Set specific album as landing page from URL

Brody · March 14, 2014

On the new SmugMug, is there a way to make a specific album the initial landing page when people sign in to my site via my URL or track me down via Google. For example, JohnBrody.com now goes to the homepage, And I want it to go to my favorite album. Is there a way to make that happen.

Any help will be hugely please appreciated. John

denisegoldberg · March 14, 2014

I'm not aware of a way to have your base URL open a gallery.

--- Denise

Brody · March 14, 2014

Hi Denise,

Very unfortunate. I find that your answers are always spot on Denise, but sadly it's not what I had hoped for. Mixed emotions here... :cry

Is that both New and Old SmugMug or just new. I'll also ask it a different way since I may be phrasing it wrong. I just want people to go directly to a screen that has all my thumbs on the left and photo #1 on the right. I don't care if I have to get rid of every other album to accomplish this. I find from feedback from visitors that the new shortened attention span on the web makes people give up when they get to the home page with the albums, and they just go somewhere else.

Here's one option that I found that I really like and I could use if the other is not possible. This seem to be a spread of the photos on the initial landing page tied to her URL. Is this a standard "New Smug" style and are the social buttons and word links at top pretty standard? Her URL is http://www.leahkennedyphotography.com

A big question I know, but I tried to convert about 4 months ago and gave up because I couldn't find an option that would work for me. The good news is that I joined G+ and met mountains of good people there, but I still want SM as my photo home. Google site FYI https://plus.google.com/+JohnBrody/

All thoughts will be appreciated. John

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I'm not aware of a way to have your base URL open a gallery.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · March 14, 2014

Brody wrote: »

Is that both New and Old SmugMug or just new. I'll also ask it a different way since I may be phrasing it wrong. I just want people to go directly to a screen that has all my thumbs on the left and photo #1 on the right. I don't care if I have to get rid of every other album to accomplish this. I find from feedback from visitors that the new shortened attention span on the web makes people give up when they get to the home page with the albums, and they just go somewhere else.

Here's one option that I found that I really like and I could use if the other is not possible. This seem to be a spread of the photos on the initial landing page tied to her URL. Is this a standard "New Smug" style and are the social buttons and word links at top pretty standard? Her URL is http://www.leahkennedyphotography.com

You can't have an open smugmug-style gallery on your home page.

The site you referenced is a new smugmug site. You can easily show a selection of photos on your homepage using a Multiple Photos content block.

I would recommend upgrading your site to new smug.

--- Denise

Brody · March 14, 2014

I'm sorry Denise, I seem to be giving you the wrong information.. My whole goal is to convert to new SmugMug, and I was looking at http://www.leahkennedyphotography.com as an example of what I would like it to look like After I convert when people first show up on smugmug.

What I've done in the past to help people land in the area that I want is I use the URL johnBrodyphotography.com as a forwarder so that they land in my favorites album. That's what I was hoping to accomplish in new Smug. I like the graphical buttons as well as the text buttons she has to forward people to external social media sites, and I was curious if those are standard features of new smug or if that had been customized.

At the risk of sounding totally clueless (sadly a fact when it comes to new smug) can I just use the Multiple Photos content block that you mentioned, that simply put all of my photos in there?

The bottom line is that I've got sites all over the web, and I want to use new SmugMug as my primary Landing Page to focus and manage all of those sites. Since the original image source for all of the other sites is SmugMug, it just seems logical to do so.

Oh, the screen capture you included - I'm not sure where that's from... I can't seem to find it

Thank you much Denise, John

denisegoldberg wrote: »

You can't have an open smugmug-style gallery on your home page.

The site you referenced is a new smugmug site. You can easily show a selection of photos on your homepage using a Multiple Photos content block.

I would recommend upgrading your site to new smug.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · March 14, 2014

Brody wrote: »

IMy whole goal is to convert to new SmugMug, and I was looking at http://www.leahkennedyphotography.com as an example of what I would like it to look like After I convert when people first show up on smugmug.

I believe that homepage is using a Multiple Photos content block.

Brody wrote: »

What I've done in the past to help people land in the area that I want is I use the URL johnBrodyphotography.com as a forwarder so that they land in my favorites album. That's what I was hoping to accomplish in new Smug. I like the graphical buttons as well as the text buttons she has to forward people to external social media sites, and I was curious if those are standard features of new smug or if that had been customized.

At the risk of sounding totally clueless (sadly a fact when it comes to new smug) can I just use the Multiple Photos content block that you mentioned, that simply put all of my photos in there?

The bottom line is that I've got sites all over the web, and I want to use new SmugMug as my primary Landing Page to focus and manage all of those sites. Since the original image source for all of the other sites is SmugMug, it just seems logical to do so.

Oh, the screen capture you included - I'm not sure where that's from... I can't seem to find it

The multiple photos block allows you to select from the items shown in the dropdown for Select From as shown in the screen shot above. I took the screen shot from:

Customize
Customize site...
Choose the page you are customizing (in your example you will probably click on homepage)
Drag in a Multiple Photo contact block (this is the screen shot)
Select the options you'd like to use

I believe there is a limit to the number of photos you can show in a multiple photos block. It is quite large but I would recommend being careful with the numbers there. When a site shows a large number of photos on the home page I usually don't bother looking at any of them. I know, I know, that might just be me, but overwhelming your viewer with photos isn't usually a good idea.

That said, you can choose to place a large number of photos in a multiple photos block.

I'd recommend that you organize your existing galleries into a set of folders that your viewers can use to select a set of galleries to view. Right now it looks like everything is in a category called "photographer" where that category contains all (most?) of your galleries.

If you'd like to see an example, I've grouped my galleries into folders. If you jump to my "gallery" page, that is a page in new smug that contains folders that I have chosen. Click on an entry on that page and you will usually be taken to a page showing galleries within that folder. I say usually because my travel folder contains folders which then contain galleries. I wanted an extra folder level there.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · March 14, 2014

Brody wrote: »

...I like the graphical buttons as well as the text buttons she has to forward people to external social media sites, and I was curious if those are standard features of new smug or if that had been customized. .

I believe they are standard buttons. Try a Social Icons content block from the Social section.

--- Denise

Brody · March 14, 2014

Hi Denise,

There are some things I'm good at and others not so much... SmugMug is in my 'not so much' category. After a few hours into this planned conversion, I remember why I ran over to Google+... I'm terrible at smugMug customization. I know it's doable, I just have to get my approach down.

There are a number of things I wanted to accomplish during this conversion. The first one I had hoped for seems to be a non-option and that was the thumbnail based single gallery landing page, so I must adapt. Trying to be logical, I think I'm going to take this approach:

Hide all of my galleries from public view and leave a half-dozen or so to work with during my learning curve, one being my Favorites, which are my main photos.

I was going to move my Favorites Gallery into a new separate favorites category or folder, whatever it's called [the changing names are not helping either

] Are they still called Galleries? I want to keep those photos separate, because of all else fails I can always send people to that Gallery or folder, again, whatever it's called, because that's where 90% of the photos I care about our stored. That way, if they come up with a way to use a gallery as a landing page, I'll have them isolated.

Next I was going to set up all the formats, structures, Buttons etc. etc. using those half-dozen albums until I get the visual layout the way I wanted it... I think I remember that I can save this process along the way so I can do it on a step-by-step basis and make sure I like it before I do the actual publication. Is that still the case?

I think I'll stop there... First off, I don't want to throw of a mountain of questions at you or anyone else who may have thoughts on this, and I need to understand the things above before I can logically approach anything further...

Maybe I should look at that 5 hour conversion "How To" and see if that's viable in my case

Thanks for all you help Denise. By the way, I really like your butterfly photos - I've always wondered where I could find some to shoot, but I didn't know there were conservatories. I must look into it.

John

denisegoldberg · March 14, 2014

Brody wrote: »

Hi Denise,

There are some things I'm good at and others not so much... SmugMug is in my 'not so much' category. After a few hours into this planned conversion, I remember why I ran over to Google+... I'm terrible at smugMug customization. I know it's doable, I just have to get my approach down.

There are a number of things I wanted to accomplish during this conversion. The first one I had hoped for seems to be a non-option and that was the thumbnail based single gallery landing page, so I must adapt. Trying to be logical, I think I'm going to take this approach:

Hide all of my galleries from public view and leave a half-dozen or so to work with during my learning curve, one being my Favorites, which are my main photos.

I was going to move my Favorites Gallery into a new separate favorites category or folder, whatever it's called [the changing names are not helping either ] Are they still called Galleries? I want to keep those photos separate, because of all else fails I can always send people to that Gallery or folder, again, whatever it's called, because that's where 90% of the photos I care about our stored. That way, if they come up with a way to use a gallery as a landing page, I'll have them isolated.

Next I was going to set up all the formats, structures, Buttons etc. etc. using those half-dozen albums until I get the visual layout the way I wanted it... I think I remember that I can save this process along the way so I can do it on a step-by-step basis and make sure I like it before I do the actual publication. Is that still the case?

I think I'll stop there... First off, I don't want to throw of a mountain of questions at you or anyone else who may have thoughts on this, and I need to understand the things above before I can logically approach anything further...

Maybe I should look at that 5 hour conversion "How To" and see if that's viable in my case

Setting most of your galleries to unlisted and leaving yourself with a few favorites to work with makes sense to me. Are you aware that you can do bulk changes of gallery settings in the organizer?

Galleries are still called galleries.
Categories and subcategories have been replaced by folders. You can have up to 7 levels (see http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1213252-what-s-new-hierarchy-and-folders).

In legacy smug there was the concept of HTML-only galleries, galleries that didn't contain photos but that were usually built using HTML and CSS. In new smug you would build a page for items like this.

I'd recommend taking a bit of time to just play. As you get more familiar with the functionality it should become easier. I think watching the conversion "how to" might help.

I don't believe you will need to customize your galleries much beyond choosing a style and deciding on gallery settings. One hint - if you set all of your galleries to the Default style you can switch your default style in one place and have all galleries switch to that style. To set the default style and to change settings on each of the styles (for example, you can choose the size photos to show in the collage styles), follow these steps:

Open a gallery
Click Customize...
Customize site...
All Galleries should be highlighted
Hover over the gallery (not the breadcrumb but the photos)
Click the wrench icon. You will be taken to a dialog box to choose the default style and customize the styles.

Until you unveil you can publish your changes as you work. Your new site won't be available to anyone but you until you unveil. After you unveil clicking publish makes your changes visible to everyone.

I had a highly customized site (lots of code!) in legacy smug because I wanted larger thumbs than were possible with legacy. In new smugmug I have very little code. Yes, there is some, but the bulk of my site is standard new smug. I would guess that you can create most of your site without any code as well. I don't know if it would help you to know what each page on my site consists of, just in case:

I have set my header and menu on entire site. My footer is also set on entire site.
my homepage contains a single photo
"kaleidoscope" is a page that contains a Galleries block set to "galleries I choose" and an HTML/CSS block. I chose that type of block because I wanted to format the text with HTML. You could choose to use a simpler text block instead, no code needed.
"gallery" is a page that contains a folders block (with "folders I choose")
"about" is a page containing a multiple photo block and a text block
"blog" links to my blog
"g+" links to my Google+ page
"contact" opens the standard smug contact form

If you get stuck on something, don't hesitate to ask questions.

Brody wrote: »

Thanks for all you help Denise. By the way, I really like your butterfly photos - I've always wondered where I could find some to shoot, but I didn't know there were conservatories. I must look into it.

You're very welcome.

I just did a search for butterfly conservatory Los Angeles (assuming your signature has your location) and came up with this - http://www.nhm.org/site/explore-exhibits/special-exhibits/butterfly-pavilion.

--- Denise

Brody · March 14, 2014

Hi Denise,

This is monumentally kind of you to help me with all this information. I may not understand some of it, but you've given me a toe-hold to get going. As you may have seen on my Google+ site that I've been a bit busy over there. The only thing I've come to SmugMug for is to upload photos, let them watermark, and then go back to publish them on Google+ - As far as the coding goes I don't think I've looked at that for at least four years, so I'm beyond rusty...

First, the fun part

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I just did a search for butterfly conservatory Los Angeles (assuming your signature has your location) and came up with this - http://www.nhm.org/site/explore-exhibits/special-exhibits/butterfly-pavilion.

I was a classic science geek kid and spent my weekends as a 12-year-old at this Natural History Museum during the closed hours working on the exhibits and learning from a wonderful curator / bone-digger named Gretchen Sibley - Many years have passed but I still remember every detail of those weekends. Very cool for a kid that age to be even slightly involved in helping assemble the foot of a T-Rex... I had no idea they had a butterfly Conservatory, but if at all possible, I will be there next month

Is there a specific video that you're referring to below that would be the best one to watch? I'm not even sure where to start looking.

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I'd recommend taking a bit of time to just play. As you get more familiar with the functionality it should become easier. I think watching the conversion "how to" might help.

Well... I just tried step 1 and I failed miserably. On your note quoted below, is that in New or Old Smug. I was trying in Old and wasn't having any luck. It raised two issues though:

If I set all galleries to default, won't that change the password protection to on or off for all? I have some private shoots that are available only to the families so I can't open everything up, and I don't want to lock down my public images.

I'm not sure how to reorganize the galleries while making sure that none of the image links are broken in the posts that I have all over the web. I have to be very careful about that for the obvious reasons.

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I don't believe you will need to customize your galleries much beyond choosing a style and deciding on gallery settings. One hint - if you set all of your galleries to the Default style you can switch your default style in one place and have all galleries switch to that style. To set the default style and to change settings on each of the styles (for example, you can choose the size photos to show in the collage styles), follow these steps:
Open a gallery
Click Customize...
Customize site...
All Galleries should be highlighted
Hover over the gallery (not the breadcrumb but the photos)
Click the wrench icon. You will be taken to a dialog box to choose the default style and customize the styles.

Thank you again for your help. It's much appreciated.

John

denisegoldberg · March 14, 2014

Brody wrote: »

Well... I just tried step 1 and I failed miserably. On your note quoted below, is that in New or Old Smug. I was trying in Old and wasn't having any luck. It raised two issues though:

If I set all galleries to default, won't that change the password protection to on or off for all? I have some private shoots that are available only to the families so I can't open everything up, and I don't want to lock down my public images.

I'm not sure how to reorganize the galleries while making sure that none of the image links are broken in the posts that I have all over the web. I have to be very careful about that for the obvious reasons.

I think the organizer is part of new smug.

What I was recommending was setting the style of the galleries to default. But that's new with new smugmug - you may not be able to do that in legacy so it's possible you will need to wait until you unveil. Not sure.

If you want to hide galleries set them to unlisted. The image links (from legacy) should still work. Or just leave the galleries public and don't hide them. Galleries in new smug can be public, unlisted, or private. Private galleries can only be viewed by you when you are logged in. Public and unlisted galleries can have passwords on them. You should be aware that new smug encrypts all passwords so you will no longer be able to see the passwords when you are logged in.

--- Denise

Set specific album as landing page from URL

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