1 gallery with 129 photos

winnjewett · April 12, 2005

I am at a loss. Can someone please explain to me why we can't put a gallery directly on the home page. Why do we have to nest in inside a category? If you only have one gallery inside a category, the user has to click once to see a page with one thumbnail, and click again to see the gallery. I don't get it?

-w

{JT} · April 12, 2005

Well, you can switch to gallery view instead of category view - but that puts all your galleries up. Instead, you probably want to "feature a gallery" that will let you highlight on the homepage but still display your other categories.

winnjewett wrote:

I am at a loss. Can someone please explain to me why we can't put a gallery directly on the home page. Why do we have to nest in inside a category? If you only have one gallery inside a category, the user has to click once to see a page with one thumbnail, and click again to see the gallery. I don't get it?

-w

winnjewett · April 12, 2005

{JT} wrote:

Well, you can switch to gallery view instead of category view - but that puts all your galleries up. Instead, you probably want to "feature a gallery" that will let you highlight on the homepage but still display your other categories.

That works fine until you reach the 4 gallery maximum. I just don't understand the advantage of restricting galleries from being displayed on the home page.
-w

winnjewett · April 17, 2005

Could someone please explain to me the advantage of restricting galleries from being displayed on the home page?
-w

winnjewett · April 18, 2005

bump

rainforest1155 · April 18, 2005

winnjewett wrote:

Could someone please explain to me the advantage of restricting galleries from being displayed on the home page?
-w

There are many reasons I guess. When albums are only meant for specific persons, you just give them the link to this particular album without having to password protect it and distract your general visitor.
It also keeps your homepage cleaner by making certain albums only visible to your own eyes. I do this with my backup-albums, where I keep all my originals.
I also have a album for forum-pictures-only (to link them to dgrin for example) and there's no need to show this on my homepage.

Hope this answears your question,
Sebastian

ginger_55 · April 18, 2005

If you had seen my home page, known my ultimate objectives with my pro acct, etc. You would understand.

My objectives were to sell prints. It didn't start off that way, it started off that I would do events or something, it actually just started out with no structure, just a dream........

The result was that everything was visible on my home page and I just wanted to sell prints of birds and scenics.

I couldn't even find these things. I had galleries of dogs, family, old family, new family, friends, friends dogs, children, every challenge we had done for a year.

Just changing everything to private took forever. Then I had to bring things out that might sell and do it in a decent order. I am still not done, and a few things are not private that should be, they are just clutter.

ginger

winnjewett · April 18, 2005

rainforest1155 wrote:

There are many reasons I guess. When albums are only meant for specific persons, you just give them the link to this particular album without having to password protect it and distract your general visitor.
It also keeps your homepage cleaner by making certain albums only visible to your own eyes. I do this with my backup-albums, where I keep all my originals.
I also have a album for forum-pictures-only (to link them to dgrin for example) and there's no need to show this on my homepage.

Hope this answears your question,
Sebastian

I'm afraid this doesn't answer my question. Let's say that I have one gallery called 'portraits'. I want to put that gallery on my home page. Currently I have to place that gallery inside a category such as 'photography' or 'portraits'. This means that my visitors have to click twice to get to my gallery. I don't think this issue has anything to do with private galleries.

-winn

winnjewett · April 18, 2005

ginger_55 wrote:

If you had seen my home page, known my ultimate objectives with my pro acct, etc. You would understand.

My objectives were to sell prints. It didn't start off that way, it started off that I would do events or something, it actually just started out with no structure, just a dream........

The result was that everything was visible on my home page and I just wanted to sell prints of birds and scenics.

I couldn't even find these things. I had galleries of dogs, family, old family, new family, friends, friends dogs, children, every challenge we had done for a year.

Just changing everything to private took forever. Then I had to bring things out that might sell and do it in a decent order. I am still not done, and a few things are not private that should be, they are just clutter.

ginger

Ginger, I wish I could have seen your home page.
-winn

BenA2 · April 18, 2005

winnjewett wrote:

I'm afraid this doesn't answer my question. Let's say that I have one gallery called 'portraits'. I want to put that gallery on my home page. Currently I have to place that gallery inside a category such as 'photography' or 'portraits'. This means that my visitors have to click twice to get to my gallery. I don't think this issue has anything to do with private galleries.

-winn

True, but like JT said, you could just make 'portraits' a feature gallery to make it appear on your home page without having to click through a category.

Ben

winnjewett · April 18, 2005

BenA2 wrote:

True, but like JT said, you could just make 'portraits' a feature gallery to make it appear on your home page without having to click through a category.

Ben

That works fine until you want five of these on your home page. There are certainly plenty of excuses that can be made to explain why the situation isn't that bad. I would like a simple explination for why restricting galleries from the home page is advantageous.

-winn

rainforest1155 · April 18, 2005

winnjewett wrote:

I'm afraid this doesn't answer my question. Let's say that I have one gallery called 'portraits'. I want to put that gallery on my home page. Currently I have to place that gallery inside a category such as 'photography' or 'portraits'. This means that my visitors have to click twice to get to my gallery. I don't think this issue has anything to do with private galleries.

Ok, I think I get your point. JT answeared this already I think: You have to turn off categories in general and then all your albums will be listed on the homepage.

Not being able to more mix albums and categories is obviously to remain a simple enough user interface. I think it would be a little bit messy being able to freely put categories and albums on the frontpage (might also confuse your users). Therefore you have the featured albums and yes, 4 of them is not much, but I can live with it.

Maybe we could settle on a feature request for an option to raise the number of featured if the user wishes so.

Sebastian

ginger_55 · April 18, 2005

I think this is something that confused me, too. Then I found out I could name my category anything I wanted. Boy was that nice. I had even more stuff on the front page.

But wouldn't that solve your problem. If you named your category portraits, all they would have to do would be to click on portraits.

Does that help?

ginger

onethumb · April 18, 2005

winnjewett wrote:

That works fine until you want five of these on your home page. There are certainly plenty of excuses that can be made to explain why the situation isn't that bad. I would like a simple explination for why restricting galleries from the home page is advantageous.

-winn

smugmug has always allowed placing galleries on your homepage. Simply change "Display: Categories" to "Display: Galleries".

If you're looking to mix-and-match galleries AND categories on your homepage, well, that's much more diffult. Your requested simple explanation is: it's never been asked for and it would be very difficult to write in a way that would be Easy, smugmug's #1 goal.

Don

winnjewett · April 18, 2005

onethumb wrote:

smugmug has always allowed placing galleries on your homepage. Simply change "Display: Categories" to "Display: Galleries".

If you're looking to mix-and-match galleries AND categories on your homepage, well, that's much more diffult. Your requested simple explanation is: it's never been asked for and it would be very difficult to write in a way that would be Easy, smugmug's #1 goal.

Don

Don, thank you for that very simple and direct answer. It makes perfect sense. I wonder if putting a default category called 'home page' at the top of the list would be easy enough for SM users. Any gallery in this category would go directly to the home page I think this could eliminate the need for some users to 1) feature a gallery and 2) make that gallery private.

It would also improve the cookie trail so that it would display:

home > portraits

instead of

home > portraits > portraits

I say that this would be an improvement because the category 'portraits' serves no functional purpose.

I cannot speak to the difficulty of implementation, but I believe that this would improve smugmug's ease of use for all users, beginners and experts alike.

I do not think that the importance of this modification should be judged by the number of user requests. I think that you, the experts both in web development and in product service should evaluate the current system to see whether your customers could be better served.

I also want to mention that this request stems purely from a desire to help smugmug improve its service and product. I do not use the homepage at all, so its functionality will have no effect on my website's functionality.

-winn
-winn

1 gallery with 129 photos

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