I'm glad I was able to help, thanks for letting me know that all is well now!
Your site looks good (although I have to say I was surprised that it is essentially one page!).
--- Denise
Thanks Denise, Lesha has given me feedback re one page too, I'd honestly like to hear your thoughts on this also. It's starting to make me consider changing things up maybe quicker than I had anticipated. So you're now the second person to mention this. I appreciate all forms of CC, I did one a one stop scrolling shop but maybe that's not what others want. I admit I have done this in a sense for people to see all the different things I shoot. It's why I chose the name mixed up pix, BUT other amateur/pro cyber friends have said nothing bad, which in the photographic community is strange to me anyway. You guys are the 1st two people to offer up suggestions which I'm grateful for. Thank you again,
Paul
Your site looks great! I never saw your legacy site but I suspect the crispness of your new site pulls it up to a new level.
--- Denise
Thanks Denise,
I remember reading a lot of your posts when I created my previous, now Legacy, site and using a lot of your recommendations. You and others were invaluable!
The old site Home Page had a large slideshow on the right and a vertical menu on the left. No drop down menus and way too much real estate taken up with text. The new look is nothing but eye-popping glorious photos and I love it - more importantly, it really grabs first time visitors and turns them into buyers of my Champions Club Memberships which unduly equates to about $1,000 a year in photo and Sports Collage orders.
It's said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That could certainly apply to those who survive the conversion process from Legacy to the new SmugMug.
It's said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That could certainly apply to those who survive the conversion process from Legacy to the new SmugMug.
I couldn't agree more with you, and if it wasn't for people like Denise and the other friendly people here in dgrin I would have been completely lost. This is a special photography forum, you just don't find helpful friendly people on other forums like you do on dgrin. That conversion was a living nightmare for me too.
I couldn't agree more with you, and if it wasn't for people like Denise and the other friendly people here in dgrin I would have been completely lost. This is a special photography forum, you just don't find helpful friendly people on other forums like you do on dgrin. That conversion was a living nightmare for me too.
Here's an analogy from my wife, who is a significant factor in our photography business.
"Converting to the new SmugMug is like having a baby - a lengthy process with periodic bouts of unbearable pain, culminating in the miracle of birth (unveiling your site), followed by an overpowering desire to proudly show off your creation to the world."
It's been great following the transition for so many of you. I think I did the right thing by waiting it out to see what tweaks people came up with to add to the already amazing options we got with the New SmugMug. While I'm not a CSS guy myself, there were some things I wanted to tweak which I was able to work with the customization options folks had posted.
I wanted a simple, no hassle, crisp and clean design for my site. Since I'm not a full-time pro, I wanted to start with a base site that highlights some of my favorite images without distracting with too many options or galleries. I was originally going to try and break out into 6 gallery pools using the Smart Rules, however I settled on 2 for now and will decide on expansion after I finish out my backlog of photos.
The tweaks I made were:
Removed "Powered by SmugMug"
Slightly washed out galleries and included a hover feature so images pop as you select different photos
Hover color change on links with an emphasis on the current page
Dropshadow and Slightly rounded corners for the slideshow
I want to incorporate an about page, a better contact page (maybe wufoo?), and would like to create a blog but I am not sure I like the SmugMug option for creating different pages as blog posts. I think I'd rather connect with Wordpress or the like. Whatever I choose, I first need to get into blogging so that'll take some time. I have gotten paid for some work, but I am not sure I want to create a "services" page right now.
I hope you guys like it, and I would love to hear your feedback - don't worry, I can take a punch!
I am a High School Sports Photographer and have been a SmugMug Pro customer for quite a few years. A year ago I completely revamped my SmugMug site, using lots of customizations from information here at Digital Grin. I wasn't very happy to hear a brand new SmugMug was coming, which would render much of my previous work worthless - particularly since it was going to happen just prior to the start of a new football season, my busiest time.
Anyway, I avoided making any attempts of changing my site but finally got tired of having to go to the Legacy mode all the time and was scared to death I would inadvertently click on "Unveil" and be completely screwed. I bit the bullet and started creating a new site an hour here and two or three hours there.
Things kind of went smooth, except when it came to creating Pages. For some reason I had a heck of a time getting changes to "Save" and quite a few times I would lose several hours worth of work, which would seem to disappear on its own. I finally hit on a weird system of getting the changes to stick. I would make the necessary changes, choose Done, and then Exit and select the option of "Save For Later". Then I would go back into Customization mode on the Page I had previously worked on, go into a previous text box, enter a meaningless space after the end of any paragraph, hit Done and then hit "Publish Now". My previous important change would then be saved. I have no idea why that works, but it did for me.
Anyway, at the end of the process I love my site. My Home Page is filled with my favorite jaw-dropping sports shots and I'm getting the "WOW!" feedback from my customers.
I think SmugMug could have made the process easier, but if you stick with it, the rewards are great. By the way, I sent an email to SmugMug Support four days ago for help on the Saving Pages problems I was having and have yet to hear back except for the promise to get back to me within 48 hours. I suspect they are swamped with a deluge of questions from frustrated site customers.
It is a very nice site with great images (I also do some school photography in my regular day job - mine however is more choreographed in-classroom images).
It is a learning curve moving over to the new site - but once you've done it - there are a lot of things you can really change in a manner that was more difficult before. Now we can easily do our own entire pages, even tabbed ones.
w: Reheat Images Torn between cycling and photography!
Thanks for all the help here at Dgrin!
HUGE thanks to all the incredibly helpful posts here in this group!
I've been tinkering with the new SM layout for the last couple weeks struggling with the new buttons and knobs. Finally, I decided this weekend I was going to lock myself in the apartment and work through it with a goal of being able to share a reasonably decent site this week.
The tutorials and videos at Smugmug.com are great starts, but there's funky hangups and gaps in the information that isn't fully covered. I found all those answers and then PAGES of customization here at Dgrin. The ridiculously informative, step-by-step posts on custom CSS stuff was a relief to find and the only way I could even mess around with this stuff.
I posted a question about the nav bar links I couldn't figure out and couldn't find at SM site; in two hours someone had answered it here. Thank you! :-)
I've got a list of other tweaks, additions and improvements still to do, but I am happy enough where it is now to go live sharing it on my FB this week. Couldn't have done it without you all here. Thanks!
I'd love to hear what you think and any suggestions for improvements.
It's been great following the transition for so many of you. I think I did the right thing by waiting it out to see what tweaks people came up with to add to the already amazing options we got with the New SmugMug. While I'm not a CSS guy myself, there were some things I wanted to tweak which I was able to work with the customization options folks had posted.
Slightly washed out galleries and included a hover feature so images pop as you select different photos
Hover color change on links with an emphasis on the current page
Dropshadow and Slightly rounded corners for the slideshow
I want to incorporate an about page, a better contact page (maybe wufoo?), and would like to create a blog but I am not sure I like the SmugMug option for creating different pages as blog posts. I think I'd rather connect with Wordpress or the like. Whatever I choose, I first need to get into blogging so that'll take some time. I have gotten paid for some work, but I am not sure I want to create a "services" page right now.
I hope you guys like it, and I would love to hear your feedback - don't worry, I can take a punch!
Overall, I like your site a lot - no need to punch
I'm a little disagree with "washed out galleries and included a hover feature" - although I understand that you want images to stand out one by one, to me it makes first impression of poor quality/contrast, and making visitors hover over image to see how it actually looks is not super-friendly. But its just my opinion.
As to blog, I think few people here (myself included) have integrated smugmug with blogger quite successfully. There is even a tutorial floating around.
Wordpress may be more difficult because customisation option on wordpress.com are quite restricted - at least in free version.
Ha, finally get to see your keyword page. You did do one last copy of the total KW's from legacy, right?
Hahaha! No, I actually went with what ever I had several weeks ago - geez, maybe a month ago! Since my keywords usually come from words in my caption, and my Search is the regular search, I THINK images will still be found IF THEY TRY SEARCH even if they don't see them in the keyword list! Sent you an email today regarding that. There is something screwy in that block that makes it VERY time consuming to make little changes. Hoping they will just fix the dang whole keyword system.
I made some changes to the unveiled site - like reducing menu items to eight, Unlisted my OTHER gallery/folder. Moved my About Me and Guestbook from Professional to the unlisted Other (had to reset the menu pointer and they work fine being unlisted). Think that's it. Still need to add different icons to large lightbox and add text for them. Need to add "See Captions" like I said in email.
Overall, after kicking and screaming for the past two months, I am happy enough with the outcome. It is not a good thing when it takes two months to create as simple a site as mine! No one outside of us Smuggies will have any idea of the struggle. After not making any major changes during the past two or three weeks, felt I was ready to unveil. Still VERY glad I waited until some bugs were fixed and people like you came up with code to get around issues that should not have been issues. THANK YOU and all the others for all your help! Can't wait to see yours so I can steal some more super ideas!
I find it entertaining in a morbid way to see the current questions and responses from those folks just now starting to rebuild their sites and are running into the SAME stumbling blocks we ran into - shows how LITTLE has been changed by SM during this long (to us) time period. Have to say they HAVE fixed some crucial items. They still have a LONG way to go to catch up to the fixes people like you have worked around. Just wonder what will happen when they DO fix some things that we have coded around. Will their code and ours collide with bad effects? Just have to wait and see!
Well this is interesting because I remember unveiling, and stumbled across you Troup in the process, right here in Dgrin. How are you!!
Both yourself and Denise were of great help to me even though my site wasn't working properly until this week. I really appreciated that, so thanks again. It sound like you made a great choice by holding off. I had no ADD TO CART button and no icons, where as a lot of others had problems with their slideshows, actually everyone seemed to have a little bug somewhere. I just wanted to thank you and I love your site it looks great. Mine's very chaotic with the collages and stretchy works great for me. I like the way it's slightly different every time I log on too. I also had problems with unlisted galleries not working but it came good, I didn't change anything either.
Paul
Hey Paul,
Doing fine and hope you are, too. VERY glad indeed that I held off. Was able to get many "fixes" that streamlines my site (like centering text - would have thought that would have been easy and built in - NOT) into a very simple structure. Don't know when you saw it last, but removed some menu items, unlisted some galleries while moving "control" galleries into them so public cannot see them. Still have some minor additions to do. Waiting for the revised slideshow to replace homepage custom code. ALso hoping for a totally revised keyword system. Yeah, I remember the no ADD TO CART issue - how basic a mistake by SM!
WHile they are making SOME changes and fixes, I notice people just getting around to re-tooling their sites still having many of the same issues we had...so, SM has a ways to go. Maybe they feel there are enough work arounds out there and they are focussing on the major programming concerns.
Cheers to you "down under" and thanks for remembering me!
There are few things that I like a lot: dark background, rounded corners, centered captions... not to mention photos themselves.
Couple of things seemed questionable:
- too many top-level links: multiple searches, separated "info" and "questbook", "slideshow" in addition to home page slideshow...
- variable width: some pages are stretchy, some are fixed width ±750 px, "info" is very narrow...
- some galleries (like "slideshow photos" and whole "others" folder) do not seem to be intended for "galleries" page - have you thought about unlisting them?
Lesha, thanks for the feedback...thought I would come back to you with the changes. Reduced the Menu items a lot into crucial ones for MY clients/endusers. Info page still same - will be just deleting and doing something entirely new and different there soon (I hope). I really hate it right now. Unlisted the OTHERS page and moved About Me and Guestbook from Professional to the newly unlisted OTHER. Reset the Menu pointers to those two and it is working fine unlisted. Oh, yeah, I removed the "Comment" field from the Info page. Still have a few more tweaks to do, but think I can now relax and get on with my life - like shooting images! Hahahaha!
Thanks again for your valuable input and you will see I took it to heart! Have another look!
Lesha, thanks for the feedback...thought I would come back to you with the changes. Reduced the Menu items a lot into crucial ones for MY clients/endusers. Info page still same - will be just deleting and doing something entirely new and different there soon (I hope). I really hate it right now. Unlisted the OTHERS page and moved About Me and Guestbook from Professional to the newly unlisted OTHER. Reset the Menu pointers to those two and it is working fine unlisted. Oh, yeah, I removed the "Comment" field from the Info page. Still have a few more tweaks to do, but think I can now relax and get on with my life - like shooting images! Hahahaha!
Thanks again for your valuable input and you will see I took it to heart! Have another look!
Troup,
Your site looks much more polished now, really nice!
Couple more things I would look at when shooting images is not an option:
- footer on your home page seems to be at fixed distance from the top, independently from the size of the slideshow. While it is fine on the smaller screens, on 27" monitor it hovers right in the middle of the photo - I'd rather move it to the bottom of the screen
- Some of the folders do not have "right" number of galleries to fill in the whole row on the screen - with the headers centered, it may be more appealing to center gallery thumbnails as well.
-
Doing fine and hope you are, too. VERY glad indeed that I held off. Was able to get many "fixes" that streamlines my site (like centering text - would have thought that would have been easy and built in - NOT) into a very simple structure. Don't know when you saw it last, but removed some menu items, unlisted some galleries while moving "control" galleries into them so public cannot see them. Still have some minor additions to do. Waiting for the revised slideshow to replace homepage custom code. ALso hoping for a totally revised keyword system. Yeah, I remember the no ADD TO CART issue - how basic a mistake by SM!
WHile they are making SOME changes and fixes, I notice people just getting around to re-tooling their sites still having many of the same issues we had...so, SM has a ways to go. Maybe they feel there are enough work arounds out there and they are focussing on the major programming concerns.
Cheers to you "down under" and thanks for remembering me!
Hey Troup,
Your site looks great mate, I' have seen a few sites now with the large photo zoom homepage it's a great look and I'm quite tempted to change mine, . I've had some great help and feedback in here too which is greatly appreciated. If I break up my site from one big scroll-a-thon and pop more pics into galleries, my site would look like yours
I have just got it working after all that time, I only have one minor glitch now, but after looking at so many sites and getting such great feedback from the great people in here I might consider doing it earlier rather than later. I just wiped a 2TB master external hard drive so I'm focusing on recovery that.
Cheers
Paul
HUGE thanks to all the incredibly helpful posts here in this group!
I've been tinkering with the new SM layout for the last couple weeks struggling with the new buttons and knobs. Finally, I decided this weekend I was going to lock myself in the apartment and work through it with a goal of being able to share a reasonably decent site this week.
The tutorials and videos at Smugmug.com are great starts, but there's funky hangups and gaps in the information that isn't fully covered. I found all those answers and then PAGES of customization here at Dgrin. The ridiculously informative, step-by-step posts on custom CSS stuff was a relief to find and the only way I could even mess around with this stuff.
I posted a question about the nav bar links I couldn't figure out and couldn't find at SM site; in two hours someone had answered it here. Thank you! :-)
I've got a list of other tweaks, additions and improvements still to do, but I am happy enough where it is now to go live sharing it on my FB this week. Couldn't have done it without you all here. Thanks!
I'd love to hear what you think and any suggestions for improvements.
WOW, I love your work and your site looks incredible Ben, I've been a huge fan for a while now. It's mind-blowing and so is your work. I just posted in here a few above you after getting my site working too. I need to send you a quick PM.
cheers
Paul
Overall, I like your site a lot - no need to punch
I'm a little disagree with "washed out galleries and included a hover feature" - although I understand that you want images to stand out one by one, to me it makes first impression of poor quality/contrast, and making visitors hover over image to see how it actually looks is not super-friendly. But its just my opinion.
As to blog, I think few people here (myself included) have integrated smugmug with blogger quite successfully. There is even a tutorial floating around.
Wordpress may be more difficult because customisation option on wordpress.com are quite restricted - at least in free version.
Thanks for the advice! While I did like the hover effect, I'm leaning towards your thoughts that it might just appear that I take washed out photos. I will look into a different hover effect which will let me keep my photos solid.
Thanks for the suggestion on blogger. I may be working on a joint blog with a friend using tumblr, but I'll take a look at what works before we fully commit to anything.
Troup,
Your site looks much more polished now, really nice!
Couple more things I would look at when shooting images is not an option:
- footer on your home page seems to be at fixed distance from the top, independently from the size of the slideshow. While it is fine on the smaller screens, on 27" monitor it hovers right in the middle of the photo - I'd rather move it to the bottom of the screen
- Some of the folders do not have "right" number of galleries to fill in the whole row on the screen - with the headers centered, it may be more appealing to center gallery thumbnails as well.
-
Thanks again! Can't seem to find a way to create a footer on the homepage, so am using a text block. Seems the only way to get a footer is to turn on the SmugMug footer. Do you know how to make your own footer?
Not sure why it starts so high up. Because of that, I put in a 600px top margin for the block. I just changed it to 700 to shove the text further down but this causes a scroll bar on my screen. I didn't know that it would be so different a placement on larger screens. Ack! I just went ahead and removed the block. That text is not really necessary - just keeps honest folks honest!
I like the idea of centering the lonesome folders and galleries. Don't know how to do it. I'll ask Allen for advice. Same for the thumbs if possible.
On your gallery, I don't mind the similar images. Each one has something a tad different in the pose, the faces, or the background. You never know what will strike someone into buying. SO, I think it is fine. On my pool page, I was shooting for a magazine. There were some VERY subtle differences (like shadows from the foillage (sp) due to big wind gusts). So, I wanted to let them pick something that mattered more to them, if you see what i mean. That was some time ago, and I think I could really delete the "almost" dupes now. Makes sense to me!
Thanks for the advice! While I did like the hover effect, I'm leaning towards your thoughts that it might just appear that I take washed out photos. I will look into a different hover effect which will let me keep my photos solid.
Thanks for the suggestion on blogger. I may be working on a joint blog with a friend using tumblr, but I'll take a look at what works before we fully commit to anything.
Check out mine - it does somewhat the reverse of yours!
How did you get that to work? For some reason, borders weren't showing for me.
My color scheme is different and using my css on your site provided nearly no effect - I changed colors and thickness to make them more visible - use it as a starting point:
My color scheme is different and using my css on your site provided nearly no effect - I changed colors and thickness to make them more visible - use it as a starting point:
sapphire73Registered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 1,963moderator
edited October 17, 2013
Just unveiled my site in new smug last night. I had a dark background in legacy for several years and chose Smug light for now. May add some texture or switch back to a darker background later. We'll see.
I thought I had taken care of all the glitches but see a few more. Sigh! When I browse and click on the Nature and Landscape Galleries folder, it brings up the three sub-folders as intended and the outline of two galleries above that. I don't see that happening on anywhere else yet. I would delete that content block but am afraid that I'll end up with the folders not containing any galleries - a problem I had earlier. I'm sure there is an easy fix but I not seeing it just now.
I would also like to avoid seeing the website assets folder when browsing but if I set it to unlisted, the About Me page doesn't show up. I could move it and relink it I guess, but is there a better way? Should I try choosing the folders myself instead of using "current location" setting?
The one thing I would change it to remove your featured galleries from your homepage and place them on a separate page (with a link in your navbar). When a site opens with a slideshow taking up all of the available space in the browser window I don't think folks are likely to scroll down to see if there is anything below the slideshow.
I would also like to avoid seeing the website assets folder when browsing but if I set it to unlisted, the About Me page doesn't show up. I could move it and relink it I guess, but is there a better way?
You can set that folder to unlisted - you just need to update the link to your about me page to include the funky characters at the end.
Set the folder to unlisted
Open your about me gallery
Copy the url
update the about me link in your navbar with the url that you copied.
The one thing I would change it to remove your featured galleries from your homepage and place them on a separate page (with a link in your navbar). When a site opens with a slideshow taking up all of the available space in the browser window I don't think folks are likely to scroll down to see if there is anything below the slideshow.
You can set that folder to unlisted - you just need to update the link to your about me page to include the funky characters at the end.
Set the folder to unlisted
Open your about me gallery
Copy the url
update the about me link in your navbar with the url that you copied.
Well i've gone and done it and have unveiled, i wasn't sure i would ever do this as had reservations but with some help from the folks on here i've got the site done (for now). I'm going to ping it out on facebook etc tonight so all my clients will see the new look but for now its just you guys. so any critique today will give me a chance to make any changes.
did feel a bit sad saying goodbye to my old legacy site as it served me so well this past year
Comments
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Thanks Denise, Lesha has given me feedback re one page too, I'd honestly like to hear your thoughts on this also. It's starting to make me consider changing things up maybe quicker than I had anticipated. So you're now the second person to mention this. I appreciate all forms of CC, I did one a one stop scrolling shop but maybe that's not what others want. I admit I have done this in a sense for people to see all the different things I shoot. It's why I chose the name mixed up pix, BUT other amateur/pro cyber friends have said nothing bad, which in the photographic community is strange to me anyway. You guys are the 1st two people to offer up suggestions which I'm grateful for. Thank you again,
Paul
Thanks Denise,
I remember reading a lot of your posts when I created my previous, now Legacy, site and using a lot of your recommendations. You and others were invaluable!
The old site Home Page had a large slideshow on the right and a vertical menu on the left. No drop down menus and way too much real estate taken up with text. The new look is nothing but eye-popping glorious photos and I love it - more importantly, it really grabs first time visitors and turns them into buyers of my Champions Club Memberships which unduly equates to about $1,000 a year in photo and Sports Collage orders.
It's said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. That could certainly apply to those who survive the conversion process from Legacy to the new SmugMug.
http://photoexperts-net.smugmug.com/
http://photoexperts.zenfolio.com/
I couldn't agree more with you, and if it wasn't for people like Denise and the other friendly people here in dgrin I would have been completely lost. This is a special photography forum, you just don't find helpful friendly people on other forums like you do on dgrin. That conversion was a living nightmare for me too.
Here's an analogy from my wife, who is a significant factor in our photography business.
"Converting to the new SmugMug is like having a baby - a lengthy process with periodic bouts of unbearable pain, culminating in the miracle of birth (unveiling your site), followed by an overpowering desire to proudly show off your creation to the world."
http://photoexperts-net.smugmug.com/
http://photoexperts.zenfolio.com/
Hi guys,
It's been great following the transition for so many of you. I think I did the right thing by waiting it out to see what tweaks people came up with to add to the already amazing options we got with the New SmugMug. While I'm not a CSS guy myself, there were some things I wanted to tweak which I was able to work with the customization options folks had posted.
I wanted a simple, no hassle, crisp and clean design for my site. Since I'm not a full-time pro, I wanted to start with a base site that highlights some of my favorite images without distracting with too many options or galleries. I was originally going to try and break out into 6 gallery pools using the Smart Rules, however I settled on 2 for now and will decide on expansion after I finish out my backlog of photos.
The tweaks I made were:
I want to incorporate an about page, a better contact page (maybe wufoo?), and would like to create a blog but I am not sure I like the SmugMug option for creating different pages as blog posts. I think I'd rather connect with Wordpress or the like. Whatever I choose, I first need to get into blogging so that'll take some time. I have gotten paid for some work, but I am not sure I want to create a "services" page right now.
I hope you guys like it, and I would love to hear your feedback - don't worry, I can take a punch!
http://www.maulinmehta.com/
It is a very nice site with great images (I also do some school photography in my regular day job - mine however is more choreographed in-classroom images).
It is a learning curve moving over to the new site - but once you've done it - there are a lot of things you can really change in a manner that was more difficult before. Now we can easily do our own entire pages, even tabbed ones.
Torn between cycling and photography!
HUGE thanks to all the incredibly helpful posts here in this group!
I've been tinkering with the new SM layout for the last couple weeks struggling with the new buttons and knobs. Finally, I decided this weekend I was going to lock myself in the apartment and work through it with a goal of being able to share a reasonably decent site this week.
The tutorials and videos at Smugmug.com are great starts, but there's funky hangups and gaps in the information that isn't fully covered. I found all those answers and then PAGES of customization here at Dgrin. The ridiculously informative, step-by-step posts on custom CSS stuff was a relief to find and the only way I could even mess around with this stuff.
I posted a question about the nav bar links I couldn't figure out and couldn't find at SM site; in two hours someone had answered it here. Thank you! :-)
I've got a list of other tweaks, additions and improvements still to do, but I am happy enough where it is now to go live sharing it on my FB this week. Couldn't have done it without you all here. Thanks!
I'd love to hear what you think and any suggestions for improvements.
Ben
http://www.thestartrail.com/
I'm a little disagree with "washed out galleries and included a hover feature" - although I understand that you want images to stand out one by one, to me it makes first impression of poor quality/contrast, and making visitors hover over image to see how it actually looks is not super-friendly. But its just my opinion.
As to blog, I think few people here (myself included) have integrated smugmug with blogger quite successfully. There is even a tutorial floating around.
Wordpress may be more difficult because customisation option on wordpress.com are quite restricted - at least in free version.
My site: www.alexmoiseyev.com
Hahaha! No, I actually went with what ever I had several weeks ago - geez, maybe a month ago! Since my keywords usually come from words in my caption, and my Search is the regular search, I THINK images will still be found IF THEY TRY SEARCH even if they don't see them in the keyword list! Sent you an email today regarding that. There is something screwy in that block that makes it VERY time consuming to make little changes. Hoping they will just fix the dang whole keyword system.
I made some changes to the unveiled site - like reducing menu items to eight, Unlisted my OTHER gallery/folder. Moved my About Me and Guestbook from Professional to the unlisted Other (had to reset the menu pointer and they work fine being unlisted). Think that's it. Still need to add different icons to large lightbox and add text for them. Need to add "See Captions" like I said in email.
Overall, after kicking and screaming for the past two months, I am happy enough with the outcome. It is not a good thing when it takes two months to create as simple a site as mine! No one outside of us Smuggies will have any idea of the struggle. After not making any major changes during the past two or three weeks, felt I was ready to unveil. Still VERY glad I waited until some bugs were fixed and people like you came up with code to get around issues that should not have been issues. THANK YOU and all the others for all your help! Can't wait to see yours so I can steal some more super ideas!
I find it entertaining in a morbid way to see the current questions and responses from those folks just now starting to rebuild their sites and are running into the SAME stumbling blocks we ran into - shows how LITTLE has been changed by SM during this long (to us) time period. Have to say they HAVE fixed some crucial items. They still have a LONG way to go to catch up to the fixes people like you have worked around. Just wonder what will happen when they DO fix some things that we have coded around. Will their code and ours collide with bad effects? Just have to wait and see!
Hey Paul,
Doing fine and hope you are, too. VERY glad indeed that I held off. Was able to get many "fixes" that streamlines my site (like centering text - would have thought that would have been easy and built in - NOT) into a very simple structure. Don't know when you saw it last, but removed some menu items, unlisted some galleries while moving "control" galleries into them so public cannot see them. Still have some minor additions to do. Waiting for the revised slideshow to replace homepage custom code. ALso hoping for a totally revised keyword system. Yeah, I remember the no ADD TO CART issue - how basic a mistake by SM!
WHile they are making SOME changes and fixes, I notice people just getting around to re-tooling their sites still having many of the same issues we had...so, SM has a ways to go. Maybe they feel there are enough work arounds out there and they are focussing on the major programming concerns.
Cheers to you "down under" and thanks for remembering me!
Lesha, thanks for the feedback...thought I would come back to you with the changes. Reduced the Menu items a lot into crucial ones for MY clients/endusers. Info page still same - will be just deleting and doing something entirely new and different there soon (I hope). I really hate it right now. Unlisted the OTHERS page and moved About Me and Guestbook from Professional to the newly unlisted OTHER. Reset the Menu pointers to those two and it is working fine unlisted. Oh, yeah, I removed the "Comment" field from the Info page. Still have a few more tweaks to do, but think I can now relax and get on with my life - like shooting images! Hahahaha!
Thanks again for your valuable input and you will see I took it to heart! Have another look!
Your site looks much more polished now, really nice!
Couple more things I would look at when shooting images is not an option:
- footer on your home page seems to be at fixed distance from the top, independently from the size of the slideshow. While it is fine on the smaller screens, on 27" monitor it hovers right in the middle of the photo - I'd rather move it to the bottom of the screen
- Some of the folders do not have "right" number of galleries to fill in the whole row on the screen - with the headers centered, it may be more appealing to center gallery thumbnails as well.
-
Also, I wanted to ask your opinion: I was always blaming myself for keeping too many similar images - like on this page: http://www.alexmoiseyev.com/Dance/2013/NEDSC/i-M7wqsW5. But I saw something similar on your site as well, like this: http://www.southeasternphotography.com/Architecture/More-Pool-Installations. Do you consider this a problem at all?
My site: www.alexmoiseyev.com
Hey Troup,
Your site looks great mate, I' have seen a few sites now with the large photo zoom homepage it's a great look and I'm quite tempted to change mine,
I have just got it working after all that time, I only have one minor glitch now, but after looking at so many sites and getting such great feedback from the great people in here I might consider doing it earlier rather than later. I just wiped a 2TB master external hard drive so I'm focusing on recovery that.
Cheers
Paul
WOW, I love your work and your site looks incredible Ben, I've been a huge fan for a while now. It's mind-blowing and so is your work. I just posted in here a few above you after getting my site working too. I need to send you a quick PM.
cheers
Paul
Thanks for the advice! While I did like the hover effect, I'm leaning towards your thoughts that it might just appear that I take washed out photos. I will look into a different hover effect which will let me keep my photos solid.
Thanks for the suggestion on blogger. I may be working on a joint blog with a friend using tumblr, but I'll take a look at what works before we fully commit to anything.
Thanks again! Can't seem to find a way to create a footer on the homepage, so am using a text block. Seems the only way to get a footer is to turn on the SmugMug footer. Do you know how to make your own footer?
Not sure why it starts so high up. Because of that, I put in a 600px top margin for the block. I just changed it to 700 to shove the text further down but this causes a scroll bar on my screen. I didn't know that it would be so different a placement on larger screens. Ack! I just went ahead and removed the block. That text is not really necessary - just keeps honest folks honest!
I like the idea of centering the lonesome folders and galleries. Don't know how to do it. I'll ask Allen for advice. Same for the thumbs if possible.
On your gallery, I don't mind the similar images. Each one has something a tad different in the pose, the faces, or the background. You never know what will strike someone into buying. SO, I think it is fine. On my pool page, I was shooting for a magazine. There were some VERY subtle differences (like shadows from the foillage (sp) due to big wind gusts). So, I wanted to let them pick something that mattered more to them, if you see what i mean. That was some time ago, and I think I could really delete the "almost" dupes now. Makes sense to me!
Check out mine - it does somewhat the reverse of yours!
.sm-tiles {
text-align: center;
}
seems to work fine on yours as well.
Thanks for the feedback on the similar photos - I feel better now
My site: www.alexmoiseyev.com
My site: www.alexmoiseyev.com
How did you get that to work? For some reason, borders weren't showing for me.
My color scheme is different and using my css on your site provided nearly no effect - I changed colors and thickness to make them more visible - use it as a starting point:
.sm-tile .sm-tile-info a {
border: 0 none;
}
.sm-tile .sm-tile-info a:hover {
border: 0 none;
}
.sm-tile a {
border: 3px solid #008080;
}
.sm-tile a:hover {
border: 3px solid #ff0000;
}
My site: www.alexmoiseyev.com
Thanks! I used this code and tweaked it to my liking. I think I'm content with the setup for now!
My site: www.alexmoiseyev.com
I thought I had taken care of all the glitches but see a few more. Sigh! When I browse and click on the Nature and Landscape Galleries folder, it brings up the three sub-folders as intended and the outline of two galleries above that. I don't see that happening on anywhere else yet. I would delete that content block but am afraid that I'll end up with the folders not containing any galleries - a problem I had earlier. I'm sure there is an easy fix but I not seeing it just now.
I would also like to avoid seeing the website assets folder when browsing but if I set it to unlisted, the About Me page doesn't show up. I could move it and relink it I guess, but is there a better way? Should I try choosing the folders myself instead of using "current location" setting?
Thanks,
Gretchen
www.gretchenkeithphotography.com
My SmugMug Galleries
The one thing I would change it to remove your featured galleries from your homepage and place them on a separate page (with a link in your navbar). When a site opens with a slideshow taking up all of the available space in the browser window I don't think folks are likely to scroll down to see if there is anything below the slideshow. You can set that folder to unlisted - you just need to update the link to your about me page to include the funky characters at the end.
- Set the folder to unlisted
- Open your about me gallery
- Copy the url
- update the about me link in your navbar with the url that you copied.
As an example, this gallery on my site is unlisted. It is accessible from my blog to viewers using this URL: http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Medley/galleries-by-date/n-GzNHG.--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
My SmugMug Galleries
did feel a bit sad saying goodbye to my old legacy site as it served me so well this past year
http://picturebike.smugmug.com