Password on category?

armani

Hello,

Im trying out some new things.
I have a PRO account.

My website is structured as follows:

Category > Sub-Categogy > Galleries.

Is it possible to set a password on a catory instead of on all galleries behind the category?

Thanks,
armani

Allen

armani wrote:

Hello,

Im trying out some new things.
I have a PRO account.

My website is structured as follows:

Category > Sub-Categogy > Galleries.

Is it possible to set a password on a catory?

Thanks,
armani

Can't set a PW for a category but if all galleries under the cat is the same
PW your visitors would only need to enter it one time.

stuartb

Allen wrote:

Can't set a PW for a category but if all galleries under the cat is the same
PW your visitors would only need to enter it one time.

and even if you 'could' password your category . . all the galleries within would still appear 'unprotected' in your iphone page at http://desmurfjes.smugmug.com/iphone/ PLUS with the great new category feature in iphone, your category names now all appear in your public iphone pages, even if they only contain passworded galleries ! They dont show any galleries but they are all still listed, so be careful how you name them.

jfriend

stuartb wrote:

and even if you 'could' password your category . . all the galleries within would still appear 'unprotected' in your iphone page at http://desmurfjes.smugmug.com/iphone/ PLUS with the great new category feature in iphone, your category names now all appear in your public iphone pages, even if they only contain unlisted galleries ! They dont show any galleries but they are all still listed, so be careful how you name them.

Stuart, I don't even work for Smugmug and you are downright annoying me. Your comment here has absolutely NOTHING to do with the question being asked which Allen provided a very helpful answer to and is therefore just you trying to continue to gring your axe about the iphone interface. I'm fine if you want to continue to do that in a thread about that subject, but please don't litter the rest of the forum with unhelpful posts on that topic.

jfriend

armani wrote:

Hello,

Im trying out some new things.
I have a PRO account.

My website is structured as follows:

Category > Sub-Categogy > Galleries.

Is it possible to set a password on a catory instead of on all galleries behind the category?

Thanks,
armani

To Armani's original question, I regularly shoot kid's sports teams. All galleries must be password protected. So, I do exactly as Allen has described. A create a sub-category that is named for the year and sports team name. I then create ~15 galleries (one for each player on the team and several more for various types of other collections of photos (pitchers, catchers, base running, etc...) inside that sub-category and give them all the same password. I upload all the photos. Then set a featured photo on each gallery to get the padlock icon to be replaced with an actual photo thumbnail.

Then when I send out a notice to the team parents, I send out a link to the single sub-category and give them one password. They can open the category to see the galleries without entering the password (because it isn't really a password protected category), but as soon as they try to open one of the galleries, they are prompted for a password. Then, when they open any other gallery that has the same password, they are not prompted again. Smugmug somehow knows (presumably from a cookie) that they already know that password. It works quite well. You get pretty much every single feature of a password protected category except that the gallery names are visible to the public. The photos are just as protected though.

It would be simpler for us to set up if Smugmug actually did password protected categories some day (I'd use it if they had it), but as long as the gallery names don't have to be private, you can still accomplish what you need by giving the galleries all the same password. You can do that as you create the galleries by either creating them enmasse all the same in an app like StarExplorer (that's how I do it), or you can create them individually and use a quick setting that has your password in it or you can change all of them after the fact to have the same password in something like SmugBrowser.

If you don't want the gallery names to be shown to the public, then you may want to make the galleries unlisted (so they won't show from your homepage) and use a sharegroup instead of a category either with or without password protection on the galleries, depending upon your needs. You can then send out the link to the sharegroup only to those who should see the galleries.

stuartb

jfriend wrote:

To Armani's original question, I regularly shoot kid's sports teams. All galleries must be password protected. So, I do exactly as Allen has described. A create a sub-category that is named for the year and sports team name. I then create ~15 galleries (one for each player on the team and several more for various types of other collections of photos (pitchers, catchers, base running, etc...) inside that sub-category and give them all the same password. I upload all the photos. Then set a featured photo on each gallery to get the padlock icon to be replaced with an actual photo thumbnail.

Then when I send out a notice to the team parents, I send out a link to the single sub-category and give them one password. They can open the category to see the galleries without entering the password (because it isn't really a password protected category), but as soon as they try to open one of the galleries, they are prompted for a password. Then, when they open any other gallery that has the same password, they are not prompted again. Smugmug somehow knows (presumably from a cookie) that they already know that password. It works quite well. You get pretty much every single feature of a password protected category except that the gallery names are visible to the public. The photos are just as protected though.

Its great that Smugmug is so flexible and customizable to give folks such control so that they can set it up to precisely meet their needs.

stuartb

jfriend wrote:

I'm fine if you want to continue to do that in a thread about that subject, but please don't litter the rest of the forum with unhelpful posts on that topic.

You make a fair point JFriend . . . apologies for hi-jacking the thread.

jfriend

stuartb wrote:

You make a fair point JFriend . . . apologies for hi-jacking the thread.

Thanks.

armani

Jfriend,

Thank you for the detailed info

My webiste is structured as follows.
Category> Subcategory> Gallery.

What i don't like is that someone that doesn't know the password (and therefore is not allowed to see my private galleries) can navigate trough the whole private section. That doesn't look very professional.

Therefore password protected category would be better.

armani

jfriend

armani wrote:

Jfriend,

Thank you for the detailed info

My webiste is structured as follows.
Category> Subcategory> Gallery.

What i don't like is that someone that doesn't know the password (and therefore is not allowed to see my private galleries) can navigate trough the whole private section. That doesn't look very professional.

Therefore password protected category would be better.

armani

I understand. I would use password protected categories if they existed too. Your two work-arounds at this point are to do as I described above or use unlisted galleries with sharegroups. Sharegroups (which are kind of like public categories) will not a appear on your home page at all (so the public cannot navigate them). But, they allow you to group a set of galleries under a sharegroup (like a category) for the purposes of sending out one link to a group of galleries. The galleries at that point can either be password protected or not - that's up to you.