Galleries > Categories?

rgluga · June 6, 2010

Flickr has frustrated me enough, so decided to give SmugMug a go.

I like the idea of password protected galleries and smart galleries. It means I can create a Private gallery in which I put all my photos, then a Family gallery that picks up keywords from my Private gallery for pics I want to share with my family, and maybe a Friends gallery as well that picks up a different keyword. The Family and Friends galleries are both unlisted and password protected, great!

But how do I then organize all these photos within the galleries? I can use keywords, but how do you sort a gallery by keyword? Or show a keyword cloud/list for the gallery?

What I'd really like is for Categories to be below Galleries. So I create my Private, Family, Friends galleries, and I then choose which category photos fall into. So a Family member can go to my password protected smart Family gallery, and see a list of all categories that contain photos within that gallery, e.g. '23rd Birthday Party', 'Trip to Europe', etc.

SmugMug has this the other way around. You create top-level categories, and then galleries. But this doesn't work. I can't create a Family category as there are no permission settings at category level. So I'd have to create say a '23rd Birthday Party' category, and then a Private gallery that includes all photos from this event, and a smart Family gallery, and a smart Friends gallery. I'd have to do this for every category I create (i.e. every event), and assign passwords to each family/friends gallery, and send out separate links every time...

I don't understand this Category > Gallery way of organizing things. Am I not thinking about it the right way?

There's also the Sharegroups to which I can bundle different galleries, but then that means I need to have 3 sets of Galleries for each event, e.g. "23rd Birthday Party - All", "23rd Birthday Party - Family", "23rd Birthday Party - Friends". The first would contain all the pictures (i.e. the private gallery), the second two would be smart galleries picking up on tags. I can then create a Family share group and a Friends share group, and add all the corresponding galleries...but this isn't workable either.

What am I missing?

denisegoldberg · June 7, 2010

I'm really not sure what you are asking with your post, other than that you seem to be fighting the structure that is available to you. As much as you say you want to put categories inside of galleries, that's not how smug works.

Categories contain galleries and optionally subcategories.
Subcategories contain galleries.
Galleries contain photos.
http://www.smugmug.com/help/upload-photo

You can keyword photos, and you can show all photos that are tagged with a keyword.

You can collect photos from a gallery into a different gallery (or galleries).

As you've seen you can password-protect galleries and you can use share groups.

You're right that you can't assign passwords other than at the gallery level. If you assign the same password to all galleries that fit into a certain classification, your viewers will only need to enter that password once. Switching from a gallery with a password to another gallery with the same password does not require reentry of password.

--- Denise

rgluga · June 8, 2010

What about if you want different guests to see different photos within your gallery? The only way to do this it seems is to create two or more different galleries.

Anyways, never mind. I don't think SmugMug is for me.

PBolchover · June 8, 2010

There's a relatively new feature (called "Smart Galleries" that I think that would help you).

However, you need to swap your terminology for "Galleries" and "Categories" - the convention you are using is the opposite of the smugmug one.

To start with, you create categories for "Friends", "Public", "Family" etc. You also create a "Private" category to contain all of your photos (for your personal use).

When you shoot an event, you do the following:
1) Upload all of the photos to a hidden gallery in your "Private" category.
2A) Create an "smart gallery" for your family in the "Family" category. Make this gallery password protected.
2B) "Collect" the photos that you want to share with your family to the "Family" smart gallery
3) Repeat 2A and B for the "Friends" and "Public" photos

Ivorf · October 25, 2010

Hi

Similar question / suggestion: I have a "family" category and would like to share all the content of that category and its sub categories with family members. At present, I have a family share group and simply add any new galleries to this. It would be great if there were a way of simply sharing the entire family category with family members while keeping it private. This would do away with the need to update the family share group each time I add a new gallery.
Perhaps this is already possible and I have just missed the way to do it (entirely possible!) - if it is not already possible, however, this would a great feature to implement on SmugMug. I'd be glad to have other users' views on this.

Andy · October 25, 2010

Ivorf wrote: »

Hi

Similar question / suggestion: I have a "family" category and would like to share all the content of that category and its sub categories with family members. At present, I have a family share group and simply add any new galleries to this. It would be great if there were a way of simply sharing the entire family category with family members while keeping it private. This would do away with the need to update the family share group each time I add a new gallery.
Perhaps this is already possible and I have just missed the way to do it (entirely possible!) - if it is not already possible, however, this would a great feature to implement on SmugMug. I'd be glad to have other users' views on this.

Easy- make all galleries in the /Family category unlisted. Use the same password for all of those galleries. Voila, done.

Allen · October 25, 2010

Ivorf wrote: »

Hi

Similar question / suggestion: I have a "family" category and would like to share all the content of that category and its sub categories with family members. At present, I have a family share group and simply add any new galleries to this. It would be great if there were a way of simply sharing the entire family category with family members while keeping it private. This would do away with the need to update the family share group each time I add a new gallery.
Perhaps this is already possible and I have just missed the way to do it (entirely possible!) - if it is not already possible, however, this would a great feature to implement on SmugMug. I'd be glad to have other users' views on this.

Standard account
Give all the galleries the same password, do not make them unlisted, you
would need to add every gallery to a sharegroup or provide a direct link to
each gallery. You would lose any browsing capabilities, cat/sub-cat. The
Family category will be exposed in the category box but none of the
galleries will be accessible without the password.

This will work with power and pro account only.
Give all the galleries the same password, do not make them unlisted, you
would need to add everyone to a sharegroup or provide a direct link to
each and lose any browsing capabilities.

Hide the Family category thumb from the category/gallery box and public
by adding this to your bottom javascript. Provide your family with a direct
link to the Family category.
http://nichname.smugmug.com/Family

      // Hide Categories 
function delCategory() {
  re = /\/(Family)$/i;

  var oList = YD.getElementsByClassName('miniBox', 'div', this);

  for (i = 0; i < oList.length; i++) {
    if (re.test(oList[i].getElementsByTagName('a')[0].href))
      oList[i].parentNode.removeChild(oList[i]);
  }
}
YE.onContentReady('categoriesBox', delCategory);
     // End Hide Categories

Using this method will provide full category/sub-category/gallery browsing.

Ivorf · October 27, 2010

Thanks to all for the suggestions!

Galleries > Categories?

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