How to stop old nickname from forwarding to new nickname?

Rando · February 15, 2007

I made the mistake of leaving my galleries public and now they are indexed by google. In attempting to try and make those links invalid I thought I'd be able to change my nickname but it appears when you go to my old nickname it just gets forwarded to my new nickname (i.e. oldnick.smugmug.com/gallery/xxxx just redirects to newnick.smugmug.com/gallery/xxxx). How do I go about stopping the forwarding from the old to the new?

Andy · February 15, 2007

Rando wrote:

I made the mistake of leaving my galleries public and now they are indexed by google. In attempting to try and make those links invalid I thought I'd be able to change my nickname but it appears when you go to my old nickname it just gets forwarded to my new nickname (i.e. oldnick.smugmug.com/gallery/xxxx just redirects to newnick.smugmug.com/gallery/xxxx). How do I go about stopping the forwarding from the old to the new?

Hi, it can't be done.

Anything http://*.smugmug.com/gallery/XXXXXX or http://*.smugmug.com/photos/XXXXXXX-S.jpg for example will always preserve the links.

Why? People change nicks all the time

Rando · February 15, 2007

I remeber seeing a posting here that had a javascript where if the referrer wasn't from your site, you were able to redirect. I've been searching the forums high and low and I can't find it.

Andy · February 15, 2007

Rando wrote:

I remeber seeing a posting here that had a javascript where if the referrer wasn't from your site, you were able to redirect. I've been searching the forums high and low and I can't find it.

Maybe on the Advanced FAQ:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=52811

#82 the url swapper ?

dmc · February 15, 2007

Rando wrote:

I remeber seeing a posting here that had a javascript where if the referrer wasn't from your site, you were able to redirect. I've been searching the forums high and low and I can't find it.

I have this code in my footer... anyone coming to my site from www.smugmug.com is sent packing... It has helped keep away smugmug "browsers"

if((document.referrer.indexOf("www.smugmug") >= 0 &&
document.referrer.indexOf("login.mg") < 0) ||
document.referrer.indexOf("google.com") >= 0 ) {
  location.href = "http://www.smugmug.com";
}

Rando · February 15, 2007

Andy:
The URL swapper only works with the newnick.smugmug.com and only for the homepage not the /gallery/xxxx pages

DMC:
I tried the footer one with the following results:
***If I do a smugmug search of my name and it finds me, it redirects to www.smugmug.com. Good.
If I manually enter in my homepage, newnick.smugmug.com it doesn't redirect and that's fine. Good.
If I manually enter in my homepage for oldnick.smugmug.com it redirects to www.smugmug.com. Good
***If I click on a google search result that is oldnick.smugmug.com/gallery/1234, it redirects to www.smugmug.com. Good.
If I manually enter in the a link from the search results that has oldnick.smugmug.com/gallery/1234, it redirects to newnick.smugmug.com/gallery/1234. Bad.

For the "***" instances however, it stores where it's being redirected from in the browser history. All I have to do is hit the back button and ESC quickly to see the URL where I was redirected from. That's bad.

I know I made a big mistake by using my real name for my domain in the first place.
I know I can't easily make the search results disappear especially in the way you can't modify meta tags or robots.txt to prevent from indexing in the first place.

As a fix, I'm working on killing every single link that shows up in google.
I've killed the CNAME ones for my custom domain by changing it.
But the problem now is I can't kill the oldnick.smugmug.com/gallery/xxxx's links because they get redirected to my newnick.smugmug.com

Now, the reason I'm freaking out about this is because I'm getting ready to go job hunting and when it comes down to it someone crafty enough can get to my smugmug galleries. Even if I password protect it's still an active link. I want a dead link.

It's looking more and more the the only I can do is to have my account deleted. I don't want that.

jfriend · February 15, 2007

Would this be cleaner?

Rando wrote:

I know I made a big mistake by using my real name for my domain in the first place.
I know I can't easily make the search results disappear especially in the way you can't modify meta tags or robots.txt to prevent from indexing in the first place.

Now, the reason I'm freaking out about this is because I'm getting ready to go job hunting and when it comes down to it someone crafty enough can get to my smugmug galleries. Even if I password protect it's still an active link. I want a dead link.

Would it be simpler and cleaner to just re-upload all your images into new galleries that are private or password protected, then once they are successfully uploaded, you can remove the original galleries. All old links would then be permanently dead and no new links would be indexed.

If you don't easily have all the original images, you can use one of the third party tools to download them all before re-uploading.

dmc · February 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Would it be simpler and cleaner to just re-upload all your images into new galleries that are private or password protected, then once they are successfully uploaded, you can remove the original galleries. All old links would then be permanently dead and no new links would be indexed.

If you don't easily have all the original images, you can use one of the third party tools to download them all before re-uploading.

along these lines, you could "move" your pics from one gallery to a new one.... this will break the gallery id links Kind of a PIA... maybe the SmugBrowser (firefox app) can help with this.

how many pics/galleries are we talking here?

dmc · February 15, 2007

Rando wrote:

DMC:
I tried the footer one with the following results:
...If I manually enter in the a link from the search results that has oldnick.smugmug.com/gallery/1234, it redirects to newnick.smugmug.com/gallery/1234. Bad.
...

this makes sense, the url is "fixed" well before our footer code is executed...

devbobo · February 15, 2007

dmc wrote:

if((document.referrer.indexOf("www.smugmug") >= 0 &&
document.referrer.indexOf("login.mg") < 0) ||
document.referrer.indexOf("google.com") >= 0 ) {
  location.href = "http://www.smugmug.com";
}

indexOf :yikes

MY EYES MY EYES

Rando · February 15, 2007

dmc wrote:

along these lines, you could "move" your pics from one gallery to a new one.... this will break the gallery id links Kind of a PIA... maybe the SmugBrowser (firefox app) can help with this.

how many pics/galleries are we talking here?

At the moment ~5600 pics at ~13GB in 42 galleries. I still have another ~50GB I was organizing into albums into Aperture (I've totally given up on kewwording because of the private gallery issues). I was expecting the individual gallery/photo links to be broken when I changed the nickname but that doesn't appear so.

I don't know, I'm looking around at other options, the privacy issues are kinda ending the honeymoon here.

jfriend · February 15, 2007

Rando wrote:

At the moment ~5600 pics at ~13GB in 42 galleries. I still have another ~50GB I was organizing into albums into Aperture (I've totally given up on kewwording because of the private gallery issues). I was expecting the individual gallery/photo links to be broken when I changed the nickname but that doesn't appear so.

I don't know, I'm looking around at other options, the privacy issues are kinda ending the honeymoon here.

If you can temporarily go somewhere that has a fast internet connection (work, library, internet cafe, etc...), you can use one of the multi-gallery uploaders (like StarExplorer) to queue up all 5600 pics for upload hit go and then just wait for it to complete. The additional 50GB is a wash either way. Presumably, you can just upload those to private or password protected galleries from the start.

Rando · February 15, 2007

jfriend wrote:

If you can temporarily go somewhere that has a fast internet connection (work, library, internet cafe, etc...), you can use one of the multi-gallery uploaders (like StarExplorer) to queue up all 5600 pics for upload hit go and then just wait for it to complete. The additional 50GB is a wash either way. Presumably, you can just upload those to private or password protected galleries from the start.

Thanks for the suggestion, I was thinking about something similar but there are just a few logistical issues with letting the 5600 rip. I do have 1 Mbs upstream, but unfortunately I have a G4 powerbook so starexplorer is out. I do have a PC but my Aperture library is on an HFS+ formatted firewire drive and the PC only has USB 1.1 (it's a really old P233) and work is real finicky about internet usage.

AnneMcBean · February 16, 2007

Hey Rando,

For what it's worth, moving photos to a different gallery will not solve the problem. At least without using a crafty trick that I'm not aware of.

The issue is that as long as your galleries retain their gallery IDs (XXXXX), typing in http://smugmug.com/gallery/XXXXX will still take you to that gallery.

Ditto with the photos retaining their image IDs (XXXX) . http://smugmug.com/photos/XXXX-O.jpg will continue to work.

This by design, as Andy mentioned.

So, moving photos around, renaming your SmugMug nick, renaming galleries, etc. will not do the trick. Brand new galleries and newly uploaded photos WILL do the trick. Make 2nd copy will work, because it generates a new Image ID... Replace photo will NOT work, because it retains the image ID.

I hope that helps. I'm sorry I don't have the answer you were hoping for.

-Anne

How to stop old nickname from forwarding to new nickname?

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