Unveiling the new SmugMug

Baldy · July 23, 2013

Hey Everyone,

You should receive an email invite for a live event we're holding on Tuesday, July 30th at 10:30 am Pacific. In case the email didn't make it to you, here's a screen capture:

2013-07-23%20at%2011.51%20AM.png

Our adrenaline is pegged! We flew in heroes from as far away as Scotland and Slovenia to live here eating Reese's Peanut Butter cups until the wee hours like we're doing. If you can't make the demo, no worries, we're recording it. It's just 30 minutes and of course we'll have blog posts and all the rest. We're doing our best to make it high-res and info-packed.

I know it's been hard on you and us to be so guarded about timing and what it's about. We are so grateful for your support and can't wait to show you what all the late nights have been about.

All the best,
Baldy

denisegoldberg · July 23, 2013

awesome!

--- Denise

chrismoore · July 23, 2013

Any teaser previews to show us?

bike21 · July 23, 2013

Yay! Soooo beyond ready to see this!

JamesGPhoto · July 23, 2013

I have high expectations......dont let us down

mbellot · July 23, 2013

JamesGPhoto wrote: »

I have high expectations......dont let us down

This.

Almost a full year from the price increase, it better be something truly spectacular... and without any glaring bugs.

EDIT: And hopefully any new social media garbage is disabled by default.

Cindy · July 23, 2013

I am way beyond excited!!! Thank You Smugmug!!!
I'll be waiting trying now even harder not to anxiously tear off my nails in super anticipation!!! Whoop-Whoop!!!

TalkieT · July 23, 2013

Customisations
Will those of us with heavy customisations need to block out a week to fix things? Or is there a smooth transition planned?

Cheers - N

Sventekoz · July 23, 2013

So, will this be the actual launch or a preview of what's going to be launched? Just to be clear, that's an honest question - I'm not being sarcastic. I was a bit concerned to hear about a live demo, which implies that there's going to be a delay between the launch and the actual release.

PilotBrad · July 23, 2013

I am taking credit for this... After wanting and waiting, I grew impatient and just a week ago spent $100 on a hosting account and wordpress theme. Had I not, we'd surely still be waiting for an annoucement. Sigh.

I am looking forward to the launch!

bwendellj · July 23, 2013

Just launch the damn upgrade and spare us the "excitement" and drama. Figures the launch time conflicts with those of us who have day jobs to attend, but then again, I honestly not interested in who you flew in or how hard everyone has worked. That's your job. Why I paid a fee. Lets go on with it and be done.

shniks · July 23, 2013

TalkieT wrote: »

Will those of us with heavy customisations need to block out a week to fix things? Or is there a smooth transition planned?

Cheers - N

I have to agree with you. I am really worried that this transition will ruin my website. I spent so much time customizing the look and feel and get compliments all the time on it. I hope they have an option for those of us with heavy customizations to continue using that. I can't imagine starting all over again and rebuilding my site.

Cheers,

Garga · July 23, 2013

Awesome!!

3.30am for me :-(
Will you be uploading the vid shortly afterwards?

beardedgit · July 23, 2013

I'm a tad confused now. The email blurb says "Thank you for entrusting us through the years with your priceless photos", yet this post seems to imply that we're entrusting Amazon with our priceless photos.

As for the new SM, well let's not forget that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

Initially my pics were with Zooomr when it imploded due to Kris Tate's MkIII upgrade failure. Then my pics went to Zoto but that crashed and burned when Kord Campbell tried to make it open-source. All of my pics then went to SM. I tried Photobucket at the same time for "quick 'n dirty" storage for blogging images but their upgrade around the start of the year went bad with massive loss of user-options and a lack of customer-support so I pulled my pics and left. Now SM is my sole photo-host and the prospect of this new release has kick-started the déjà vu.

4 years ago I had about 1200 blogged pics, the move to SM meant finding and editing about 2400 html links, a job that took over 3 months. Of course, all images put up on various forums couldn't have their links updated so they just died on the vine leaving empty place-holders here, there and everywhere.

Now I have 7 years of blogged pics which means an estimated 8000 html links to find and edit if the new SM goes wrong and I have to move again. That, or I just bin the blog, save me nearly a year of mind-numbing editing, and go get me a life.

Me? Nervous? You bet!

jpl_1020 · July 23, 2013

I hope to see improved or better gallery styles and slideshow.

A blog as a new feature would also be nice....

Garga · July 23, 2013

beardedgit wrote: »

I'm a tad confused now. The email blurb says "Thank you for entrusting us through the years with your priceless photos", yet this post seems to imply that we're entrusting Amazon with our priceless photos.

They wouldn't store Petabytes of pics in some little office in SF, so they use Amazon S3. Also, doubt they'd say "Thank you for entrusting Amazon through the years.....".

Take a chill pill beardedgit!

Your links will be fine I'm sure.

dmaccca · July 23, 2013

?
So is this an actual launch of new features or just an announcement that new stuff is coming? Why no answers on this? You have paying customers whose businesses and livelihoods could be affected by this. Why all the big Apple like drama. Please just let your paying customers know what you have planned so that they can adjust accordingly if needed. Customers pay you, you stay in existence. Please keep them informed. At least answer the question on whether you are launching new stuff on this date or just announcing what changes are coming. Thanks.

ian408 · July 24, 2013

Looking forward to the excitment!

beardedgit · July 24, 2013

Garga wrote: »

They wouldn't store Petabytes of pics in some little office...

Zooomr did. The big fail happened when KT shipped the servers (actual servers, not just data) to Asia, millions of pics were lost.

Garga wrote: »

Take a chill pill beardedgit!

I take one every time the SM elite and heroes tell us that they can't tell us something. Just lately I've been ODing quite often.

Garga wrote: »

Your links will be fine I'm sure.

I admire your confidence, Garga, but would you put your money where your mouth is? Pay my next year's subscription if the links do unravel, maybe?

mbellot · July 24, 2013

Sventekoz wrote: »

So, will this be the actual launch or a preview of what's going to be launched? Just to be clear, that's an honest question - I'm not being sarcastic. I was a bit concerned to hear about a live demo, which implies that there's going to be a delay between the launch and the actual release.

I haven't seen this answered yet, which (sadly) leads me to believe it is indeed just a "live demo", not an actual release.

I also haven't seen an answer to the question about impact on those of us with heavy customizations.

If this is going to mess with customization then I want the ability to leave it turned OFF until I have time to figure out the real impact to my site.

SM, we can't hear you...

juanheredia · July 24, 2013

I'm looking forward for the changes. I trust the heroes and believe it will be better in many ways. Thank you smugmug.

Sent from my Galaxy S3 with Tapatalk 4

chrismoore · July 24, 2013

Interestingly, I received the email announcement while I was busy customizing a site I started with another company I intended to switch to, as there appeared to be no end in sight for the outdated clunky SM interface. I really wish they would just give us the ability to play around with the new styles, etc. Giving zero information prior to this dramatic unveiling is setting this whole thing up for disappointment IMO. I'm really hoping for some html 5 magic and really slick gallery viewing with whatever they are coming up with; If not, or if this is an announcement of what 'will be available in the future,' my new site will be ready in a couple of months and I'm out.

caroline · July 24, 2013

What a miserable lot you all are, moaning all the way:) We all need to be prepared for bugs, problems with our customization, not getting the features we have personally requested etc. The upgrade may be rolled out in stages so not everyone goes live at the same time. Give the guys a break please and stop whining about things that you don't even know will happen.

Baldy, I'm looking forward to this whatever the glitches might be and thanks to everyone for their perseverance and hard work.

Caroline

dmaccca · July 24, 2013

caroline wrote: »

What a miserable lot you all are, moaning all the way:) We all need to be prepared for bugs, problems with our customization, not getting the features we have personally requested etc. The upgrade may be rolled out in stages so not everyone goes live at the same time. Give the guys a break please and stop whining about things that you don't even know will happen.

Baldy, I'm looking forward to this whatever the glitches might be and thanks to everyone for their perseverance and hard work.

Caroline

Miserable lot for just simply wanting some basic information that could have an impact on our businesses? We understand they are doing something new. That is fine. The simple question they refuse to answer is whether or not changes that could have an effect on our customizations will go into effect on July 30 or only an announcement of any possible changes will take place on July 30. We just want to be prepared in case any work needs to be done on our end that may have an impact on our sites and our customers. Just a simple question.

caroline · July 24, 2013

dmaccca wrote: »

Miserable lot for just simply wanting some basic information that could have an impact on our businesses? We understand they are doing something new. That is fine. The simple question they refuse to answer is whether or not changes that could have an effect on our customizations will go into effect on July 30 or only an announcement of any possible changes will take place on July 30. We just want to be prepared in case any work needs to be done on our end that may have an impact on our sites and our customers. Just a simple question.

It's never good business sense to put all your eggs in one basket, however big or great you think it is. Get real you will have to do some work, you've got a week to tidy your desk:)

Rita Baumann · July 24, 2013

The blatant Apple-style launch ripoff is more than a little annoying (let's hope the lemmings get excited and drink the kool-aid!) but my true hope is the gobs of extra money I had to pay (to have the service I paid less for before) will finally actually work for me.

TalkieT · July 24, 2013

I'm getting ever more nervous about the obvious avoidance of answering the question about effect on customisations.

So simple to defuse, but they choose not to.

Ouch

N

Matthew Saville · July 24, 2013

beardedgit wrote: »

Zooomr did. The big fail happened when KT shipped the servers (actual servers, not just data) to Asia, millions of pics were lost.

I take one every time the SM elite and heroes tell us that they can't tell us something. Just lately I've been ODing quite often.

I admire your confidence, Garga, but would you put your money where your mouth is? Pay my next year's subscription if the links do unravel, maybe?

I'd be happy to take that bet, if you'd take the opposite bet!

Rest assured, there's no way in hell they're going to break the URLs to their 1 billion+ photos...

If anything, the stories of how so many other hosting sites have crashed and burned just makes me more secure and happy to stick with SmugMug!

beardedgit · July 24, 2013

caroline wrote: »

Get real you will have to do some work...

IMO, we shouldn't have to do any work. SM staff, being the paid party and hence the service-providers to us customers, should do the necessary work to ensure that the new SM is backwards-compatible with sites/blogs built to work with the current SM. We users have already done our work to get to where we are today, whether that's a customised SM site or a blog that uses SM-linked Amazon-hosted images.

If somebody broke your car/window/TV, would you not consider them obliged to take appropriate measures to fix it? Websites are property too, the same obligation should apply.

Tim Kamppinen · July 24, 2013

My account is up for renewal on the 27th, three days before this mystery announcement. I switched to monthly payments so I don't have to pay for a whole year before finding out whether I want to stay. If this doesn't turn out to be amazingly better, I'm jumping ship and going to zenfolio. I set up an account last night on a whim and was able to import my entire smugmug site automatically over the course of a few hours (with no uploading from my computer). I was able to customize the site to look basically just like my current smugmug site looks, and it was extremely easy and intuitive instead of requiring arcane CSS and javascript customizations that make me never want to update anything because I can't really remember how I did it in the first place. Adding a page with information and text is dead simple, not like all the ridiculous workarounds and back doors that I have to go through with smugmug. They even have a built in blog function that looks every bit as good as the customized blogger template I have been using, and it's hosted on the same site so it won't split up your SEO juice between two domains. Drop down menus are built in and very easy to configure. You can host .pdf files such as price guides, etc.

And of course, the really big deal, *SELF FULFILLMENT*. I can sell whatever I want through zenfolio, including mounted prints. With smugmug I would have to turn on "photo extras" and cross my fingers hoping that the customer gets mounting on their 20x30 print. Of course I would have to charge less than my normal prices, because how can I justify full price for an inferior (unmounted) product that is so fragile. It's ridiculous that you can't force mounting and make it part of the product in the price lists. Because of this I only sell small prints through my website. I can sell products from any lab I want with this feature. I can also collect session fees and any other payments I want through the website. What's more, they don't collect a dime of commission on self-fulfilled orders if you have their top level account, which is $250 a year (same as it would be for me to continue with smugmug).

So yeah, smugmug better really blow me away with solutions to the needs mentioned above, or there will really be no reason whatsoever to stay with them.

kd2 · July 24, 2013

I'm looking forward to seeing what this is all about. I gave Zenfolio a try because I needed additional functionality. I liked it a lot. I then tried and signed up for Squarespace (just a few days ago) for my non-photography website and I really like all the features it has and it's extremely easy to use. If Smugmug can give me the ease of Squarespace, married with some of the best features of Smugmug, then I'll be a very happy camper.

Unveiling the new SmugMug

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