Blogger dilemma

photoman10 · November 28, 2020

My first post here, why? I am new to SM, my previous host had a built in blog that was fast, easy, and worked good for SEO. I am pretty disappointed that one major tool that is needed for a photography site is missing such a valuable feature.

I have poured over many threads both here and on the internet and have see the workaround. That to me is a very labor intensive process fraught with peril if you are not a coder. I am not a coder I am a photographer and do not want to spend hours managing a manual blog for SEO and more visibility but at the same time i need a blog.

it is my understanding that if I got a blogger account on google that is one solution as far as the blog goes but that does me nothing for my website even if it did it would do nothing for SEO. I have been told the code for iframe to embed the blog on my page does not work on SM. I know NOTHING about Wordpress or the discussion how to link the two together.

I have played with the custom pages and in fact made a couple, very disappoint as it is very limited in scope which means to jazz up the pages I either need to learn to code or find code that meets my needs.

I see this is an age old issue with SM and also see that SM has responded many times saying an integrated blog is on their mind for the future, something it appears has been the party line for many years.

Has anyone recently come up with a solution for us non coders that is simple, easy to manage, that will successfully help SEO, that does not cost even more money, if used? I know whatever I do now would disappear if SM did come out with an integrated blog as most assuredly all the links would be different once converted so really it is a catch 22 in many ways. Not to mention a lot of re-work on my part.

Sorry for the rant but I just got a reply from a SM Support Hero that he would put adding a "blog" in as a feature request. Very frustrated.

denisegoldberg · November 28, 2020

You can't use iframes so you would need to either customize your blog to match your SmugMug site or customize your SmugMug site to match your blog.

As far as I know you will need to use some code to match your blog and your SmugMug site unless you use pages on your SmugMug site for your blog. There is a tutorial on creating a blog on your SmugMug site at https://school.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Tips/How-to-Make-a-Photo-Blog.

I wanted the facilities of a blogging site so I use Blogger for my blog and SmugMug for my photos. I updated the code in Blogger to match the header to my SmugMug site. Links to my sites are in my signature (below).

@Hikin' Mike matched his SmugMug site with his Wordpress site.

Hikin' Mike · November 28, 2020

SmugMug is great for displaying photos but not so much for blogging as you figured out. I really doubt SM will ever implement some type of blog. If you want a blog you'll have to use a "3rd-Party" solution. Like @denisegoldberg mentioned, she opted for Blogger and I went for WordPress. I did the self-hosting version of WordPress as my main website and created a subdomain to "point" my SM gallery to that. It just matched my SM to my WP site, but I do know coding.

photoman10 · November 29, 2020

> @denisegoldberg said:
> You can't use iframes so you would need to either customize your blog to match your SmugMug site or customize your SmugMug site to match your blog.
>
> As far as I know you will need to use some code to match your blog and your SmugMug site unless you use pages on your SmugMug site for your blog. There is a tutorial on creating a blog on your SmugMug site at https://school.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Tips/How-to-Make-a-Photo-Blog.
>
> I wanted the facilities of a blogging site so I use Blogger for my blog and SmugMug for my photos. I updated the code in Blogger to match the header to my SmugMug site. Links to my sites are in my signature (below).
>
> @"Hikin' Mike" matched his SmugMug site with his Wordpress site.

Thanks for the feedback, I like your approach as the visitor does not realize they are changing sites unless they are looking at the URL change. That works for me perfectly.
You even have the menu staying really close between the two.
I went with a slightly different look on my site that pretty much mirrored my previous site before I switched hosts to SM so I would probably have a little trouble matching color and texture on blogger?
Has this concept helped you with traffic?
Has it improved your SEO ranking?
Here is my site if you want to look and recommend style changes to make things easier. I don't know if blogger has enough control to make it look like my site?

https://www.normstokesphotography.com

Being new to this forum I don't know how to have the nice signature line like you and Hikin Mike yet. :). Heck I had trouble finding my own post. Again, thanks for the hand.

photoman10 · November 29, 2020

@Hikin' Mike said:
SmugMug is great for displaying photos but not so much for blogging as you figured out. I really doubt SM will ever implement some type of blog. If you want a blog you'll have to use a "3rd-Party" solution. Like @denisegoldberg mentioned, she opted for Blogger and I went for WordPress. I did the self-hosting version of WordPress as my main website and created a subdomain to "point" my SM gallery to that. It just matched my SM to my WP site, but I do know coding.

I'd get lost trying to figure how to do that out, used to but after suffering a TBI them skills are gone but having SM as a subdomain probably helps more with SEO? I think @denisegoldberg has what might be the easiest for me if i can figure out how to make blogger look like my site. thanks

Hikin' Mike · November 29, 2020

@photoman10 said:
I'd get lost trying to figure how to do that out, used to but after suffering a TBI them skills are gone but having SM as a subdomain probably helps more with SEO? I think @denisegoldberg has what might be the easiest for me if i can figure out how to make blogger look like my site. thanks

I use WordPress because I was already using WP as my website way before I came upon SmugMug and I was familiar with WP. From what little I know about Blogger, it seems more user-friendly to match the two platforms (Blogger and SM).

photoman10 · November 29, 2020

@Hikin' Mike said:

@photoman10 said:
I'd get lost trying to figure how to do that out, used to but after suffering a TBI them skills are gone but having SM as a subdomain probably helps more with SEO? I think @denisegoldberg has what might be the easiest for me if i can figure out how to make blogger look like my site. thanks

I use WordPress because I was already using WP as my website way before I came upon SmugMug and I was familiar with WP. From what little I know about Blogger, it seems more user-friendly to match the two platforms (Blogger and SM).

I just found a way on blogger (internet article) where I should be able to match things up pretty close. I am going to try and set up an account tomorrow as it appears to be my easiest solution.

denisegoldberg · November 29, 2020

@photoman10 said:
Being new to this forum I don't know how to have the nice signature line like you and Hikin Mike yet. . Heck I had trouble finding my own post. Again, thanks for the hand.

New users are limited for a short period of time and number of posts. I think you should be OK now.

To add a signature line...

Click on your name to go to your profile page
Click on the drop-down to the right of the line showing your id
Click Edit Profile.
To add a signature, click Signature settings. Note that to make the entries in your signature clickable you will need to add https:// to the front of your URL.

Best wishes on your work to match blogger to your SmugMug site.

BoothMasters · December 9, 2020

Another vote for wordpress. We run smugmug on a separate domain from our main blog. This way, we can do all of our remarketing pixels, opt-in forms, lead collection, etc... and then our smugmug galleries are on a separate non-primary domain, and we embed the galleries in our blog posts.

photoman10 · December 9, 2020

I will have to look into wordpress

Blogger dilemma

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