smugmug new features - June 17th, 2005

[onethumb]

Been busy over here at the smugmug HQ! Here's what's new and changed:

- Speed boost. You should see a noticeably snappier reaction when clicking around smugmug.

- Can now delete album templates.

- Can now batch apply album templates.

- Can now preview the affects of album templates on your gallery settings page.

- Community update includes "most popular" communities, searching for communities, browsing by name.

- You can now delete communities you own.

- 'Featuring' a community gallery now works on all gallery styles (only worked on Elegant before)

- Cobranding should properly work on the community and user level now.

- Pro pricing had a bug fix when increasing prices on items that didn't have pricing already.

- Images in a gallery with HideOwner enabled were refreshing slowly on Internet Explorer because IE sucks. Fixed.

- Custom domains should now "auto-forward" multiple hostnames on the same domain to your custom hostname. If you use, for example, myphotos.mydomain.com, you can now point myphotos2.mydomain.com and mydomain.com to smugmug and they will redirect to myphotos.mydomain.com.

- The organize galleries interface on your homepage has gotten a minor (but important!) facelift. Should be more obvious now.

- Power & Pro accounts can now, using customization, get rid of "search fo all users" and related links on their search result pages.

- Single-word wildcard searching works again. 'band*' will find 'bandana' for example.

- The math for your referrals page was broken. Fixed, we hope. :)

- Bugs related to the display of your renewal date fixed.

- Accounts were prematurely getting locked for renewals if your card was expired. Should now be fixed.

Whew, lots more small bug fixes, I'm sure. I'll post more if I think of them.

In addition, you might like to know what architecture improvements we've made in the last two weeks or so:

- Aggregate bandwidth available increased nearly 500%. We went from 45Mbps (max) to 245Mbps (max) and will soon reach 300Mbps.

- Web server capacity increased 50%.

- Upload server capacity increased 50%.

- Database server capacity increased 200%.


Enjoy!

Don

[Nikolai]

Wow, Don, you guys *were* busy!
Great news, thank you very much for you hard work (and for the update:-)!:thumb
Cheers!:1drink

[onethumb]

Also, we could use some testing on our new BETA uploader (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=13499) if you get a chance.

Don

[jfriend]

Been busy over here at the smugmug HQ! Here's what's new and changed:
Wow, it IS noticeably faster. Feels snappy again, expecially clicking around on different images in the Elegant style. Thanks.

This should help a ton when faced with "pbase is faster" comments.

--John

[DavidTO]

Major speed boost. Awesome.

[Baldy]

Also, there is a whole new set of help sections on getting great prints.

They're sure to set off some controversy.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-problems

But they're absolutely what we see every day with pro prints.

[SnapTheFrog]

Also, we could use some testing on our new BETA uploader (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=13499) if you get a chance.

Don
Don, I can tell you it's not working, or at least the one that is available to download for Macs isn't working.
Log in fails every time. :dunno

[Barb]

Been busy over here at the smugmug HQ! Here's what's new and changed:

- Speed boost. You should see a noticeably snappier reaction when clicking around smugmug.

- Can now delete album templates.

- Can now batch apply album templates.

- Can now preview the affects of album templates on your gallery settings page.

Wow, thank you SmugMug! I just love the new delete options :) And the speed is quite noticable.

[Baldy]

Don, I can tell you it's not working, or at least the one that is available to download for Macs isn't working.
Log in fails every time. :dunnoApple is notorious about breaking Java and you probably did a software update recently where they broke it yet again.

This patch (http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/04/21/java/index.php) should speed you on your way.

[marlinspike]

But when will we see the upgrade I want most: custom watermarking (or at least custom opacity to the watermark)? I suppose it shows just how good smugmug is when my only desire is a custom watermark, but it's one that I desire greatly (I thought this one had grown on me, and it has for bright day shots, but not for nighttime shots).
Richard

[muddyknees]

Also, there is a whole new set of help sections on getting great prints.

They're sure to set off some controversy.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-problems

But they're absolutely what we see every day with pro prints.That's a real nice barchart of the frequency of problems of various types:thumb , and I found myself clicking first the graphics, then the text, then doubleclicking, then checking my network connection :scratch before reallizing those graphics and text were not hyperlinked to information on the typical reasons and solutions to those problems.

gary

edit:
OK, I;m back after finding the link to the info I was looking for: in the paragraph above the bar chart, and am now left with an idle question on the "tanning salon" - does it alter the "original" file? (My guess is yes.)

[Andy]

wow.

:clap :clap :clap

[Baldy]

That's a real nice barchart of the frequency of problems of various types:thumb , and I found myself clicking first the graphics, then the text, then doubleclicking, then checking my network connection :scratch before reallizing those graphics and text were not hyperlinked to information on the typical reasons and solutions to those problems.

gary

edit:
OK, I;m back after finding the link to the info I was looking for: in the paragraph above the bar chart, and am now left with an idle question on the "tanning salon" - does it alter the "original" file? (My guess is yes.)I want to make those bars clickable to a help section, but we don't have a help section for each of them yet.

Yes, the Tanning Salon permanently alters the files.

Did everyone see Andy's example in the washed out help section (http://www.smugmug.com/help/washed-out)?

[rainforest1155]

Huge thank you from Germany, the new speed is incredible!! :clap :thumb
Before it took 3 or several more seconds before the new page loaded (I mean the html file, not the pictures!), now it's down to 1 second or so!

YEAH! :D

[igoforit]

Many thanks. This was the single biggest issue with Smugmug for me.
Thanks again,

Jos

[Maki]

Absolutely fantastic speed boost! Thank you!

[Maki]

...bugger... I just tried this and it killed all the Featured gallery photos.

[onethumb]

...bugger... I just tried this and it killed all the Featured gallery photos.

Would like to look into this, but have no idea what your smugmug URL is. Mind sharing? :)

Don

[Richard S]

Sorry I must be missing something. Can somebody please tell me the
exact page I navigate to in order to delete album templates, or to the
help page the explains this new feature?

Thanks.

[Barb]

Sorry I must be missing something. Can somebody please tell me the
exact page I navigate to in order to delete album templates, or to the
help page the explains this new feature?

Thanks.
Hi :)

If you go into customize gallery, and in the drop-down menu at the top, highlight one of the templates that you want to delete, the link "delete" will then appear next to it. Click that and it's gone :)

[Richard S]

Got it. Thanks!

[Maki]

Would like to look into this, but have no idea what your smugmug URL is. Mind sharing? :)

Don Sure thing:
maki.smugmug.com

I already started fixing some -- hope that doesn't mess anything up.

Thanks!

(edit - the non-pic galleries were getting on my nerves so I'm back fixing these... almost done)

[rutt]

Thanks, Don, for fixing cobranding with communities! I'm much more likely to use them now.

[mercphoto]

- Power & Pro accounts can now, using customization, get rid of "search fo all users" and related links on their search result pages.

Cool! But how? Can't figure out how. :shrug

[mercphoto]

Also, I figured out how to remove a gallery template, but can't create a new one.

[Barb]

Also, I figured out how to remove a gallery template, but can't create a new one.
Hi :)

On the drop-down box at the top of customize gallery, click on "save settings below as" and a box will appear to name it.

[mercphoto]

Hi :)

On the drop-down box at the top of customize gallery, click on "save settings below as" and a box will appear to name it.

Not on Safari.

[Barb]

Not on Safari.
Hi Bill :)

I'm using Safari and it works great. When you click the drop-down box at the top, the one that defaults to "Set everything manually," you don't get a choice of "save settings below as ..."? In Safari, when I highlight "save settings below as ..." a box appears to the right where you can name a new template. If that's not happening for you, I'm not sure what to suggest :scratch

I'm using OS 10.4.1 and Safari 2.0 if that makes any difference.

[mercphoto]

Hi Bill :)

I'm using Safari and it works great. When you click the drop-down box at the top, the one that defaults to "Set everything manually," you don't get a choice of "save settings below as ..."? In Safari, when I highlight "save settings below as ..." a box appears to the right where you can name a new template. If that's not happening for you, I'm not sure what to suggest :scratch

I'm using OS 10.4.1 and Safari 2.0 if that makes any difference.

I'm not on Tiger. If I go to customize gallery, I see a box at the top that says "Customize Gallery: Set gallery options here. Help. Cropping, captioning or arranging? Photo tools to the rescue.". Then it has a "cancel" button and a "save" button. Nowhere on the page does it say "save settings below as"

[Barb]

I'm not on Tiger. If I go to customize gallery, I see a box at the top that says "Customize Gallery: Set gallery options here. Help. Cropping, captioning or arranging? Photo tools to the rescue.". Then it has a "cancel" button and a "save" button. Nowhere on the page does it say "save settings below as" Wow, that's weird. Between Cancel and Save, I have a drop-down box. where it says "set everything manually" is where the "save settings below as" is:

http://digitaldaze.smugmug.com/photos/25502088-M.jpg

[mercphoto]

Wow, that's weird. Between Cancel and Save, I have a drop-down box. where it says "set everything manually" is where the "save settings below as" is:

http://digitaldaze.smugmug.com/photos/25502088-M.jpg

Not me. Safari 1.3. OS-X 10.3.9. I hate how ambiguous the web languages are. :(

[Barb]

Not me. Safari 1.3. OS-X 10.3.9. I hate how ambiguous the web languages are. :(
Ack ... well I often find that things go bump in the night at times with Safari, and so then I revert to Firefox. You might try that :)

[{JT}]

There is a bug with the tool ... it is being fixed :)

Ack ... well I often find that things go bump in the night at times with Safari, and so then I revert to Firefox. You might try that :)

[mercphoto]

There is a bug with the tool ... it is being fixed :)

FYI. Also same behavior on Mozilla on Linux at work.

[{JT}]

FYI. Also same behavior on Mozilla on Linux at work. The bug is NOT browser specific :)

[winnjewett]

A slight bug:
When using the new bulk template applicator, only the last row's image number is being displayed.

-winn

[{JT}]

Good catch, will be fixed shortly.

A slight bug:
When using the new bulk template applicator, only the last row's image number is being displayed.

-winn