Migration to New SmugMug-> Issues with customizations?

56Kruiser · October 31, 2013

I've not done much in my site for a while. Going to it today to load some files, I see it has the button for me to migrate my old site to new design. In fact, my custom menus on my site do not work when I'm logged in now.

I've browsed the threads quickly, and don't see anything posted that alarms me.

But I wanted to ask before I migrate: Should I expect things in my customizations to work as they do on the old site, or will I likely be faced with a lot of effort to repair/change things?

denisegoldberg · October 31, 2013

your photos migrate; your customizations do not.

So any CSS that you had in place will not be in place in the new smug. While you still may want (or need) some CSS in the new world it is likely to be much less than in legacy smug.

You will need to define your navbar in the new smug - I'd recommend using the new menu block which allows for both flat and nested nav bars.

I had a highly customized site in old smug because I had implemented more than 2 levels and replaced the smug navigation with my own. It took less than an hour for me to build my site in the new world. I no longer needed my previous customizations, and I had three html-only galleries that I replaced with Pages in the new smug.

--- Denise

ChancyRat · October 31, 2013

I have not unveiled yet and I'm glad I didn't. I need to fix a lot of things.

What will be most safe is if you don't immediately unveil.

In fact, you will need to choose a theme before you can do anything else, so do that and then, customize entire site.

If you think you're good with the theme, click "done" and then "publish", which will publish to you only. Works like "save and view privately". Then mosey on through all of your site and check the folders, galleries, and pages. If you had custom text or html, check those pages to see what needs fixing.

There is another button for "preview", but I haven't used it and apparently there are problems with it. Publish is easist.

Keeping Legacy alive can be help in another way, in that you can have the page you're viewing, open in two browsers, on in Legacy and one in New, so you can compare them.

You may want to construct a navbar as well - New gives you brand new options for that that won't be there automatically (I think) if you unveil.

Even though I'm glad I have not yet unveiled, I also do have broken navbar links now in Legacy, and several broken pages. I'm "wounded" in Legacy. So this is a cost-benefit analysis for me, what I have to let stay broken in Legacy against what I have to fix in New.

Unveil is the last step, the permanent transition. Hold off on that one, is my suggestion.

56Kruiser · October 31, 2013

Wow. Thiis is a real pain. I have a LOT, that is, a LOT of effort in th existing site.

I"m not particularly happy with this. I'll have to give some thought about what options I want to pursue.

Thanks for the input. This forum is the best.

denisegoldberg · October 31, 2013

56Kruiser wrote: »

Wow. Thiis is a real pain. I have a LOT, that is, a LOT of effort in th existing site.

Take some time and look at what is available.

There are no changes needed to galleries containing photos. You can build a drop-down navbar without using code, just using the menu element.

The areas that need some thought are galleries that are HTML-only galleries in legacy or are in the style Journal (Old). And you do have quite a few of these... Decide what you want to keep and what you want to drop. Look at using Pages instead of galleries for these. If you look at my site, the kaleidoscope, gallery, and about links from my navbar go to pages. Once the viewer clicks on a folder or a gallery - what is shown is standard pages / galleries.

--- Denise

56Kruiser · October 31, 2013

denisegoldberg wrote: »

Take some time and look at what is available.

There are no changes needed to galleries containing photos. You can build a drop-down navbar without using code, just using the menu element.

The areas that need some thought are galleries that are HTML-only galleries in legacy or are in the style Journal (Old). And you do have quite a few of these... Decide what you want to keep and what you want to drop. Look at using Pages instead of galleries for these. If you look at my site, the kaleidoscope, gallery, and about links from my navbar go to pages. Once the viewer clicks on a folder or a gallery - what is shown is standard pages / galleries.

--- Denise

Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it. My problem is the time.

I wonder how long my legacy site will work before they dismantle all capability of that. Anyone heard about that?

ChancyRat · October 31, 2013

56Kruiser wrote: »

Wow. Thiis is a real pain. I have a LOT, that is, a LOT of effort in th existing site.

I"m not particularly happy with this. I'll have to give some thought about what options I want to pursue.

Thanks for the input. This forum is the best.

If you have a lot of HTML or text in your gallery descriptions, please do check those pages in Legacy mode asap. For my site, all of the HTML is broken. That's because I had errors in the code, which new SM is not accommodating.

For me the pressure is on to fix those pages in new SM, so that I can unveil asap.

Like Denise described, my method has been similar:
- choose a theme in new SM, get some basics in place, like a navbar and what main folders and galleries should look like. Color scheme, background, font, logo, header, etc.
- survey the galleries, which have plain simple text in the descriptions, which are specialized with HTML or other embedded content, such as iframes (which new SM does not support), or youtube embeds (which new SM has a specific block for, cannot be embedded in an HTML gallery).
- Made decisions to let some galleries reduce to simple text.
- ID'd which *must* be formatted with HTML, and now I'm working on those separately. This one is the breaker because as I mentioned these pages are broken on Legacy.

denisegoldberg · October 31, 2013

56Kruiser wrote: »

I wonder how long my legacy site will work before they dismantle all capability of that. Anyone heard about that?

I haven't seen any announcements but I assume that legacy smug will continue to work for a long time. Not forever, but certainly enough for you to take your time updating for the new smug.

--- Denise

56Kruiser · October 31, 2013

ChancyRat wrote: »

If you have a lot of HTML or text in your gallery descriptions, please do check those pages in Legacy mode asap. For my site, all of the HTML is broken. That's because I had errors in the code, which new SM is not accommodating.

For me the pressure is on to fix those pages in new SM, so that I can unveil asap.

Like Denise described, my method has been similar:
- choose a theme in new SM, get some basics in place, like a navbar and what main folders and galleries should look like. Color scheme, background, font, logo, header, etc.
- survey the galleries, which have plain simple text in the descriptions, which are specialized with HTML or other embedded content, such as iframes (which new SM does not support), or youtube embeds (which new SM has a specific block for, cannot be embedded in an HTML gallery).
- Made decisions to let some galleries reduce to simple text.
- ID'd which *must* be formatted with HTML, and now I'm working on those separately. This one is the breaker because as I mentioned these pages are broken on Legacy.

Thanks.

Just went over and browsed through several pages, and all seems to be working fine. Didn't click every link on every page, but I think it's pretty good. I ran most of my HTML through tests while writing the pages...hence, again...lots of work ;=)

You guys have at least taken me off of my panic button for the moment.

leftquark · November 1, 2013

56Kruiser wrote: »

Thanks.

Just went over and browsed through several pages, and all seems to be working fine. Didn't click every link on every page, but I think it's pretty good. I ran most of my HTML through tests while writing the pages...hence, again...lots of work ;=)

You guys have at least taken me off of my panic button for the moment.

Looking at your legacy site, i can see why you worry. You have done quite a bit of customization to it. Will it be super easy for you to migrate? No.
Will it take some time to get the migration in order? Yes.
Will it be worth it? In my opinion, YES!!!!

I mean no offense and no disrespect here but your Legacy Site is rough on the eyes. It looks 10 years old ... probably because it is 10 years old. It's a lot of text -- a lot of static links with no hover features, no transitioning / fading links, no customized buttons, etc. The New SmugMug will change all that and make it look much cleaner. A simple font upgrade would actually do wonders.

It may take some time but it's time worth spending. If I can to your site now, I'd most likely leave right away simply because I'm overwhelmed by text. A visual upgrade will do wonders!

Mike J · November 1, 2013

56Kruiser wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it. My problem is the time.

I wonder how long my legacy site will work before they dismantle all capability of that. Anyone heard about that?

I emailed SM about how long legacy would last about 6 weeks ago. Their reply was spring of 2014. I don't know how hard and fast that is though...

Migration to New SmugMug-> Issues with customizations?

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