Newbie Questions!

[Jarvo]

Hey All,

I've just signed up for the smugmug demo ... on the PowerUser one, although thinking of subscribing to the pro one. I'd also looked at Zenfolio ... but the lack of commenting made it a "no-no". My photo's are mainly just hobby pics, but I am venturing into "photoblogging" where I extract one decent photo and then make that stand out from the rest. I'm at a point where I'm messing with aperture and shutter modes to see how it impacts the images etc.

I've posted before about the nice to haves, which was chiefly integrating the ability to print in the UK. Other than Photobox, whose site is very poor, there are NO other Pro photo hosting companies which allow UK printing. This is very much a niche market that I think could be advantageous. At present I don't think I'd have anyone interested in buying my images, even the photoblog ones, but to allow family and friends to order their own prints directly from the site would be lovely!

Anyway, back to my problem:
The only photo's I've uploaded so far are for my Sister in Law's wedding, as a test of Smugmug, but also because she was pesting me for the photos!

I have two questions:

1) Despite uploading the photo's yesterday, is there anyway to change the album creation date to that of the Wedding?! This would be great for time sensitive events, such as vacations, where I can pinpoint time.

2) Geotagging - I realise there is a limit of 150 tags per account, and that "bulk updating" is on it's way. However is there a way, or "can there be a way" ... to tag an album, rather than just one photo in an album? For instance the Wedding was in Shrewsbury in the UK, and tagging the album would work better and quicker than tagging just one image.

3) I've set the "theme" of the wedding gallery to be very wedding-esque ... however when you click on keywords, it goes back to the standard Smugmug theme. Am I missing something, or is this by design?


Lastly ... since I'm pretty sold on signing up for Power User or Pro Hosting .... feel free to give me your referrer code when replying!

Cheers

Tom

[PBolchover]

For you usage, I doubt if you'd gain much by going for a Pro account - that's mainly for people who wish to sell photos (or need to hand out a guest password).

To answer your questions:
1) There is no easy way to change the update date. It's probably possible to hack it via javascript, but it'd be messy. One possibility is not to display the update dates (e.g. via the "clean" setting), and include the date in the album title ("Joan and Peter's wedding: April 2008")

2) Keyword results potentially span multiple galleries. They ignore the gallery theme, and use your site-wide default theme.

[Jarvo]

Excellent thanks for the reply on those.

I'm still trying to decide between the two account types as the only features of pro I'd use are:

Use custom watermarks
Protect your images from theft
Create a guest password for others to upload
Add bigger files (up to 24 mb)
Add Hi-Def videoAlthough really it will probably only be the watermarks, larger files and video that I will use!

[hyachts]

2) Geotagging - I realise there is a limit of 150 tags per account,

Huh!? Really? How does that work? Once you hit 150 geotagged photos do the oldest ones start losing the mapping ability?

EDIT: Never mind - what I just read I think indicates that the 150 limit is for a given map (e.g. the "Around the World" map). If I'm wrong, somebody please let me know.

[PBolchover]

The 150 is a google-imposed limit of how many placemarks can be displayed on a single map.