New Design - Customization thread

SamirD · June 1, 2011

Thank you for the heads-up. Because this is going to mean BIG work for those of us that have customized our sites, what is the rollout timeline? Inside of a year? Inside of 6mos? I need to budget for paying for customization as I'm not going to have time to mess with it when you guys flip the switch.

jfriend · June 1, 2011

Hitch in the roll-out plan
Here's a little hitch in the roll-out plan. If you give this new style to non-customized accounts first (as mentioned by onethumb), then none of the helpers here on dgrin (who have all customized their site) will be able to help anyone who's new and shows up at dgrin for customization help because our own accounts won't have the new style. I'd suggest you revisit the plan that gives your dgrin helpers the new style last. That doesn't make sense to me.

One other big glitch is that there are tens of thousands of posts on dgrin and tutorials with customization advice (primarily CSS, but also JS) that will now be out-of-date and completely wrong. This is already a bit of a problem now because the site has been changed in small ways over the years, but now it's going to be a large problem. Anyone searching for help on how to customize is going to be highly likely to find old and wrong advice. This has always been one of the general problems with using search to find customization advice on dgrin, but now dgrin search is going to find nearly 100% wrong info.

FWIW, I agree with Allen that truncating HTML in the gallery description is going to break a lot of pages and you haven't offered any other way to achieve what people were doing with that. It would be very bad to lose the ability to put arbitrary HTML in a gallery page as that is a very useful tool.

jfriend · June 1, 2011

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I hope that you have added the ability for me to define a tag with multiple CSS properties that I can then assign to a set of galleries. That would make customizations much easier to maintain - especially when the same customization is applied to multiple galleries.

Yes! This has been my #1 gallery customization request for the last 5 years. I've written numerous long posts explaining how much this would simplify gallery customizations if we could add class names to galleries and have a single copy of generic and more meaningful CSS that scopes to a meaningful classname instead of copying the same CSS over and over and putting a cryptic gallery number in every CSS rule. Imagine how easy it would be for someone to pick up a customization. Copy this into your CSS. Add this classname to the desired galleries in gallery settings. This would be hugely simplifying for gallery customization. I've written about this desire for years, but never heard one ounce of positive feedback so I honestly don't know if the right folks at Smugmug understand how simple and powerful this would be!

Allen · June 1, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

...

I looked at the CSS and it looks like every element on the page has a
different name. So everyone starts from scratch customizing.

denisegoldberg · June 1, 2011

Andy wrote: »

We're going to make the cat and homepage thumbs bigger.

How big? 150x150 is not big enough. I can live with something slightly smaller than my current 250x250 but I know I won't be happy going to 150x150.

--- Denise

jfriend · June 1, 2011

Allen wrote: »

I looked at the CSS and it looks like every element on the page has a
different name. So everyone starts from scratch customizing.

Yep, NO existing gallery customization will work unless SM plans some sort of auto-conversion. I like that they are name scoping all the CSS identifiers with "sm-", but I'm surprised that ALL customization will break.

jfriend · June 1, 2011

Andy wrote: »

We're going to make the cat and homepage thumbs bigger.

Andy, thinking that making thumbs bigger obviates the need for all custom HTML is very naive (if that's what you were implying). If you're strategically getting rid of our ability to use any custom HTML we want and make our own HTML pages, then please let's have that discussion because you'll be killing a lot of site creativity folks have now.

If you have other plans to enable custom HTML pages that folks could use instead, then please share enough of those plans so folks know how to take the new restrictions on gallery descriptions and captions and whether that's OK or whether they should help you guys understand why those restrictions are going to ruin sites and probably lose customers and certainly lose a lot of loyalty. Breaking a lot of customizations is one thing (and requiring a lot of work to redo them), but providing no way to accomplish in the new world what folks have built in the old world is a deal breaker for many. Please clarify.

Just to give you one example of a use of both script and HTML in a gallery description, there are people who have implemented their own custom slideshow in the gallery description and hidden the rest of the gallery chrome (in most cases because your gallery slideshow uses flash and is not customizable in any way). Are you allowing people to still do things like that?

Other people put important purchase information there that's more than one line and may include buttons or links.

Other people make their own custom HTML pages using gallery description (contact, services, about, etc...).

Andy · June 1, 2011

MakeMeShutter wrote: »

What What What????

I have spent over a year customizing my site and now all is about to change?????????

It was painful the first time, I don't want to have to start over.

I have one gallery that is HTML driven:
http://www.shawnkrausphoto.com/PicturesForYourWalls/The-Art-Gallery/The-Silhouette-Exhibit/16826949_WDSktc

Will this gallery no longer function????????

YES, I AM VERY SCARED!!!!!!!!!

Tell me everything will work on my site exactly as it does now and I will be happy, if not I am at a complete loss for words and feel betrayed by SmugMug!

Hi folks, please do not panic. Thanks and stay tuned for more.

Onethumb wrote:

5. Migration window. We'll announce a specific migration window (many months) during which everyone with customization will be given the information needed to move their existing customizations over, test them, and then switch their accounts. We'll provide all kinds of resources and assistance with this.

Cygnus Studios · June 1, 2011

denisegoldberg wrote: »

What's the status of the style Journal (Old)?

I'm still using it for one gallery, and it's the only style that meets my needs for that gallery. A change to the style would be OK, but I need the side-by-side photo and caption.

--- Denise

I use Journal Old a lot and when the new journal was released it scared me quite a bit as the handwriting was now on the wall. I am all for new and slick designs, but one of the things that I love most about smugmug is having full control over how our website looks and feels.

Seems like those of us who have a ton of CSS and html are kind of being thrown under the bus.

I also have faith that smugmug has our backs and so far you have never let us down. Please don't make this hard on us.

A timeline on these new features would be very helpful. If I have to begin recoding the website it would be nice to know it before it gets revamped and I have to scramble to get pages that work the way we intend it.

BKGPhoto · June 1, 2011

Very very scared
I understand the need to change in order to keep up with industry standards, but I am very scared about how much work I will need to do to keep my customizations. I have spent uncountable hours customizing my site (which I could not have done without the help of everyone here) and I am not looking forward to spending that much more time redoing everything or even worse losing customizations that I have now. I think their are a ton of people with customized pages that are going to be losing much sleep over this. I know you say that help will be provided during the changeover, but nonetheless I'm still scared s***less.

onethumb · June 3, 2011

New Design - Customization thread
Our Sneak Peek experiment isn't quite ready for customization discussion, so we moved all of that over here. When we're ready for that stage of the rollout, we'll start talking about it right here.

BigRed · June 3, 2011

onethumb wrote: »

Q. What about my customizations?
A. ... There will be a painful migration process, which we'll be helping with as much as we can (details still to come)...

I applaud the goals of this overhaul, the soliciting of customer feedback during the design phase, and the expressed intent to "help" with the conversion of customizations. This is stating the obvious, but having worked in migration planning, I know that unless you find a creative way to automate the customization (CSS, JS, HTML) data conversion, you will have very unhappy customers (or ex-customers) and very broken sites. Most of the "pain" needs to be on SM's end. No clue how that might work in the SM environment, but I bet brainstorming with your other customization advisors could come up with some mapping strategies. (I'm pleased that jfriend has been invited to participate -- have great confidence in his knowledge, insight, and inventiveness.)

Andy · June 3, 2011

BigRed wrote: »

Most of the "pain" needs to be on SM's end.

jfriend · June 5, 2011

I realized today that one of Smugmug's mistakes was telling us that they were removing some customization features before they had explained/introduced the replacement functionality.

Simple solution. Before taking anything away from the customization of gallery descriptions, introduce your new HTML page functionality. Then, everyone can plainly see what the replacement functionality looks like, how it works and what it's capabilities or limitations are. Then, and only then, can you get legitimate feedback on what it means to reduce the customizing capabilities in gallery descriptions. Right now, you have all the info, we have none so, of course, we're fearing a loss of functionality.

Introduce the new capability first before you remove the old capability. Then, assess how well the new thing is working for all of us before you throw any switches on the old thing (I'm sure we'll have lots of feedback for you).

The grand mistake was not introducing the new functionality before telling us you were going to take something away.

denisegoldberg · June 5, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

I realized today that one of Smugmug's mistakes was telling us that they were removing some customization features before they had explained/introduced the replacement functionality.

Agreed!

Seeing the new would definitely remove the unknown and hopefully some of the fear of not being able to replace what we currently have.

--- Denise

Allen · June 5, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

... Before taking anything away from the customization of gallery descriptions, introduce your new HTML page functionality...

This would only apply for pure html text type pages but not for descriptions in
photo galleries. They have to stay with every page in the gallery.

jfriend · June 5, 2011

Allen wrote: »

This would only apply for pure html text type pages but not for descriptions in
photo galleries. They have to stay with every page in the gallery.

Yep.

caroline · June 5, 2011

Introduce the new capability first before you remove the old capability. Then, assess how well the new thing is working for all of us before you throw any switches on the old thing (I'm sure we'll have lots of feedback for you).

Great commonsense from John :-)

jfriend · June 6, 2011

FYI, I posted a summary of all my comments on the new gallery style over here. Specific to this thread, if people can post links to examples of how folks are uniquely using HTML in either the gallery description or caption, we can collect a list of representative examples here.

So far, here are some I have found or others have posted about:

Event-specific-search:
http://www.mikejulianaphotography.com/SkiRacing/2011-Season/2011-04-09-Western-Region-FIS/16554233_7hWAn#1246960931_6Qr3e
http://www.mikejulianaphotography.com/SkiRacing/2011-Season/May-Day-Races-Sat-and-Sun/16884898_XVdC3k#1275353339_h7ZdkPS

Event data and event-search:
http://www.sternpics.com/Events/Mercedes-Benz-Corporate-Run/Warm-Up-MIA/16756799_SvQdgn#1270837457_SDBVXJh

Extended navigation for relevant parts of the site:
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/Birding-2011-June/2010-06-05-Springfield/17404804_TfQsjB#1323650146_sCb4zvH
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/Least-Tern-Project/2010-Interior-Least-Tern/11828300_TvSMZ#838058274_8tAfC

Site Index:
http://www.photosbyat.com/gallery/6429787_dmmWa

Photo Summary and Keyword Index:
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/Missouri-Bird-Photos-H-Z/3760688_ty5Tu#430458546_inSde

Please add more examples as responses to this post.

BigRed · June 6, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

FYI, I posted a summary of all my comments on the new gallery style over here. Specific to this thread, if people can post links to examples of how folks are uniquely using HTML in either the gallery description or caption, we can collect a list of representative examples here.

So far, here are some I have found or others have posted about:

Event-specific-search:
http://www.mikejulianaphotography.com/SkiRacing/2011-Season/2011-04-09-Western-Region-FIS/16554233_7hWAn#1246960931_6Qr3e
http://www.mikejulianaphotography.com/SkiRacing/2011-Season/May-Day-Races-Sat-and-Sun/16884898_XVdC3k#1275353339_h7ZdkPS

Extended navigation for relevant parts of the site:
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/Birding-2011-June/2010-06-05-Springfield/17404804_TfQsjB#1323650146_sCb4zvH
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/Least-Tern-Project/2010-Interior-Least-Tern/11828300_TvSMZ#838058274_8tAfC

Site Index:
http://www.photosbyat.com/gallery/6429787_dmmWa

Photo Summary and Keyword Index:
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/Missouri-Bird-Photos-H-Z/3760688_ty5Tu#430458546_inSde

Please add more examples as responses to this post.

Some simpler examples of HTML in gallery descriptions and image captions:

To link to related external sites:
http://www.janicebrowne.com/Mid-Atlantic/More/More/10321971_B9VDH

To style text and to insert an email link:
http://www.janicebrowne.com/ANS/Events/Auction-2010/14068136_tLgJm

To use a Journal-style gallery as a blog: Under a representative small image for each entry, I use HTML to format/style text, to link to the full gallery of related photos, and to insert a dividing line between entries.
http://www.janicebrowne.com/TripJournal/Phlog/15567487_eJPJn

denisegoldberg · June 6, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

Specific to this thread, if people can post links to examples of how folks are uniquely using HTML in either the gallery description or caption, we can collect a list of representative examples here.

I am using HTML + CSS to build replacements for smug's category and subcategory windows. This was done to overcome three problems with basic smug functionality - the miniscule size of the thumbnails, the inability to create more than 3 levels (cat / subcat / gallery), and the inability to mix links to subcatgories and galleries (as opposed to displaying all subcategories first followed by all galleries.

my category replacement: http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Focus/Galleries/4859541_NYqCo

a mixture of galleries and my subcat replacement:
http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Focus/Travel-galleries/4859072_Z5YkN
>>> the first entry on this screen is the equivalent of a subcat
>>> second entry is a gallery
>>> third entry is the equivalent of a subcat
>>> entry titled Coastal New England wanders contains a combination of a subcat equivalent and galleries

My kaleidoscope page at http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Medley/Kaleidoscope/2659217_WLMog#1146145545_kcCkw is an html-only page containing both text and photos.

--- Denise

Hikin' Mike · June 6, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

Specific to this thread, if people can post links to examples of how folks are uniquely using HTML in either the gallery description or caption, we can collect a list of representative examples here.

Not gallery specifically, but I use some custom HTML on my home page: http://mike.imagesinthebackcountry.com

I use a <h1> tag in the description on each photo to add a title, such as this (Tunnel View): http://mike.imagesinthebackcountry.com/Landscapes/yosemite-landscape-pictures/15036862_brFqf#1123156227_8ib9V. Would love to see a separate IPTC 'Title', just like the 'Description' field is now. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif" border="0" alt="" >

BradfordBenn · June 6, 2011

Is there a way that we can experiment with the new look without mucking up our existing site? I understand that I can create a trial account but then I have to bring over everything and the customization so I figured I would just ask if there was an easier way?

jfriend · June 6, 2011

BradfordBenn wrote: »

Is there a way that we can experiment with the new look without mucking up our existing site? I understand that I can create a trial account but then I have to bring over everything and the customization so I figured I would just ask if there was an easier way?

They've said that there will be a way to experiment with customizing it before switching to it, but that isn't ready yet.

jfriend · June 10, 2011

I went over to Smugmug yesterday and met with a bunch of folks yesterday to talk about customization and how it will be affected by some upcoming changes. I'm under an NDA so I can't speak about specifics that they haven't announced yet, but here what I can say:

There's a bunch of cool new stuff coming and it will be useful to a lot of people who customize their sites. A lot of things that we've been using customizing hacks for will be more directly supported in a much nicer way and a bunch of new capabilities will be added. The act of customizing your site gets a lot easier for many things too.
Full CSS and Javascript customizing will still be supported, though enhanced in some very useful ways.
As onethumb from Smugmug has said, in order to use the new capabilities, you will have to convert/modify some of your existing customizations to fit in the new world. There will be a long period of time over which you can work on these modifications and decide yourself when your site is ready to move to the new design (e.g. you won't just wake up one morning and find your site in need of repair).
They want to make this site conversion as straightforward as possible, but are still working out what the best tools they can offer are. You will be able to work on converting your site without your public site changing while you're doing it.
As part of improving SEO, some fields that we could previously put raw HTML into will be restricted to their originally intended text usage so that text can be reliably used in SEO (gallery descriptions, in particular) rather than pieces of customization code showing up on Google and being the primary thing your gallery gets indexed by.
But, Smugmug fully understands how people have done all sorts of creative things with HTML in gallery descriptions (I'm not sure they fully understood that two weeks ago, but they do now) and they want to continue to support what people have been doing with that. It sounds like their intentions are in line with our needs and what people have been doing so far with custom HTML, but I haven't seen the exact solution yet to know more than that.
A lot of the visual and functional feedback they've received on the new gallery style so far is being acted upon and it will be improved significantly for the next preview version they show. That was the point of putting it out there for people to see and comment on so we should give them credit for doing it that way, even though it created some of this other controversy about customizing. They are trying to do the right thing (get feedback from customers on important big design changes during the development process), even if the communication about details isn't always what we want.
For competitive reasons (photo sharing is a very competitive business these days and getting even more competitive with new startups popping up regularly), Smugmug doesn't want to discuss the whole plan in public because they don't want to reveal some of the new things they have coming in advance of when they become available. Anyone who has been involved in strategic planning in a competitive business will understand why you don't want to show your competition your next innovations any sooner than required because to do so just gives them more time to respond to your next advancements. In this particular case, that causes some heartache for everyone because we're asking questions related to the new design and Smugmug thinks they have a good answer for those questions, but to really answer them would require them to reveal aspects of what's coming that they don't yet want to reveal to the competition. There isn't a way to solve that conundrum in the general public because there's no way to publicly discuss things with customers, but not let competitors know about it. The only middle ground is to discuss with some customers under NDA (which is what they did with me).

If you have other unanswered concerns about customizations in the new design, feel free to ask and I'll see what info I can offer.

caroline · June 10, 2011

Thanks John for giving so generously of your time.

Caroline

jfriend wrote: »

I went over to Smugmug yesterday and met with a bunch of folks yesterday to talk about customization and how it will be affected by some upcoming changes. I'm under an NDA so I can't speak about specifics that they haven't announced yet, but here what I can say:
There's a bunch of cool new stuff coming and it will be useful to a lot of people who customize their sites. A lot of things that we've been using customizing hacks for will be more directly supported in a much nicer way and a bunch of new capabilities will be added. The act of customizing your site gets a lot easier for many things too.

Full CSS and Javascript customizing will still be supported, though enhanced in some very useful ways.

As onethumb from Smugmug has said, in order to use the new capabilities, you will have to convert/modify some of your existing customizations to fit in the new world. There will be a long period of time over which you can work on these modifications and decide yourself when your site is ready to move to the new design (e.g. you won't just wake up one morning and find your site in need of repair).

They want to make this site conversion as straightforward as possible, but are still working out what the best tools they can offer are. You will be able to work on converting your site without your public site changing while you're doing it.

As part of improving SEO, some fields that we could previously put raw HTML into will be restricted to their originally intended text usage so that text can be reliably used in SEO (gallery descriptions, in particular) rather than pieces of customization code showing up on Google and being the primary thing your gallery gets indexed by.

But, Smugmug fully understands how people have done all sorts of creative things with HTML in gallery descriptions (I'm not sure they fully understood that two weeks ago, but they do now) and they want to continue to support what people have been doing with that. It sounds like their intentions are in line with our needs and what people have been doing so far with custom HTML, but I haven't seen the exact solution yet to know more than that.

A lot of the visual and functional feedback they've received on the new gallery style so far is being acted upon and it will be improved significantly for the next preview version they show. That was the point of putting it out there for people to see and comment on so we should give them credit for doing it that way, even though it created some of this other controversy about customizing. They are trying to do the right thing (get feedback from customers on important big design changes during the development process), even if the communication about details isn't always what we want.

For competitive reasons (photo sharing is a very competitive business these days and getting even more competitive with new startups popping up regularly), Smugmug doesn't want to discuss the whole plan in public because they don't want to reveal some of the new things they have coming in advance of when they become available. Anyone who has been involved in strategic planning in a competitive business will understand why you don't want to show your competition your next innovations any sooner than required because to do so just gives them more time to respond to your next advancements. In this particular case, that causes some heartache for everyone because we're asking questions related to the new design and Smugmug thinks they have a good answer for those questions, but to really answer them would require them to reveal aspects of what's coming that they don't yet want to reveal to the competition. There isn't a way to solve that conundrum in the general public because there's no way to publicly discuss things with customers, but not let competitors know about it. The only middle ground is to discuss with some customers under NDA (which is what they did with me).

If you have other unanswered concerns about customizations in the new design, feel free to ask and I'll see what info I can offer.

BigRed · June 10, 2011

caroline wrote: »

Thanks John for giving so generously of your time.

Caroline

We customizers are so fortunate to have John advocating for us, in both this strategy as well as tactically every day. What a great bridge-builder!

SamirD · June 10, 2011

So John, how do you feel now about SM's approach to the transition, their plans for the new design, and the workload it will present for those of us with highly customized sites?

jfriend · June 10, 2011

SamirD wrote: »

So John, how do you feel now about SM's approach to the transition, their plans for the new design, and the workload it will present for those of us with highly customized sites?

I think the new design is a good place to be going to.

I don't yet have a good handle on how the transition will work other than the fact that we'll have a sandbox to work in to get it the way we want without affecting the public site. What I'm expecting is that common types of customizations will be fairly cookie cutter for how to modify them whereas completely unique customizations will require more work (but unsure how much). Smugmug has said they are assembling resources to help people in this transition, but they didn't share specifics for how that would work (automated tools, people to help, tutorials, etc...).

SamirD · June 10, 2011

Thank you very much for all your hard work and the keen insight.

Andy · June 10, 2011

BigRed wrote: »

We customizers are so fortunate to have John advocating for us, in both this strategy as well as tactically every day. What a great bridge-builder!

New Design - Customization thread

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