really struggling with new themes

cederic · September 8, 2013

So leaving aside the whole "Why break something that was nice" and assuming I'm going to have no choice if I want to continue using Smugmug (and if I can't resolve these issues, I wont), I just can't get the new themes to look nice.

The old goodness:

The new badness, as good as I can get it:

An issue on the homepage:

Issues that I still haven't resolved:

Title and caption both showing
Awful massive 'add to cart' button with glaringly horrible colour scheme
Gallery page selector displaying badly
unable to centre the footer (the one that reads "Pictures mostly (C) Stuart Scott")
Homepage title showing html encoding
Gallery titles showing "Gallery name - cederic" rather than just "Gallery name"
The share/prev/next/download sets of buttons below a picture don't change width to match the picture

This is a cry for help. Please help

There are a bunch of other changes that annoy me, but those issues will stop me switching.

Is it possible to just retain the existing theme? It works. It's clean. It's elegant. I have it configured how I want it.

denisegoldberg · September 8, 2013

cederic wrote: »

Awful massive 'add to cart' button with glaringly horrible colour scheme
Is it possible to just retain the existing theme? It works. It's clean. It's elegant. I have it configured how I want it.

You might take a look at the thread Guide: Convert existing SmugMug site into new format -match old layout.

The color of the Add to cart button is the accent color from your theme. If you change the accent color the button color should change. There is also a customization you can apply - see http://www.smugocity.com/CSS/Buttons/Add-To-Cart.

cederic wrote: »

Issues that I still haven't resolved:
Gallery titles showing "Gallery name - cederic" rather than just "Gallery name"

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Are you asking about the browser name? It should show the gallery name followed by your site name. If you don't like the site name, have you considered changing it?

--- Denise

cederic · September 8, 2013

denisegoldberg wrote: »

You might take a look at the thread Guide: Convert existing SmugMug site into new format -match old layout.

The color of the Add to cart button is the accent color from your theme. If you change the accent color the button color should change. There is also a customization you can apply - see http://www.smugocity.com/CSS/Buttons/Add-To-Cart.

Thanks, I'll take a look. That guide doesn't really cover most of my issues, but at least I can get the 'cart' button sorted.

It should show the gallery name followed by your site name. If you don't like the site name, have you considered changing it?

It does show that - but it's showing my smugmug id (cederic) not my site title ("Stuart's Photographs") which appears (broken) on the homepage.

The whole thing just doesn't feel professional - certainly nowhere near the bugfree elegance that attracted me to Smugmug in the first place. I'm finding myself very stressed by this.

denisegoldberg · September 8, 2013

cederic wrote: »

It does show that - but it's showing my smugmug id (cederic) not my site title ("Stuart's Photographs") which appears (broken) on the homepage.

It should be showing the site meta title. Do you have one set?

Go to Account Settings... Discovery... Search. Verify that Site Meta Title contains the text you want shown in the browser title and in bookmarks. You should also verify that the Homepage Meta Description and Homepage Meta Keywords boxes contain the text you want.

--- Denise

cederic · September 9, 2013

Set all of those. None of them fixed the title issue on the homepage the gallery page.

I appreciate your attempts to help, but I'll just keep the old setup until it's disabled, then find a photo hosting site that works.

stu1102 · September 12, 2013

cederic wrote: »

Set all of those. None of them fixed the title issue on the homepage the gallery page.

I appreciate your attempts to help, but I'll just keep the old setup until it's disabled, then find a photo hosting site that works.

I have to agree with you. My wife and I are very angry and upset about the way this has been imposed on what was a great legacy site but I think what is really appauling is the architecture of the new softwware tool to design your new site. I would really like to know who the developers were of this, becuse it reminds me of early software attempts in the early 70's. I appreciate some people may love it. we have been with Smugmug for years and now we have had enough

Like you Cederic were currently investigating other alternatives

starrynight · September 12, 2013

I feel all the same frustrations that you do. I've tried hard to consider it a learning curve & a novelty-aversion effect, but, the more time I spend with trying to get things to work, the more frustrated I become. Individual settings are broken up in multiple (difficult to deduce locations). It's as though some idiosyncratic organizer came to my office and reorganized everything based on their own scheme and I have to hunt around looking for where they put everything (like, say, they decided the keyboard should be in the top shelf in the closet, labelled "input devices").

I also use the gallery view, and I think it's the one people dislike the most in comparison with its format in the legacy smugmug. Right now, I've spent at least an hour trying to fix the display of gallery names, which get cut off -- and since the relevant information is at the end of the name, are completely useless.

I don't know if replacement for smugmug is a reasonable thread for a smugmug forum, but I hope someone who is researching alternatives will put that information somewhere for me to find.

(PS: I do not have answers to any of the original questions, but have the same reaction every time I look at my gallery view and compare legacy to the current version)

really struggling with new themes

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