own site) is that your site can then have access control. For example, you can specify that a properly authenticated bob@yahoo.com is allowed to see galleries A, B and C while susie@yahoo.com is allowed to see galleries A, D and E. While a different form of this can be done today with gallery passwords, it can be cleaner for a frequent viewer if they just login to their viewing identity and then they are just magically presented with all the galleries they are allowed to see and none of the ones they are not without having to manage any gallery passwords. There are clearly pros and cons to this approach. It probably works best for frequent visitors only who don't mind establishing a viewing login and who get regular benefit out of coming and not having to deal with gallery passwords (like family members, club members, etc...). It is probably not desirable for one-time visitors who would find it easier to just get a link and password in email.

Thanks for clearing that up for me!