Nesting Galleries ?

LouBuonomo · January 24, 2005

I am planning on revamping my galleries and would like to have a more nested structure if possible.

For example

Nature -> Avian --> Small Birds --> Cardinals
BlueJay
House Finch

Can I do this ?

Lou

Allen · January 24, 2005

The only way I found is create a subcategory named birds
and place all the bird galleries under it.
example:
http://atsmith.smugmug.com/Creatures
See birds subcategory.
AL

LouBuonomo wrote:

I am planning on revamping my galleries and would like to have a more nested structure if possible.

For example

Nature -> Avian --> Small Birds --> Cardinals
BlueJay
House Finch

Can I do this ?

Lou

LouBuonomo · January 24, 2005

Thanks AL. I was hoping to get one to two levels deeper. Right now I have

Nature --> Avian
--> Wildlife

And then galleries under them.

Lou

onethumb · January 25, 2005

LouBuonomo wrote:

Thanks AL. I was hoping to get one to two levels deeper. Right now I have

Nature --> Avian
--> Wildlife

And then galleries under them.

Lou

Currently, this isn't possible.

Furthermore, it would require a pretty major rewrite of the way categories/subcategories now work.

We're willing to do the work, though, if we thought it would benefit most of the people who use smugmug. We're not, however, convinced that's the case.

In the spirit of smugmug's open communication policy, I'll be completely honest with you: I'm not happy with the way Categories and SubCategories work. I wish we had an elegant way of making the problem both flexible (as many levels deep as you'd like) and accessible (computer novices can navigate their way through them). At this point in time, we haven't come up with a way to do it, so I'm afraid my hands are tied.

The perfect example of the problem is Yahoo!. When they started, their directory of the web was awesome. Very handy, easy to use, and worked just like it should. Then, the net exploded, and layer upon nested layer was added to Yahoo, and overnight, Yahoo's directory sucked, and your average computer user can't find what they need to find.

The vast majority of current smugmug users (whether they're customers or just browsing) aren't computer experts and are easily confused when we make poor design decisions. Chief among these is navigation, or "how do I get back to where I started?" and "How do I find the photo I want?". The more layers you add, the more rapidly you reduce your audience.

I'm just ballparking here, based on conversations we've had with the computer novices in our lives, but I think we'd reduce our target viewing audience by as much as 50% if they were forced to navigate 6 levels of complexity rather than the current 4 levels (user -> category -> subcategory -> gallery). Some people already have a hard time finding their way around and getting back as it is, even with our (imho) easy-to-follow breadcrumbs. I've had people tell me their moms were unable to view their photos because there were just too many clicks to get to them. That makes for unhappy customers.

We have customers with more than 30,000 photos who are living comfortably in the 4-tier architecture we currently have. That's a pretty huge number of photos (to be honest, that's more than I expected anyone to upload to a single smugmug account. I love it when my customers show me how wrong I am, though

.

If anyone would care to chime in with suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Here's the criteria that *must* be met for the suggestion to have merit:

- It must be easy for novice users to navigate, both "down" to the photos and back "up" to the parent user and everything in between.

- It must be easy for novice customers to create, organize, lay out, and manage. (We don't do a good enough job of this as it is, even with our simplified architecture, though we're working on it).

- It must continue to look great (example: the breadcrumbs can't continue to just get larger and larger, forcing the text to wrap and pushing the photos down on the page so there's scrolling).

So, have at it. Give it to me. Our customers have, over and over, been much better than we are at dreaming up features, so here's your chance.

Don

marlinspike · January 25, 2005

I don't know how to make more layers convenient, but I think with the current set up, users (not customers, since I think customers of smugmug can figure out their own site) would find how to go back easier if instead of the nickname/name/whatever you set in the settings appear as a link to home, it just said home (I solved this myself by putting a home link in my header). I was showing my roomate from last year my website, and he couldn't figure out that he was supposed to click on "Richard" to go back to the main page, or how to go back to the sub-category/category. Once I told him "Richard" meant home, he had no problem figuring out that the stuff at the top is to let you navigate through the pages.

LouBuonomo · January 25, 2005

Don,

Thanks for being open and honest. I would have to do some thinking but maybe if SM had an explorer view that could be called up. I would think most computer users know can handle an explorer.

Since I shoot primarly nature that one extra level would alow me to break up my catagories into a more meaningful structure.

Most of my friends have gone the route of rolling their own website to get the nesting but I think service SM in the end will do a much better job.

I am just getting started looking at my co-branding options.

Cheers,
Lou

mercphoto · January 25, 2005

onethumb wrote:

The vast majority of current smugmug users (whether they're customers or just browsing) aren't computer experts and are easily confused when we make poor design decisions.

Have I learned that! I'm surprised at times the simple questions I get regarding to finding a buying a photo. Keep things simple. Correct me if I'm wrong onethumb, but if a Pro user wants really change the way his site works, that can be done through cobranding and custom HTML. I'm not sure what the limits are to this approach.

Allen · January 25, 2005

How bout two navigation buttons, home and back, under the current one. I too have to explain how to navigate by clicking things in top left corner. Most people have no idea how navigation works, at least the ones around here

.

marlinspike wrote:

I don't know how to make more layers convenient, but I think with the current set up, users (not customers, since I think customers of smugmug can figure out their own site) would find how to go back easier if instead of the nickname/name/whatever you set in the settings appear as a link to home, it just said home (I solved this myself by putting a home link in my header). I was showing my roomate from last year my website, and he couldn't figure out that he was supposed to click on "Richard" to go back to the main page, or how to go back to the sub-category/category. Once I told him "Richard" meant home, he had no problem figuring out that the stuff at the top is to let you navigate through the pages.

sit · January 25, 2005

sharegroups interaction

onethumb wrote:

- It must be easy for novice users to navigate, both "down" to the photos and back "up" to the parent user and everything in between.

Sharegroups violate the simplicity of the current navigation system.

As you are drilling down among the albums (which are not organized by category, but merely listed), you appear to be drilling down into the group, e.g. "onethumb > friends > galleryname". But, when you look at the album itself, you see the "real" navigation crumbs, e.g. "onethumb > Weddings > galleryname". Then when the user clicks back up on "Weddings" or "onethumb", there is some completely different view than what was shown before.

Perhaps it would be clearer if sharegroups were more like capabilities: when you visit the sharegroup URL, it would expand the list of albums that are shown to include the private albums in the sharegroup. But otherwise it would looks like the normal site --- all the non-private albums are visible as well and everything would be organized the same way (either by category or as a complete list). An additional feature would be to display a sharegroup featured album. If you visit more than one sharegroup, the display would be additive. A small icon could be added (similar to the password protect icon) to indicate that the album is visible because you visited a sharegroup (maybe too confusing?).

NikonGirl · January 25, 2005

I just want to add my 2 cents. I would also like to see a "home" button to allow people to go quickly to my home page. Then navigation buttons are confusing to most people, it's just not "intuitive" that clicking on my name will get people back to the home page.

Markjay · January 29, 2005

To Chris (smugmug)
You probably don't remember this but, AGES ago I requested that you make one simple change to the navigation of galleries..........

a "Home" button or better yet, change the default username title (In my case Mark Javer's Galleries) with........

a HOME link and a BACK link

You may believe that the two decorative looking arrows you now supply as navigation buttons are sufficient but, I can tell you from the feedback I get from MANY visitors to my site, that they initially thought they were merely page decorations.

Can't you replace the left "arrow" with the WORD Back? How hard can that be?
(now you can go into a rage and tell me how ingorant I am, 'cause I am :-)

Surely, you can't truly believe that a decorative looking arrow that is many times misinterpreted as just that.... a decorative looking arrow, could be easier to figure out as a navigation link than the word, Back?

All that being said, I can not express to you how much I appreciate all the great feature additions you have included lately. I'm a big fan of Smugmug and, I wish more people would list me as their referal source :-)

Markjay

Nikolai · January 29, 2005

Explorer View

LouBuonomo wrote:

Don,
I would have to do some thinking but maybe if SM had an explorer view that could be called up. I would think most computer users know can handle an explorer.

Actually, it exists, even in (at least) two variations.
First is recently introduced SmugDAV (Mac OS X and Windows XP)
Second is a almost two month old smugmug explorer - Windows client side application, tuned for XP (and higher). Thus far should work for 2000/Me/98 too, not sure for how long, though - I have some plans..:-)

HTH

Nikolai · January 29, 2005

Don
First of all, thank you very much for your open and detailed answer. One of the things that immediately got SM close to my heart/mind/liver/other vital organs is the opennes and responsiveness of "smugmug family".

I do understand what you say. Being a programmer I know from experience how hard it is to create a solution which both rookies and experts would enjoy.
Quite often, however, the solution simply lies in a level of customization allowed.
Im'sure you've seen a lot of "dual" UIs, usually having two different modes "standard" and "advanced". In a standard mode you lock out most of the features. No more than two levels, for instance. Hide (not disable! hide!) all the options unavailalbe for this account type, etc.
And somewhere deep in the acccount settings you put a humble check box named "Expert mode" (Advanced mode. Genius mode. Whatever:-). I'd switch it on immediately. My mom probably would never find it.
That should bring all you have - links to hacks, all possible configuration options, etc.
You can even go beyond simple boolean distinction. I'd dare to suggest a third mode - "In development" (Alpha. Bleeding edge. Here be dragons. Backup your system first, etc.). This way you can differentiate stable advanced features from those that you eventually gonna put into first two, but which are in dire need of testing, hence, "in development":-)

Other than that, my only - kinda permanent:-) - Big Wish is that you always eat your dogfood first. I mean - you decide what you gonna do, design an API, then use it yourself. Once you are satisfied with its results - let us use it. This you kill two ducks in one shot - feature is thyere and ready to be used not only by SM users, but also by us, 3d party ppl:-)
But I guess, that's just me. Well, maybe rutt likes this, too.:-)

I have many other things to say, but I prolly should wait until May. I'd enjoy some nice and relaxed shop talk over a good martini (and if their bartender sucks, I'll make some:-) under the shade of the Half-Dome..

(BTW - there is no martini icon!!!)

Cheers!

Nesting Galleries ?

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