Search for photos by date

Lille Ulven · March 10, 2016

I do have another kind of weird date-issue...

When you do a search by date (by using your sites url followed by /date like this: www.lilleulven.com/date ) the date in question is definitively not the "date taken" from the photo but possibly some "date modified"... I have to call it "some date modified" as I am pretty certain that I did do some more work to a photo which I managed to find with this function.

Example: http://www.lilleulven.com/date/2014-4-20/2014-5-31/
This photo is taken January 2013, almost 18 month before it shows in the "photo by date finder". If someone was to read my blog and found out "hey I would like to see more photos from this particular travel-date" that visitor would with the photo-by-date finder not in 10 years be able to locate all photos from this particular date. No chance. And to be honest even I don't have a chance to find one of my photos by date with this link.

Could this be changed or maybe get customizable so that we can choose which date should be used from all those dates that come with the exif-information of a photo?

Thanks in advance.
(Yes I could send this as a feature request, but I am out of votes, so I need to wait until some nice developer -- there are of course only nice developers -- will code some of my other (supported) feature requests)

Lille Ulven

Allen · March 10, 2016

It is the "date uploaded" that it sorts on. This has been mentioned to Smug and someone said they would look into it.
Edit: found it
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1981421&postcount=18

Lille Ulven · March 11, 2016

Thanks, Allen.

In this case I have to say there must be more wrong to the date-search-function than just taking "date uploaded".
This because, if I am not completely off by an entire year, I started my website in March 2014 (definitively not March 2015 but reasonably certain not in 2013). Until November the search with dates from January onward finds exactly 1 photo, while I am certain that I added way more in the first few days of my website's existence.

Well let's hope it will be fixed soon

Lille Ulven

Ferguson · March 11, 2016

You might want to open a ticket with the help desk. I think the staff has been distracted by the photo show, and I am not completely certain they know they have an issue. Could be wrong, but it's been quiet around here.

Lille Ulven · March 13, 2016

Ferguson wrote: »

You might want to open a ticket with the help desk. I think the staff has been distracted by the photo show, and I am not completely certain they know they have an issue. Could be wrong, but it's been quiet around here.

Thanks, Ferguson.
I will do so tomorrow - if I don't hear anything else until then. (Just back from a weekend without internet but lots of new photos and a challenging headache, so all I want right now is my bed

)

I will keep you posted about the outcome.

Lille Ulven

leftquark · March 21, 2016

The /date/ page displays photos that were uploaded between those dates. It's currently showing them in Descending order, so the newest photos are displayed first. I tend to think this reverse sort is strange, so I'm debating switching it to show the oldest photo first and the newest photo last. Thoughts?

We could also switch it to "Date Taken" instead of "Date Uploaded" but we've been telling everyone that it's "Date Uploaded" for the last 2 years and I'm reluctant to change which photos are shown, since people may have shared links expecting it to show a certain set of images.

denisegoldberg · March 21, 2016

leftquark wrote: »

The /date/ page displays photos that were uploaded between those dates. It's currently showing them in Descending order, so the newest photos are displayed first. I tend to think this reverse sort is strange, so I'm debating switching it to show the oldest photo first and the newest photo last. Thoughts?

We could also switch it to "Date Taken" instead of "Date Uploaded" but we've been telling everyone that it's "Date Uploaded" for the last 2 years and I'm reluctant to change which photos are shown, since people may have shared links expecting it to show a certain set of images.

I would really like that page to show by Date Taken. To me and my viewers, Date Uploaded is meaningless.

And I want the newest photos shown first.

--- Denise

Lille Ulven · March 21, 2016

I would love to see it go by date taken too. Date uploaded is pretty meaningless (and in my case even date uploaded is relatively wrong as the photos that I uploaded in March - November 2014 are mostly not shown until December 2014. But you'd never expect to find a photo from a trip in 2014 when searching for photos from 2015 or later...
Sorting within the date range...good question I think the best option would be let the user choose between descending and ascending, if I enter the date range "dec 2014 - February 2015" I would expect the dec photos to show first. But then that's what I am used to from database programming...

Lille Ulven

Allen · March 21, 2016

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I would really like that page to show by Date Taken. To me and my viewers, Date Uploaded is meaningless.

And I want the newest photos shown first.

--- Denise

Agreed. I would think most would want to see latest, date taken.

Allen · March 21, 2016

One possible problem is scanned old photos with no true date taken. In this case probably
date created/digitized could be used.

BigRed · March 21, 2016

leftquark wrote: »

The /date/ page displays photos that were uploaded between those dates. It's currently showing them in Descending order, so the newest photos are displayed first. I tend to think this reverse sort is strange, so I'm debating switching it to show the oldest photo first and the newest photo last. Thoughts?

We could also switch it to "Date Taken" instead of "Date Uploaded" but we've been telling everyone that it's "Date Uploaded" for the last 2 years and I'm reluctant to change which photos are shown, since people may have shared links expecting it to show a certain set of images.

This puzzles me because in my long usage of the /date/ page, it selects images based on Date Taken (and I hope it stays that way). Example: http://www.janicebrowne.com/date/2006-09-16/2006-09-30/ -- which I know I didn't upload until at least 2009 because that's when I joined SmugMug. (I can't see Date Uploaded in the Info box, but my source files were last modified 2010-2012.)

leftquark · March 21, 2016

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I would really like that page to show by Date Taken. To me and my viewers, Date Uploaded is meaningless. And I want the newest photos shown first.

I think we're going to go ahead and switch it to use Date Taken instead of Date Uploaded. The newest photo would be shown first.

Since this changes how things have been done for the past 2 years, we need to find out how to best communicate it with our beloved SmugMuggers. This might mean that the actual change gets delayed until April or May, when we have enough time to get it into our Newsletter (which is the most popular way for reaching our customers). However, if you'd like a quicker fix, see below...

BigRed wrote: »

This puzzles me because in my long usage of the /date/ page, it selects images based on Date Taken (and I hope it stays that way). Example: http://www.janicebrowne.com/date/2006-09-16/2006-09-30/ -- which I know I didn't upload until at least 2009 because that's when I joined SmugMug. (I can't see Date Uploaded in the Info box, but my source files were last modified 2010-2012.)

There used to be a toggle in legacy that allowed the owner to set their preference for the /date/ page, to use either "Date Taken" or "Date Uploaded". When we went from Old SmugMug to New SmugMug we got rid of the toggle (not sure why) and but did continue to sort by the setting that the user had previously set. In your case, Big Red, you had previously set it to "Date Taken", so we're using that.

For Denise and anyone else: If you'd like me to toggle the setting for you, just let me know and I can have one of the Engineers toggle it. I'm still looking to see if we have a URL that can help toggle it.

denisegoldberg · March 21, 2016

leftquark wrote: »

For Denise and anyone else: If you'd like me to toggle the setting for you, just let me know and I can have one of the Engineers toggle it. I'm still looking to see if we have a URL that can help toggle it.

Hmm... it's quite possible if the setting was moved across from legacy that my photos might be set to "by date taken" already.

Can one of the engineers check to see how it is set on my site? If it is not already set that way (and I think it might be based on a quick perusal of a set of dates) then please have them set the sort to date taken.

Thanks!

--- Denise

pbandj · March 22, 2016

leftquark wrote: »

There used to be a toggle in legacy that allowed the owner to set their preference for the /date/ page, to use either "Date Taken" or "Date Uploaded".

For Denise and anyone else: If you'd like me to toggle the setting for you, just let me know and I can have one of the Engineers toggle it. I'm still looking to see if we have a URL that can help toggle it.

I would love a URL to dynamically toggle it, if that's at all possible. When I'm searching, I would like it to sort by date taken. Mine is currently using "date uploaded", which I occasionally find useful when I'm making sure I finished all the steps in my workflow...I can use the "date uploaded" sort to remember the most recent galleries I uploaded...unless there is an easier way to find the most recent photos/galleries uploaded.

Lille Ulven · March 22, 2016

leftquark please ask someone to toggle my settings to use "date taken" - that would be of great help. Thank you!

Lille Ulven

Allen · March 22, 2016

pbandj wrote: »

...unless there is an easier way to find the most recent photos/galleries uploaded.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=245936

See my page here
http://www.photosbyat.com/Recent-Gallery-Changes

leftquark · March 23, 2016

Lille Ulven wrote: »

leftquark please ask someone to toggle my settings to use "date taken" - that would be of great help. Thank you!

Lille Ulven

Looks like Heroes beat me to it. We've toggle you to use "Date Taken"!

Lille Ulven · March 25, 2016

Thanks leftquark - I admit it, I ran out of patience with my first hero-contact and when I asked for a status there it got fixed

so now it is working as expected.
One tiny thing though: on the date search page the first year-button is "All 0" considering the other buttons display the year and the number of photos in brackets some people might assume "All" not to show a single photo. Could that "0" somehow got removed or actually the number of photos been added here too?

Have some great Easter days!

Lille Ulven

leftquark · March 26, 2016

Lille Ulven wrote: »

One tiny thing though: on the date search page the first year-button is "All 0" considering the other buttons display the year and the number of photos in brackets some people might assume "All" not to show a single photo. Could that "0" somehow got removed or actually the number of photos been added here too?

It looks like this is a known issue that we haven't had a chance to tackle. If you'd like to fix it immediately you can apply this CSS:

/* Hide the "All 0" text from the button */
.sm-page-date-years a:nth-of-type(1) .sm-button-label {
    display: none;
}

/* Replace the "All 0" with just "All" */
.sm-page-date-years a:nth-of-type(1):after {
    content: 'All';
}

Lille Ulven · March 26, 2016

Thank you leftquark that makes it at least less confusing

Happy weekend

Lille Ulven

pbandj · March 27, 2016

Allen wrote: »

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=245936

Thanks, Allen (And Nicholas, in absentia); that was just the trick I needed. I just added it to the bottom of my timeline page.
http://photos.bellhanley.com/Timeline

MarkJ · November 17, 2016

Date uploaded is also important for Copyright Registrations
The US copyright office wants to know upon what date photos were "first published" when you register them with the copyright office. On SmugMug, this would likely be the date they were uploaded to a public gallery that had the shopping cart functionality activated. Or the date they were "published" if for whatever reason they were not visible when uploaded.

So I would hate to see "date uploaded" go away. On the contrary, it would be extremely useful to be able to see [at least by the account owner] both the EXIF data and the date uploaded associated with all of the images in a gallery.

Search for photos by date

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