You might be surprised. Our bread-and-butter is the $100/year service fee, not the 15% commission.
Baldy will never publicly admit to it, so I'll do it for him, but customer service on printing is expensive and time consuming. He spends way too much time on assisting with print orders, Pros who haven't learned how to color correct, reprints, returns, and the like. The 15% goes to pay for all the time and energy related to making sure your customers get great prints. It doesn't chew up the entire 15%, but there's a significant hit.
Don't get me wrong - we love the revenue stream, we love our Pros, we love all the sales they're doing. But the 15% is less cushy than it sounds.
I'll re-iterate for clarity's sake: It'd be very tough to cobrand the shopping cart not so much for technical reasons but for customer service reasons. You don't see all the high-touch, white-glove customer service we do behind-the-scenes, but I assure you it's happening. Your customers interact with our customer service reps often, which keeps them out of your hair.
Further, we have customers who decline payment on print orders fairly regularly. They call their credit card company and complain that they have no idea who "smugmug" is and that they haven't done business with us. (The credit card company won't let us put another name on the bill, such as your studio's name).
We then call them up and remind them of that gorgeous 16x20 print they got of their favorite horse and they fall all over themselves apologizing. If our brand were removed or reduced, the number of times that would happen would skyrocket. I don't think 15% would cover our losses.
Don
Well let me be the first to offer $300.00 per year, I'll pay the 2-4% credit card fees and you drop the other 11%
You might be surprised. Our bread-and-butter is the $100/year service fee, not the 15% commission.
>15% commission is not much when most people set prices at nothing anyway. I would imagine you get more staple food from the lower end account subscriptions anyway.
Baldy will never publicly admit to it, so I'll do it for him, but customer service on printing is expensive and time consuming. He spends way too much time on assisting with print orders, Pros who haven't learned how to color correct, reprints, returns, and the like. The 15% goes to pay for all the time and energy related to making sure your customers get great prints. It doesn't chew up the entire 15%, but there's a significant hit.
>Whoaa, saving sales?? For everyone or just pros? Let the money be refunded, your staple is the accounts you say. Do you try to save all sales from all levels of users??
Don't get me wrong - we love the revenue stream, we love our Pros, we love all the sales they're doing. But the 15% is less cushy than it sounds.
>make it more then or make another level of service, my suggestion
I'll re-iterate for clarity's sake: It'd be very tough to cobrand the shopping cart not so much for technical reasons but for customer service reasons. You don't see all the high-touch, white-glove customer service we do behind-the-scenes, but I assure you it's happening. Your customers interact with our customer service reps often, which keeps them out of your hair.
>I have a pretty good idea how much support behind the scenes a person like myself needs or gives. I would rather have them in my hair or have my email or phone number available in the process. Without that, of course you are going to have alot of support issues behind the scenes. You can't do that forever.
Further, we have customers who decline payment on print orders fairly regularly. They call their credit card company and complain that they have no idea who "smugmug" is and that they haven't done business with us. (The credit card company won't let us put another name on the bill, such as your studio's name).
>Patrtly because of your cc billing setup. You should make it say photographs or something only, and not smugmug so people don't get confused. Or have your financial parner allow a sub-line or notation behind smugmug.
We then call them up and remind them of that gorgeous 16x20 print they got of their favorite horse and they fall all over themselves apologizing. If our brand were removed or reduced, the number of times that would happen would skyrocket. I don't think 15% would cover our losses.
I dunno...but it seems you have closed this issue.
Don
ell let me be the first to offer $300.00 per year, I'll pay the 2-4% credit card fees and you drop the other 11%
I'll be the second. I would quite possibly go a bit further and offer a larger percentage to cover fees as well for a less smugmug branded professional account.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I view SM as my fulfillment house that takes and transmits orders not as a “view and share pictures with the family site” (I use my website and gallery for that),the “OnLine” fulfillment and delivery method (which includes SM) is an integral part of my business plan. Perhaps if SM were to view this from a commercial aspect rather than a “Picture Sharing” view they could empathize?
I could not have put any better. This is how I viewed smugmug's pro level service.
I see this thread is a bit old. God knows I don't have time to lurk here and don't come often. I was actually looking to see if any new features, such as Sports Cards, Sports Covers was being offered (like http://www.sports-america.com/) I also would like the ability to put my brand on my pictures. I was surprised and disappointed when I got my first order and had SM on the back. Since I had a pro account and a co-branded site I assumed I would see www.dewwitpics.com. As a small start up event photographer customer retention and repeat business is important to me, as I'm sure it is for SM. We're in this together and I'd hope "this boat could carry two".
I sense frustration and arrogance in some of onethumbs posts. This wouldn't be the first dot com doomed by ego. Despite what is said, I'm concerned that pro accounts may be a second class citizens at SM.
While I'm here I'd like to thank Nikolai for SmugMugExplorer. Without it I wouldn't have re-upped!
I sense frustration and arrogance in some of onethumbs posts. This wouldn't be the first dot com doomed by ego. Despite what is said, I'm concerned that pro accounts may be a second class citizens at SM.
I don't think I agree with that at all. Frankly I found the original post that started this thread to be a gross exaggeration of the state of affairs. Then his reply that he can get Freeware to do the same thing... I mean if you can, then why in the world aren't you using it? I highly suspect that the "free" software comes with it a whole host of issues, such as order fulfillment and customer satisfaction.
As the Powers that Be have stated, they do a lot for us. I personally do NOT want to do customer support, web development, order fulfillment, etc. I'm more than happy to pay $100 for the site and 15% for the rest.
Yes, I am standing up for the people running Smugmug on this topic.
I don't think I agree with that at all. Frankly I found the original post that started this thread to be a gross exaggeration of the state of affairs. Then his reply that he can get Freeware to do the same thing... I mean if you can, then why in the world aren't you using it? I highly suspect that the "free" software comes with it a whole host of issues, such as order fulfillment and customer satisfaction.
I am not sure who you are directing this to, but I will take a stab at it as I think you may have missed a post or two above. The open source software I am speaking of does automatic order fulfillment and the printhouse used is one that the "big boys" use. Actually, you have a choice of three very highly regarded open source galleries to chose from. Two of them you need to add a mod and one comes with the mod installed already. Like I said before, it is much like the smugmug system of things. Actually the gallery systems rock and are used all around the net in gigantic numbers.
The general drawback for some people is that you need some hosting of some sort and maybe a bit of script experience. Those that don't know better think that basic hosting is difficult or expensive, which usually it is not.
This brings us to why someone would use smugmug and and open source solutions together. I for one prefer to put my colection of 25,000 quality images on smugmug because of the pricing scheme. It offers what seems to be great offsite storage limits (unlimited) and usuable print fulfillment system and an adequte bandwidth allocation for a nice price. I use another sharing site that gives supposed "unlimited bandwidth" for general photosharing. With 6 million views last year I would not have wanted to pay smugmug's bandwidth rates.
Putting another 25,000 images on my own servers does not make sense for my off-site backup purposes either. And actually, considering the amout of high rez images I intend to upload, smugmug makes sound economical sense as well. And for the record I did not find the thread starters post off base at all, to be quite frank. This is matter close to the heart and pocketbook for many of us.
It's STAR*Explorer ! (I still can't believe that domain was available in 2005!)
Thank you very much, appreciate your kind words!
Cheers!
That is odd that domain was available. I need to try your explorer as many people here rave on it. Sorry this post is ot, but it is such a nice domain name to still be around for sure.
That is odd that domain was available. I need to try your explorer as many people here rave on it. Sorry this post is ot, but it is such a nice domain name to still be around for sure.
Cheers
-don
For now it mostly for upload, but i'm getting close to full-duplex mode:-)
$100 buys you an unlimited amount of storage. Plus, someone else deals with
all the customer support crap. To me, that's a pretty damn good deal.
To those who argue having a smugmug logo is not desirable, I say consider
it a co-brand. Look at all the good press they get. In the end, it may
help you. It's like adding "Intel Inside" to a PC case. Customers see that
as a sign of quality.
Regarding free software that all the "big boys" use. I have some terrible news.
It's not free. Sure, they downloaded it for free and installed it on their servers.
But just because it didn't cost them anything doesn't mean they don't pay for
it.
Ian
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
$100 buys you an unlimited amount of storage. Plus, someone else deals with
all the customer support crap. To me, that's a pretty damn good deal.
>we all have our opinions, the 15 percent pays for something, eh? 15 percent of a large amounts is a large amount...
To those who argue having a smugmug logo is not desirable, I say consider
it a co-brand. Look at all the good press they get. In the end, it may
help you. It's like adding "Intel Inside" to a PC case. Customers see that
as a sign of quality.
>Nobody much cares about intel inside as I use an old athlon for this. I don't care about all of the press. If you would have read this thread you may have a better understanding of the other point of view here. I seriously doubt the smugmug name is going to help my fine-art print sales. I can guarantee you I will get confused unwanted clickaways with all of this cobranding jazz. I want to build my brand, not have it totally obscured during the payment and printing process. Thats's why I have invested in dozens of photo related domains in the first place. Catchy ones that draw traffic, know what I mean? I am just looking for a more generic pro solution here.
Regarding free software that all the "big boys" use. I have some terrible news.
It's not free. Sure, they downloaded it for free and installed it on their servers.
But just because it didn't cost them anything doesn't mean they don't pay for
it.
>look friend, if you would have read my earlier posts to this thread I mentioned I own a small webhosting co and am a domain name registrar. I also own dozens of photo-related domains and I went over all of this before. The software is easy as pie to download and and re-upload and manipulating it is very similar to smugmug. It costs nothing and you can run it on a 99 cent webserver if you want to. People offer ample storage and bandspace these days for almost nothing. FTP programs are found all over the net for free. Domain names are less than $10 a year. The freeware takes minutes to download and mere minutes to upload to your server. Whoaaa....yup, that cost me an investment of $11 up-front and $1 a month to get up and running with a server, domain name, and autoprinting software that allows flex pricing. You are right, they paid for it...they paid almost nothing!
Now can you explain to me the trerrible news? I don't get it, some pros make a pitch for less smugmug branding on pro accounts and other people come attacking without reading the entire thread... I guess? I hate to keep re-mentioning this junk but I hate seeing such off-target stuff on this subject. And before you say, oh 99 cent a month webservers are junk I hope you know what you are talking about. BTW, the "bigboys" I was referring to were users of the same printhouses the small guy can use. My point being a little guy gets his prints from same printers as some of the big sites use. And you don't need any background in servers, domains, or code because I am a self trained idiot and I can do it.
For now it mostly for upload, but i'm getting close to full-duplex mode:-)
Good luck!
Not to further hijack the thread ... Nikolai, I have two requests if that's ok. Do you foresee the option of offline use? I mean, be able to download all your gallery structure info (like when SE connects) and allow drag & drop without being connected to the net. Then, when we're ready, we can upload?
This would be great for laptop users or when you have time to queue up the upload, but not actually upload. Closing SE loses all this information too, if not uploaded. This could also allow more time for caption entry etc.
And second, along with the offline option, it would be fabulous if we could customize individual gallary options too, and later upload to update. This is probably asking A LOT but I think it could save us a lot of time (as if you haven't saved us enough already!)
Minolta Man, would you mind divulging the 4 software packages that are available for free that allow integration with printing houses? I looked at 'gallery', which I believe smugmug is based on, but it didn't offer any sort of printing features, as far as I could tell.
I read the entire thread. You shouldn't make assumptions.
Like you said earlier, we all have our opinions and I have mine. Just to clarify,
I work with storage systems and deal with free software daily. So, like you,
I feel qualified to comment on both since I do both for my living and I know
what it costs to download, build and maintain them and it 'aint free.
Ian
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
I read the entire thread. You shouldn't make assumptions.
Like you said earlier, we all have our opinions and I have mine. Just to clarify,
I work with storage systems and deal with free software daily. So, like you,
I feel qualified to comment on both since I do both for my living and I know
what it costs to download, build and maintain them and it 'aint free.
Ian
You stated some weird stuff, like pros only pay 100 dollars and convienently left off the 15 percent commission on each sale that goes to smugmug. You should know maintaing a templated gallery or a php gallery is pretty darn easy. Set it up and she pretty much runs forever without touching it again. There are so many great open source gallery scripts available it is not even funny. I have set up forums and galleries on servers and really never had to touch them again.
You should know maintaing a templated gallery or a php gallery is pretty darn easy. Set it up and she pretty much runs forever without touching it again. There are so many great open source gallery scripts available it is not even funny. I have set up forums and galleries on servers and really never had to touch them again.
But people like me have neither the time nor desire to do any of that, which is exactly why I pay $100 a year plus 15% to have someone else do it for me.
This open source stuff would not be "free" for me. I'd have to buy a PC to run it on, which would be near impossible to get me to do anyway. I'd have to take the time to learn how to do it. To test it, make the changes as I see fit, maintain it over time. That time is money. It is worth something to me.
Nothing is free. I have a striking sense that you are not counting in all the costs involved with running a business.
I'm not sure why you are griping so violently towards Smugmug. So they do it more expensively than you can on your own. Good. Go off and do it, because it is obviously better for you. What I don't understand is your attitude towards it. Smug is here to make money and a profit off people like me. I'm here to take advantage of their willingness to do so. I'm not sure why you think that is such a bad thing.
You stated some weird stuff, like pros only pay 100 dollars and convienently left off the 15 percent commission on each sale that goes to smugmug. You should know maintaing a templated gallery or a php gallery is pretty darn easy. Set it up and she pretty much runs forever without touching it again. There are so many great open source gallery scripts available it is not even funny. I have set up forums and galleries on servers and really never had to touch them again.
We agree to disagree.
-don
I stated some wierd stuff? Where? What?
Besides. Why are you complaining about 15% or branding if:
I will upload about 25,000 quality hig rez images to smugmug that I want to put somewhere other than on my servers. Have you ever heard of off site backup?
It's apparent to me that all you want is something for nothing.
Ian
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
Minolta Man, would you mind divulging the 4 software packages that are available for free that allow integration with printing houses? I looked at 'gallery', which I believe smugmug is based on, but it didn't offer any sort of printing features, as far as I could tell.
Thanks,
-w
The three galleries were 4images Gallery, sourceforge’s coppermine and Dean Higginbotham’s PHPJK.
Since my galleries are temporarily offline I decided to check his integration site. Now here is where it gets strange. I went to the integrators site and the new subscriber link is not functioning. The link to the Coppermine mod located in the sf forums is still good and the mod is still there. As a matter of fact you will see where I contracted someone to install the Coppermine mod and bridge a bb to the gallery in the same job. I ended up not bridging to the bb but the fellow did install the integration to the Coppermine gallery.
The link to phpjk is still on the integrators site as well and the jk site mentions the integration in its FAQ. Now the link to 4images Gallery mod located in the 4images forum needs a login so I didn’t check to see if it is still there.
I have been rebuilding two-dozen of my sites, and my two integrated sites are offline currently. I sent an email to the integrator, Dean, and am awaiting a reply on why the registration link is not working. Also his support link is down, I don’t know if he has stopped supporting this, there is legal trouble, an upgrade is in progress, or stuff is just smacked up. It is strange because I actually had the author of the software do the installation and mod on one of my servers for phpjk late last year.
Even though you can still download the scripts and install the mods, the flexible price printing service will not function until you enter two code numbers. One is an account identifier and another is to access your sales figures and account data. If I don’t hear from the author in a timely fashion on this, I will bring one of my sites back on-line and do an order and see what happens. I just dunno until I hear from Dean. He is a busy guy working on other projects so I really don’t know what is up yet. The mods were released last aug I believe, so it is a relatively new thing. Gallery was looking for legal representation for one of it’s peeps, but I doubt very much if it is related to this.
Sorry to be vague here, but I don’t think it is fair to discuss much about smugmug alternatives here. Smugmug provides a nice service for its price. I originally mentioned this stuff in an attempt to contribute to the author of this threads request on branding and add some info on the cart branding. This is where I mentioned that many other similar alternatives sites to smugmug available, and even some gallery programs that are open source. Now I know many great open source gallery programs do standard print house pricing and have had automatic order fulfillment for a while, but I have not seen any other scripts to allow flex pricing on the open source scripts other than the one I have tried and have mentioned here. I would be sure you could get something from a print house or somebody else’s partner program, but that is not what we are talking about here.
To get things back on track, and to be clear here, I am lobbying for generic smugmug branding, or less smugmug branding, or more minimal smugmug branding in the payment process and order fulfillment stream. I am looking for smugmug to become the ultimate solution so I don’t have to use multiple sites to sell prints and stock. That’s the bottom line and I close with that.
Sorry for the rambling array of sloppy thoughts and text. This was a rewrite as boned my first attempt at posting by testing a link.:cry
***update****
An email I just received from Dean. 4-05-05 12:27pm
Don,
Sorry our server crashed and we lost all data and backups. It was on a 14
disk raid system that blew during the backup -- lost over $100k of hardware.
No, I haven't set Aricaur back up completely. I'll let you know when it's
back up. But I do realize that might be too long of a wait for you. Sorry.
The crash set my partner and I back at least a month. We're still "cleaning
Looks like crashes happen with the big guys too....Better have multiple backups with the ability to do order fullfillment, I'd say. That's why I signed on to smugmug anyway, backup storage and order fullfillment. I don't have much to cry about though with this crash because the images are on my servers, not at the printhouse or on a third parties servers. I now know of no functioning software to integrate with those open source galleries that can be set to something other than the default printhouse pricing until Dean has this fixed.
Now it looks like I am really pushing this branding thing here at smugmug...
It's apparent to me that all you want is something for nothing
Excuse me, I pay smugmug $100 plus 15 percent. I paid pbase $150 dollars over the last 2 years to store images. I have purchased over 80 urls that are photo related in the past 14 months. I have bought a domain regstrar and web hosting company and am building out a couple dozen photo sites. I have paid for photo mods and integrations. I have paid for numerous great gallery scripts including a great didital download script. I have bought a half dozen high end photographers templates. I have purchased a few thousand dollars worth of camera gear in the past three years and not to mention I purchased and burned almost a thousand cd roms worth of photos as backup. I store images on my serveres, pbase, and many other sites. I have stuff on display at the Butler Museum of Art Beecher Center in Yougstown Ohio, have been published in America and the UK, I have sold dozens of stock images lately,I have my stuff in books and on websites and have shared 6,000,000 image views to the masses for free this last year alone. I also receive thousands of gallery comments and hundreds of thanks for sharing emails. Matter of fact I have even publish thousands of public domain works on my servers as a public service. I have many reasons for doing things the way I do, so I don't know what you are taking about. Also, I basically spend of my awake all of hours on photography and the web. I even run a crappy ecard site...for free.
Have a good day and I don't see much point in discussing any more of this with you.
If a person sells 2000 fine art prints for $100 each smugmug makes $30,000.
That is one *ell of a lot more money than $100 eh? I call that very weird math!!
I also would classify some info in one of your earlier posts a bit weird, but that might be a metter of opinion, I guess. I see not much point in discussing much more of this with you though, sorry.
I will upload about 25,000 quality hig rez images to smugmug that I want to put somewhere other than on my servers. Have you ever heard of off site backup?
Now you're adding order fullfillment to your requirement and you think that $100
a year ought to cover printing, mailing and other administrative costs associated
with handling 2,000 orders and storage for 25,000 quality hi rez images? Who
should pay for that service?
I'll bet you couldn't build a system and operate your own business capable
of managing 25,000 images for $100 a year. Care to take me up on that?
Ian
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
Minolta Man, would you mind divulging the 4 software packages that are available for free that allow integration with printing houses? I looked at 'gallery', which I believe smugmug is based on, but it didn't offer any sort of printing features, as far as I could tell.
Thanks,
-w
ROFLMAO. smugmug was written from scratch. It's not based on anything.
Personally, I don't even see the resemblence. If you do, I must be doing something terribly wrong. It's not exactly the prettiest or easiest to use software. We like to think that we're both.
(Or maybe they're playing catch-up? Some people have forwarded messages from their mailing list where they list smugmug things to add to Gallery. I haven't seen Gallery in years, so maybe it's gotten more similar.).
Now you're adding order fullfillment to your requirement and you think that $100
a year ought to cover printing, mailing and other administrative costs associated
with handling 2,000 orders and storage for 25,000 quality hi rez images? Who
should pay for that service?
I'll bet you couldn't build a system and operate your own business capable
of managing 25,000 images for $100 a year. Care to take me up on that?
Ian
Dude, waht the smack are you talking about. Let me refer you to a couple other of my earlier posts in this thread before I reply.
Quote: Don Northup
I thought I clarified myself on this earlier in the thread, it is the cart footer and branding that really bothers me. Quote: __________________
Originally Posted by K.Van Perhaps I’m wrong, but I view SM as my fulfillment house that takes and transmits orders not as a “view and share pictures with the family site” (I use my website and gallery for that),the “OnLine” fulfillment and delivery method (which includes SM) is an integral part of my business plan. Perhaps if SM were to view this from a commercial aspect rather than a “Picture Sharing” view they could empathize?
My reply: I could not have put any better. This is how I viewed smugmug's pro level service.
________________________
My Quote: This brings us to why someone would use smugmug and and open source solutions together. I for one prefer to put my colection of 25,000 quality images on smugmug because of the pricing scheme. It offers what seems to be great offsite storage limits (unlimited) and usuable print fulfillment system and an adequte bandwidth allocation for a nice price. I use another sharing site that gives supposed "unlimited bandwidth" for general photosharing. With 6 million views last year I would not have wanted to pay smugmug's bandwidth rates.
Putting another 25,000 images on my own servers does not make sense for my off-site backup purposes either. And actually, considering the amout of high rez images I intend to upload, smugmug makes sound economical sense as well.
_______________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by K.Van ell let me be the first to offer $300.00 per year, I'll pay the 2-4% credit card fees and you drop the other 11%
My reply: I'll be the second. I would quite possibly go a bit further and offer a larger percentage to cover fees as well for a less smugmug branded professional account.
_______________________
The main reason I chose smugmug for backup is they have a useable order fullfillment process and good storage prices.
Now to your figures. I have 20 orders at 100 prints each and the profiles and crops are correct. Only 20 originals are used and ezprints delivers the files trouble free and smugmug makes 30,000 grand for almost nothing. I think a more generic branding solution could be afforded in the payment process and the back printing issue resolved for this kind of money. It is called a pro account and I think that is what it takes to be totally pro feeling. If you read the thread, you would know all of this stuff because it is mostly all repeat.
As far as how much it takes monthly for 25,000 images. Assuming say 3mb per image you'll need to pay whatever company however much it takes to by 7.5 gb of hd space. Depending on where that is, that can be pretty darn cheap!! Check for yourself, many hosts are using good pipes and strong servers give unlimited storage these days for almost nothing. If you can't find any with google, I'll give you a hand. I would not sell you that much storage that cheap, but people better than I will. That's just where the server business is now. My answer is for a very similar price you could manage that quantity of images.
ROFLMAO. smugmug was written from scratch. It's not based on anything.
Personally, I don't even see the resemblence. If you do, I must be doing something terribly wrong. It's not exactly the prettiest or easiest to use software. We like to think that we're both.
(Or maybe they're playing catch-up? Some people have forwarded messages from their mailing list where they list smugmug things to add to Gallery. I haven't seen Gallery in years, so maybe it's gotten more similar.).
Don
Actually, Menalto's Gallery has become an awsome piece of software. I asume that is the one being mentioned and not 4image gallery.
Administration
Installation/Configuration Wizard
Gallery comes with a handy web based configuration wizard. This wizard helps to make sure that your web server and operating system are set up correctly (screenshot). It also allows you to configure many of Gallery's options while determining as much as it can from your environment (screenshot). The wizard lastly creates and admin account for you to administer your Gallery with. Later on if you want to change settings, you can run the configuration wizard and make changes without having to take down your Gallery.[1] (screenshot)
Here are some of the features that you can customize in the configuration wizard:
Image Magick or NetPBM - pick which image manipulation package you have on your server or want to use.
Auto Rotate Images - Gallery can look at information in pictures from digital cameras and automatically rotate them as needed.
Image Quality and Size Defaults - You can limit the quality and size of images so that when images are uploaded, Gallery will resize them to save space.
Main Gallery Page Settings - The configuration wizard contains all of the settings for how the main Gallery page looks and acts including showing or hiding the album tree, search engine, or album owner, and what frames to show around albums.
Optional Binaries: zip, jhead, jpegtran - If you have these programs on your webserver, you can enable them to make gallery work better and be more flexible.
Languages - Choose which languages you want your Gallery to support and how the user is presented with the choice.
Email Support - Set up email support to have your Gallery email users when their accounts are created or when they forget their password, email you copies, email people when the Gallery is updated, and more!
Gallery-wide Slideshow - enable or disable a slideshow that includes all pictures in the gallery
Commenting - turn off or on the public commenting system and configure it.
Logging - enable logging with syslog or the Windows logger
RSS publishing - publish your Gallery with RSS![1]
Album Defaults - set defaults for the way that all new albums will originally look
Accounts/Permissions
You start off with only one user, the Administrator (login name:admin). This account can do anything with Gallery. Typically you'll want to use the admin to create other users (which can also be administrators if you want). Users can be granted permission to create and maintain their own albums on a per-album basis (screenshot). Users can also self-register [0] (screenshot) and sign up for e-mail notification [0] (screenshot) when things in the Gallery change.
Albums
An album is a group of pictures and movies inside of a gallery. Albums can be nested inside of each other (screenshot) and can be customized on an individual basis. Albums can have specific permissions (screenshot) (ie, some users can modify it, some users can add to it, etc), and the album owner can grant permissions to different users. Albums can even be hidden to only allow logged in or specifc users access to even see that it exists.
An album's thumbnail defaults to a scaled version of the first image added but can be set to be all or part of any image in the album. Items in an album can be sorted based on date added, date captured, etc, and the whole album can be deleted, moved, or renamed. All captions for items in an album can be edited at once without having to click on each picture (screenshot). Comments can also be viewed in once place for easy review and moderation (screenshot). Additionally, if polling is enabled for an album, the results can be viewed by the album owner or optionally displayed at the top of the page.
Album can also be easily watermarked (watermarking every image in it) (screenshot) and customized by their owners in a variety of ways. You can change the title, colors, background, fonts, and borders. You can also specify a target thumbnail size and a target intermediate photo size (so that folks with lesser bandwidth can view scaled versions of big photos) (screenshot). The number of rows and columns in an album is customizable, as well as a variety of viewer options.
Photos
If you have the appropriate permissions, you can add photos to an album. A default method is set in the config wizard, but there are several ways to do this:
Upload a ZIP file full of photos and movies
Use a form to upload up to 10 photos at each time with and optional file containing descriptions. (screenshot)
Specify a web page and let Gallery go slurp up all the photos and movies on that page. (screenshot)
Copy all images to a directory on your webserver and let Gallery copy them directly into your album.
Use the embedded applet (screenshot) and drag-and-drop pictures and movies to upload them.
As you upload pictures, they will be automatically thumbnailed, added to your album, and have intermediate sized images created if needed. They can also be automatically watermarked if you have enabled this feature[1]. Once photos are upload there are several things you can do to manage them:
Edit the title, caption, keywords, and other custom fields that you define. (screenshot)
Modify the thumbnail with java applet, selecting only part of the image to show. [2]
Rotate the image in increments of 90 degrees.
Move the photo to a different place in the same album or a different album.
Hide the photo so that only the album owner or logged in users can see it.
Delete the photo.
Add a watermark of your choice to your photo. (screenshot)
Mirroring Albums
Gallery lets you mirror your albums on as many remote servers as you like. This lets you run your Gallery on a machine with limited bandwidth (like over a DSL line) but still serve up your images quickly from a high bandwidth source like an ISP. Gallery will not actually mirror the files for you. You're responsible for doing it yourself. I use a program called rsync. You can use whatever you want. If the remote album is up to date, Gallery will use it. If not, Gallery will use the local one. Or see: Synchronizing your albums with a mirror server
Connecting
Gallery has a remote protocol to allow software other than the web interface to interact with it.
Gallery Remote - Gallery Remote is a java program that will run on any system that java will run on. Your users can use to upload photos to your Gallery via a drag-and-drop interface[0] (screenshots). On the standard file upload page there is a link to the Gallery Remote download page which will download the application from the SourceForge server directly to your user.
Other methods are available to easily add pictures to your Gallery including ones that support Windows XP, Apple's iPhoto, Mobile Phones, perl, python, and more.
RSS can be used to publish your Gallery and updates to it.
Embedding
Gallery can be embedded in several different content management systems, here are the current ones that we support:
Nuke 5.0+
NSN-nuke
Post-nuke
Geek Log
phpBB2
Mambo
For the nuke systems, just put your Gallery directory inside the nuke modules directory and you're all set, for the other systems, documentation is included in the "contrib" folder of the source code explaining installation.
Customizing
Gallery is extremely customizable. There are lots of included customizations, many more that you can download, and endless possibilities! There are 4 main ways to customize Gallery:
CSS - Modify Gallery's style sheets, use your existing site's style sheet, or write your own to control colors, borders, spacing [0]
Themes - Gallery comes with lots of themes are there are plenty more to download. Check out ckdake's gallery page to start looking for more skins and other easy customizations. [0]
html_wrap - Have an existing HTML template for your site but don't use a content management system? html_wrap is for you! You can include content above, below, to the left, and to the right of gallery to make it blend in with the rest of your site. (example 1, example 2, example 3)[0]
changing code - Gallery is open source so you can easily change the source code to make it do whatever you want it to do.
The one thing you can't easily do right now is to change the layout from a grid format to something else. However, in v2.0 we plan to introduce a templating system that will let you write your own HTML to do customized themes and layouts (or use the ones that we and other users provide). You can find out more about MANY more customizations further down in the user guide underneath the Customization area
Users viewing your album can easily navigate around using the navigation bars at the top and bottom of every album page. Each album can be given its own unique URL. Each photo within the album in turn has its own unique URL. You can use these URLs to get directly to a specific photo from outside the Gallery (useful when you want to email photo links to a friend). In addition to this, the album owner can allow the user to use the following features:
Languages - Gallery supports over 30 languages and you can choose which language you want to have and how they are presented to the user. The language can be automatically detected by Gallery from the user's browser configuration, or the user can be presented with a drop down box or pictures of flags to select a language. (screenshot)
Unique, Short URLs[0] - If your server supports mod_rewrite (a module for Apache), your albums and pictures can have short, easy to remember urls such as http://example.com/gallery/springbreak/thebeach
Fit-to-window Images[0] - If a visitor has a supported browser, Gallery can dynamically resize images to make them as large as possible while still fitting inside of the visitors browser window.
Full or Resized Images[0] - Visitors can choose if they want to see the full size images or scaled versions.
Print Photos[0] - Gallery supports several photo-printing services which allow visitors to order prints of pictures in your gallery.
Keyword Searching[0] - Visitors can search a gallery for text in Picture and Album descriptions and optional fields.
EXIF Headers[0] - Gallery can read information embedded in the exif headers of jpegs. Digital Cameras and some photo editing programs use these headers to store information about how and when pictures were taken or created. (screenshot)
Click Counting[0] - Gallery keeps track of how many times albums and pictures are viewed and displays them on your Gallery so that you know which items are most popular.
Public Commenting[0] - Visitors can comment on pictures and other visitors can view them. Logged in users with the proper permissions can delete comments and view all of them on one page. (screenshot)
Polling[0] - The owner of an album can choose to include a poll where visitors can vote on which image they think is the best, or what they think of every image. Results can be displayed at the top of the album or only to the album owner. (screenshot)
Slideshow[0] - Visitors can view the pictures and, if configured, pictures in subalbums, as either a slideshow inside of the browser window or as a full screen slideshow. (screenshot)
Album Tree[0] - A tree of all albums and subalbums with clickable links to them can be displayed on the front page of your Gallery to provide quick and easy access to all of the albums. (screenshot)
[0]++++++++++++++++ denotes a feature that is "optional" and can be disabled by the Gallery administrator. [1]++ denotes a feature that is new to the most recent version of Gallery, 1.4.4 [2] denotes that a screenshot will be available soon
[3] denotes a feature that will be in the next release of Gallery, 1.4.5
__________________________________________________________
But people like me have neither the time nor desire to do any of that, which is exactly why I pay $100 a year plus 15% to have someone else do it for me.
This open source stuff would not be "free" for me. I'd have to buy a PC to run it on, which would be near impossible to get me to do anyway. I'd have to take the time to learn how to do it. To test it, make the changes as I see fit, maintain it over time. That time is money. It is worth something to me.
>you don't need a pc, your server is located and maintained by someone else. You just upload images like normal.
Nothing is free. I have a striking sense that you are not counting in all the costs involved with running a business.
>I have been self employed for many years and this is one broke *ob that does know the cost of running a business. I detailed a bit of my past earlier in this thread.
I'm not sure why you are griping so violently towards Smugmug.
>Whoaa, you may need a check-up. I am NOT griping violently. I am contributing to this thread about back printing, branding, and smugmug and similar services. Please show me where I have violently attacked smugmug. You can't because I have not. I actually credited this site as being a very nice one and a good value a few times in this thread already.
So they do it more expensively than you can on your own. Good. Go off and do it, because it is obviously better for you.
>please read thet the thread to understand why I use smugmug and stop telling me what to do or where to go
What I don't understand is your attitude towards it.
>you don't have too, ignore my posts and you will not perceive any attitude
Smug is here to make money and a profit off people like me.
>I know this, they also do a few things for the pros and have a suggestions and support forum that we are posting to here. I pay 100$ yearly plus 15 percent, you seemed to have missed my point of posting to this thread which was the branding issues others are discussing.
I'm here to take advantage of their willingness to do so. I'm not sure why you think that is such a bad thing.
>Who said I did? Please stop putting n my mouth and quit misquoting me.
Wowza, heve a good day. I suggest you just keep on keeping on cuz this stuff may not be something for you.
I have been self employed for many years and this is one broke *ob that does know the cost of running a business. I detailed a bit of my past earlier in this thread.
Did you ever stop to consider why you are broke?
Ian
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
Comments
-don
www.PhotoByLaurie.com
I could not have put any better. This is how I viewed smugmug's pro level service.
Cheers
-don
I also would like the ability to put my brand on my pictures. I was surprised and disappointed when I got my first order and had SM on the back. Since I had a pro account and a co-branded site I assumed I would see www.dewwitpics.com. As a small start up event photographer customer retention and repeat business is important to me, as I'm sure it is for SM. We're in this together and I'd hope "this boat could carry two".
I sense frustration and arrogance in some of onethumbs posts. This wouldn't be the first dot com doomed by ego. Despite what is said, I'm concerned that pro accounts may be a second class citizens at SM.
While I'm here I'd like to thank Nikolai for SmugMugExplorer. Without it I wouldn't have re-upped!
I don't think I agree with that at all. Frankly I found the original post that started this thread to be a gross exaggeration of the state of affairs. Then his reply that he can get Freeware to do the same thing... I mean if you can, then why in the world aren't you using it? I highly suspect that the "free" software comes with it a whole host of issues, such as order fulfillment and customer satisfaction.
As the Powers that Be have stated, they do a lot for us. I personally do NOT want to do customer support, web development, order fulfillment, etc. I'm more than happy to pay $100 for the site and 15% for the rest.
Yes, I am standing up for the people running Smugmug on this topic.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
The general drawback for some people is that you need some hosting of some sort and maybe a bit of script experience. Those that don't know better think that basic hosting is difficult or expensive, which usually it is not.
This brings us to why someone would use smugmug and and open source solutions together. I for one prefer to put my colection of 25,000 quality images on smugmug because of the pricing scheme. It offers what seems to be great offsite storage limits (unlimited) and usuable print fulfillment system and an adequte bandwidth allocation for a nice price. I use another sharing site that gives supposed "unlimited bandwidth" for general photosharing. With 6 million views last year I would not have wanted to pay smugmug's bandwidth rates.
Putting another 25,000 images on my own servers does not make sense for my off-site backup purposes either. And actually, considering the amout of high rez images I intend to upload, smugmug makes sound economical sense as well. And for the record I did not find the thread starters post off base at all, to be quite frank. This is matter close to the heart and pocketbook for many of us.
Thanks for the input. Good day.
-don
It's STAR*Explorer
Thank you very much, appreciate your kind words!
Cheers!
Cheers
-don
For now it mostly for upload, but i'm getting close to full-duplex mode:-)
Good luck!
all the customer support crap. To me, that's a pretty damn good deal.
To those who argue having a smugmug logo is not desirable, I say consider
it a co-brand. Look at all the good press they get. In the end, it may
help you. It's like adding "Intel Inside" to a PC case. Customers see that
as a sign of quality.
Regarding free software that all the "big boys" use. I have some terrible news.
It's not free. Sure, they downloaded it for free and installed it on their servers.
But just because it didn't cost them anything doesn't mean they don't pay for
it.
Ian
This would be great for laptop users or when you have time to queue up the upload, but not actually upload. Closing SE loses all this information too, if not uploaded. This could also allow more time for caption entry etc.
And second, along with the offline option, it would be fabulous if we could customize individual gallary options too, and later upload to update. This is probably asking A LOT but I think it could save us a lot of time (as if you haven't saved us enough already!)
Thanks, and keep up the great work!
Thanks,
-w
I have answered your questions in a separate thread, ok?
Here, in "Hacks"
I read the entire thread. You shouldn't make assumptions.
Like you said earlier, we all have our opinions and I have mine. Just to clarify,
I work with storage systems and deal with free software daily. So, like you,
I feel qualified to comment on both since I do both for my living and I know
what it costs to download, build and maintain them and it 'aint free.
Ian
We agree to disagree.
-don
But people like me have neither the time nor desire to do any of that, which is exactly why I pay $100 a year plus 15% to have someone else do it for me.
This open source stuff would not be "free" for me. I'd have to buy a PC to run it on, which would be near impossible to get me to do anyway. I'd have to take the time to learn how to do it. To test it, make the changes as I see fit, maintain it over time. That time is money. It is worth something to me.
Nothing is free. I have a striking sense that you are not counting in all the costs involved with running a business.
I'm not sure why you are griping so violently towards Smugmug. So they do it more expensively than you can on your own. Good. Go off and do it, because it is obviously better for you. What I don't understand is your attitude towards it. Smug is here to make money and a profit off people like me. I'm here to take advantage of their willingness to do so. I'm not sure why you think that is such a bad thing.
A former sports shooter
Follow me at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bjurasz/
My Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mercphoto?ref=hdr_shop_menu
Besides. Why are you complaining about 15% or branding if:
It's apparent to me that all you want is something for nothing.
Ian
Since my galleries are temporarily offline I decided to check his integration site. Now here is where it gets strange. I went to the integrators site and the new subscriber link is not functioning. The link to the Coppermine mod located in the sf forums is still good and the mod is still there. As a matter of fact you will see where I contracted someone to install the Coppermine mod and bridge a bb to the gallery in the same job. I ended up not bridging to the bb but the fellow did install the integration to the Coppermine gallery.
The link to phpjk is still on the integrators site as well and the jk site mentions the integration in its FAQ. Now the link to 4images Gallery mod located in the 4images forum needs a login so I didn’t check to see if it is still there.
I have been rebuilding two-dozen of my sites, and my two integrated sites are offline currently. I sent an email to the integrator, Dean, and am awaiting a reply on why the registration link is not working. Also his support link is down, I don’t know if he has stopped supporting this, there is legal trouble, an upgrade is in progress, or stuff is just smacked up. It is strange because I actually had the author of the software do the installation and mod on one of my servers for phpjk late last year.
Even though you can still download the scripts and install the mods, the flexible price printing service will not function until you enter two code numbers. One is an account identifier and another is to access your sales figures and account data. If I don’t hear from the author in a timely fashion on this, I will bring one of my sites back on-line and do an order and see what happens. I just dunno until I hear from Dean. He is a busy guy working on other projects so I really don’t know what is up yet. The mods were released last aug I believe, so it is a relatively new thing. Gallery was looking for legal representation for one of it’s peeps, but I doubt very much if it is related to this.
Sorry to be vague here, but I don’t think it is fair to discuss much about smugmug alternatives here. Smugmug provides a nice service for its price. I originally mentioned this stuff in an attempt to contribute to the author of this threads request on branding and add some info on the cart branding. This is where I mentioned that many other similar alternatives sites to smugmug available, and even some gallery programs that are open source. Now I know many great open source gallery programs do standard print house pricing and have had automatic order fulfillment for a while, but I have not seen any other scripts to allow flex pricing on the open source scripts other than the one I have tried and have mentioned here. I would be sure you could get something from a print house or somebody else’s partner program, but that is not what we are talking about here.
To get things back on track, and to be clear here, I am lobbying for generic smugmug branding, or less smugmug branding, or more minimal smugmug branding in the payment process and order fulfillment stream. I am looking for smugmug to become the ultimate solution so I don’t have to use multiple sites to sell prints and stock. That’s the bottom line and I close with that.
Sorry for the rambling array of sloppy thoughts and text. This was a rewrite as boned my first attempt at posting by testing a link.:cry
***update****
An email I just received from Dean. 4-05-05 12:27pm
Don,
Sorry our server crashed and we lost all data and backups. It was on a 14
disk raid system that blew during the backup -- lost over $100k of hardware.
No, I haven't set Aricaur back up completely. I'll let you know when it's
back up. But I do realize that might be too long of a wait for you. Sorry.
The crash set my partner and I back at least a month. We're still "cleaning
up", and it crashed mid-Mar.
Thanks for your understanding.
--Dean Higginbotham
B.S. DBA Software Eng.
Dean.Higginbotham@OneWorldStore.com
www.OneWorldStore.com - ASP ECommerce Solution
www.SiteBeater.com - ASP Portal Software
www.phpJK.com - PHP Gallery Software
www.Aricaur.com - Image Branded Merchandise
www.WPSE.com - Fitness & Bodybuilding Portal
Original Message
From: Don Northup [mailto:digitalfuzz@tds.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 7:56 AM
To: Dean Higginbotham
Subject: aricaur problem
Dean, Is aricaur working? I sent some people to download the software and
your mod but the link to new registrations seems dead at the aricaur site.
Are you still on-line with this print fulfillment system. A quick reply
would be great.
Thanks
-don
www.illinoisphoto.com
_____________________________________________________________
Looks like crashes happen with the big guys too....Better have multiple backups with the ability to do order fullfillment, I'd say. That's why I signed on to smugmug anyway, backup storage and order fullfillment. I don't have much to cry about though with this crash because the images are on my servers, not at the printhouse or on a third parties servers. I now know of no functioning software to integrate with those open source galleries that can be set to something other than the default printhouse pricing until Dean has this fixed.
Now it looks like I am really pushing this branding thing here at smugmug...
That is one *ell of a lot more money than $100 eh? I call that very weird math!!
Excuse me, I pay smugmug $100 plus 15 percent. I paid pbase $150 dollars over the last 2 years to store images. I have purchased over 80 urls that are photo related in the past 14 months. I have bought a domain regstrar and web hosting company and am building out a couple dozen photo sites. I have paid for photo mods and integrations. I have paid for numerous great gallery scripts including a great didital download script. I have bought a half dozen high end photographers templates. I have purchased a few thousand dollars worth of camera gear in the past three years and not to mention I purchased and burned almost a thousand cd roms worth of photos as backup. I store images on my serveres, pbase, and many other sites. I have stuff on display at the Butler Museum of Art Beecher Center in Yougstown Ohio, have been published in America and the UK, I have sold dozens of stock images lately,I have my stuff in books and on websites and have shared 6,000,000 image views to the masses for free this last year alone. I also receive thousands of gallery comments and hundreds of thanks for sharing emails. Matter of fact I have even publish thousands of public domain works on my servers as a public service. I have many reasons for doing things the way I do, so I don't know what you are taking about. Also, I basically spend of my awake all of hours on photography and the web. I even run a crappy ecard site...for free.
Have a good day and I don't see much point in discussing any more of this with you.
Good day.
-don
Now you're adding order fullfillment to your requirement and you think that $100
a year ought to cover printing, mailing and other administrative costs associated
with handling 2,000 orders and storage for 25,000 quality hi rez images? Who
should pay for that service?
I'll bet you couldn't build a system and operate your own business capable
of managing 25,000 images for $100 a year. Care to take me up on that?
Ian
ROFLMAO. smugmug was written from scratch. It's not based on anything.
Personally, I don't even see the resemblence. If you do, I must be doing something terribly wrong. It's not exactly the prettiest or easiest to use software. We like to think that we're both.
(Or maybe they're playing catch-up? Some people have forwarded messages from their mailing list where they list smugmug things to add to Gallery. I haven't seen Gallery in years, so maybe it's gotten more similar.).
Don
Quote: Don Northup
I thought I clarified myself on this earlier in the thread, it is the cart footer and branding that really bothers me.
Quote:
__________________
Originally Posted by K.Van
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I view SM as my fulfillment house that takes and transmits orders not as a “view and share pictures with the family site” (I use my website and gallery for that),the “OnLine” fulfillment and delivery method (which includes SM) is an integral part of my business plan. Perhaps if SM were to view this from a commercial aspect rather than a “Picture Sharing” view they could empathize?
My reply: I could not have put any better. This is how I viewed smugmug's pro level service.
________________________
My Quote: This brings us to why someone would use smugmug and and open source solutions together. I for one prefer to put my colection of 25,000 quality images on smugmug because of the pricing scheme. It offers what seems to be great offsite storage limits (unlimited) and usuable print fulfillment system and an adequte bandwidth allocation for a nice price. I use another sharing site that gives supposed "unlimited bandwidth" for general photosharing. With 6 million views last year I would not have wanted to pay smugmug's bandwidth rates.
Putting another 25,000 images on my own servers does not make sense for my off-site backup purposes either. And actually, considering the amout of high rez images I intend to upload, smugmug makes sound economical sense as well.
_______________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by K.Van
ell let me be the first to offer $300.00 per year, I'll pay the 2-4% credit card fees and you drop the other 11%
My reply: I'll be the second. I would quite possibly go a bit further and offer a larger percentage to cover fees as well for a less smugmug branded professional account.
_______________________
The main reason I chose smugmug for backup is they have a useable order fullfillment process and good storage prices.
Now to your figures. I have 20 orders at 100 prints each and the profiles and crops are correct. Only 20 originals are used and ezprints delivers the files trouble free and smugmug makes 30,000 grand for almost nothing. I think a more generic branding solution could be afforded in the payment process and the back printing issue resolved for this kind of money. It is called a pro account and I think that is what it takes to be totally pro feeling. If you read the thread, you would know all of this stuff because it is mostly all repeat.
As far as how much it takes monthly for 25,000 images. Assuming say 3mb per image you'll need to pay whatever company however much it takes to by 7.5 gb of hd space. Depending on where that is, that can be pretty darn cheap!! Check for yourself, many hosts are using good pipes and strong servers give unlimited storage these days for almost nothing. If you can't find any with google, I'll give you a hand. I would not sell you that much storage that cheap, but people better than I will. That's just where the server business is now. My answer is for a very similar price you could manage that quantity of images.
-don
Administration
Installation/Configuration Wizard
Gallery comes with a handy web based configuration wizard. This wizard helps to make sure that your web server and operating system are set up correctly (screenshot). It also allows you to configure many of Gallery's options while determining as much as it can from your environment (screenshot). The wizard lastly creates and admin account for you to administer your Gallery with. Later on if you want to change settings, you can run the configuration wizard and make changes without having to take down your Gallery.[1] (screenshot)
Here are some of the features that you can customize in the configuration wizard:
- Image Magick or NetPBM - pick which image manipulation package you have on your server or want to use.
- Auto Rotate Images - Gallery can look at information in pictures from digital cameras and automatically rotate them as needed.
- Image Quality and Size Defaults - You can limit the quality and size of images so that when images are uploaded, Gallery will resize them to save space.
- Main Gallery Page Settings - The configuration wizard contains all of the settings for how the main Gallery page looks and acts including showing or hiding the album tree, search engine, or album owner, and what frames to show around albums.
- Optional Binaries: zip, jhead, jpegtran - If you have these programs on your webserver, you can enable them to make gallery work better and be more flexible.
- Languages - Choose which languages you want your Gallery to support and how the user is presented with the choice.
- Email Support - Set up email support to have your Gallery email users when their accounts are created or when they forget their password, email you copies, email people when the Gallery is updated, and more!
- Gallery-wide Slideshow - enable or disable a slideshow that includes all pictures in the gallery
- Commenting - turn off or on the public commenting system and configure it.
- Logging - enable logging with syslog or the Windows logger
- RSS publishing - publish your Gallery with RSS![1]
- Album Defaults - set defaults for the way that all new albums will originally look
Accounts/PermissionsYou start off with only one user, the Administrator (login name:admin). This account can do anything with Gallery. Typically you'll want to use the admin to create other users (which can also be administrators if you want). Users can be granted permission to create and maintain their own albums on a per-album basis (screenshot). Users can also self-register [0] (screenshot) and sign up for e-mail notification [0] (screenshot) when things in the Gallery change.
Albums
An album is a group of pictures and movies inside of a gallery. Albums can be nested inside of each other (screenshot) and can be customized on an individual basis. Albums can have specific permissions (screenshot) (ie, some users can modify it, some users can add to it, etc), and the album owner can grant permissions to different users. Albums can even be hidden to only allow logged in or specifc users access to even see that it exists.
An album's thumbnail defaults to a scaled version of the first image added but can be set to be all or part of any image in the album. Items in an album can be sorted based on date added, date captured, etc, and the whole album can be deleted, moved, or renamed. All captions for items in an album can be edited at once without having to click on each picture (screenshot). Comments can also be viewed in once place for easy review and moderation (screenshot). Additionally, if polling is enabled for an album, the results can be viewed by the album owner or optionally displayed at the top of the page.
Album can also be easily watermarked (watermarking every image in it) (screenshot) and customized by their owners in a variety of ways. You can change the title, colors, background, fonts, and borders. You can also specify a target thumbnail size and a target intermediate photo size (so that folks with lesser bandwidth can view scaled versions of big photos) (screenshot). The number of rows and columns in an album is customizable, as well as a variety of viewer options.
Photos
If you have the appropriate permissions, you can add photos to an album. A default method is set in the config wizard, but there are several ways to do this:
- Upload a ZIP file full of photos and movies
- Use a form to upload up to 10 photos at each time with and optional file containing descriptions. (screenshot)
- Specify a web page and let Gallery go slurp up all the photos and movies on that page. (screenshot)
- Copy all images to a directory on your webserver and let Gallery copy them directly into your album.
- Use the embedded applet (screenshot) and drag-and-drop pictures and movies to upload them.
- Use Gallery Remote or one of the Other methods available.
As you upload pictures, they will be automatically thumbnailed, added to your album, and have intermediate sized images created if needed. They can also be automatically watermarked if you have enabled this feature[1]. Once photos are upload there are several things you can do to manage them:- Edit the title, caption, keywords, and other custom fields that you define. (screenshot)
- Modify the thumbnail with java applet, selecting only part of the image to show. [2]
- Rotate the image in increments of 90 degrees.
- Move the photo to a different place in the same album or a different album.
- Hide the photo so that only the album owner or logged in users can see it.
- Delete the photo.
- Add a watermark of your choice to your photo. (screenshot)
Mirroring AlbumsGallery lets you mirror your albums on as many remote servers as you like. This lets you run your Gallery on a machine with limited bandwidth (like over a DSL line) but still serve up your images quickly from a high bandwidth source like an ISP. Gallery will not actually mirror the files for you. You're responsible for doing it yourself. I use a program called rsync. You can use whatever you want. If the remote album is up to date, Gallery will use it. If not, Gallery will use the local one. Or see: Synchronizing your albums with a mirror server
Connecting
Gallery has a remote protocol to allow software other than the web interface to interact with it.
- Gallery Remote - Gallery Remote is a java program that will run on any system that java will run on. Your users can use to upload photos to your Gallery via a drag-and-drop interface[0] (screenshots). On the standard file upload page there is a link to the Gallery Remote download page which will download the application from the SourceForge server directly to your user.
- Other methods are available to easily add pictures to your Gallery including ones that support Windows XP, Apple's iPhoto, Mobile Phones, perl, python, and more.
- RSS can be used to publish your Gallery and updates to it.
EmbeddingGallery can be embedded in several different content management systems, here are the current ones that we support:
- Nuke 5.0+
- NSN-nuke
- Post-nuke
- Geek Log
- phpBB2
- Mambo
For the nuke systems, just put your Gallery directory inside the nuke modules directory and you're all set, for the other systems, documentation is included in the "contrib" folder of the source code explaining installation.Customizing
Gallery is extremely customizable. There are lots of included customizations, many more that you can download, and endless possibilities! There are 4 main ways to customize Gallery:
- CSS - Modify Gallery's style sheets, use your existing site's style sheet, or write your own to control colors, borders, spacing [0]
- Themes - Gallery comes with lots of themes are there are plenty more to download. Check out ckdake's gallery page to start looking for more skins and other easy customizations. [0]
- html_wrap - Have an existing HTML template for your site but don't use a content management system? html_wrap is for you! You can include content above, below, to the left, and to the right of gallery to make it blend in with the rest of your site. (example 1, example 2, example 3)[0]
- changing code - Gallery is open source so you can easily change the source code to make it do whatever you want it to do.
The one thing you can't easily do right now is to change the layout from a grid format to something else. However, in v2.0 we plan to introduce a templating system that will let you write your own HTML to do customized themes and layouts (or use the ones that we and other users provide). You can find out more about MANY more customizations further down in the user guide underneath the Customization areaUsers viewing your album can easily navigate around using the navigation bars at the top and bottom of every album page. Each album can be given its own unique URL. Each photo within the album in turn has its own unique URL. You can use these URLs to get directly to a specific photo from outside the Gallery (useful when you want to email photo links to a friend). In addition to this, the album owner can allow the user to use the following features:
- Album Tree[0] - A tree of all albums and subalbums with clickable links to them can be displayed on the front page of your Gallery to provide quick and easy access to all of the albums. (screenshot)
[0]++++++++++++++++ denotes a feature that is "optional" and can be disabled by the Gallery administrator.[1]++ denotes a feature that is new to the most recent version of Gallery, 1.4.4
[2] denotes that a screenshot will be available soon
[3] denotes a feature that will be in the next release of Gallery, 1.4.5
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The above two posts is a copy and paste from this website http://gallery.menalto.com/index.php and are copyright Bharat Mediratta © 2000-2005.
gallery site. All copyrights remain with him. This is placed here as other galleries seem to have become part of this discussion as fair use text and links. I am not a member or contributor of gallery, nor do I use it. I have tried it and I like it but I do not use it. I didn't think smugmug was based on anything, as I don't know if it could be anyway for legal reasons, and many sites are homegrown, as is slug's pbase.
Regards
-don
-w
Cheerleading: http://www.CheerPhoto.com
Blog: http://cambler.livejournal.com
Have a wonderful day.
Ian