Thank you, Jtring, for letting me know that we're basically migrating if we even click on that blue pop up now...that's what I wasn't sure of. (Migrating was once called just that. Then it was sneakily called "Previewing", now it's just "Hold onto your eyeballs"). I was finally able, after going off my site a bunch of times, to get an iteration of it without that blue pop-up.
Yes, I completely agree... the attempt to be opaque at this point with people like me makes me mad, is a bit ridiculous, and has just made me completely lose trust. Note that there's no Admin answering me... in many hours. That pop-up should say clearly "when you hit this button, you're starting the migration" if that's the deal. It should also tell me roughly how long that's gonna take. In other words, I have 100s & 100s of galleries, & 1000s of archives. If I hit the blue box, I may have to wait hours or days until I can even access my site again. I should be informed about that. Why is SmugMug trying to be so coy & not telling me any of this & instead trying to force me to click on that stupid box? It feels very patronizing, like we're babies who might just crawl around pressing buttons to see what they do.
I completely understand that I can play around with stuff (after migrating), and not publish til I'm ready (or til Oct. 15 at this point), & that no one else will see anything new til I want them to (or til Oct. 15) However, there are some ducks I need to get in a row in Legacy before starting any migration. And I want to know how much time my site will be inaccessible!! That's pretty important. Through all this, I can barely sit at a computer due to back problems, & I'm ticked at the assumptions & lack of empathy Smug admins have for a situation like that. And ticked that they feel they have to try to trick people who've been long-time loyal customers. I used to frequently try to talk people into getting a Smug site, but all this opaqueness has for a long time kept me from even wanting to tell anyone about it. There's no empathy or answers or caring about losses like embedded badges & slideshows either. I just don't get that. Sad state of affairs.
If you click through all the blue pop up screens, you end up with a "sandbox" version of the New SmugMug but the Old Smugmug is still the live one that non-logged-in users see. As the logged-in site owner, you can go back and forth between old and new (although you will get nagged at some). The final conversion to the New SmugMug requires saying yes to a very explicit acceptance screen. At least that's the situation with my wife's set-up after she was forced to begin the roll-over. We walked all the way to the final conversion screen but didn't go ahead.
If I may editorialize, I think SmugMug missed the psychology on this one. Seems to me that folks like my wife, those who haven't yet converted now two years on, need reassurance that they will have control over their sites during the conversion even if it does have a time limit, that at least most of the functionality they had before will still be achievable without too much time investment, and that in the end, all will work out OK. I think that's mostly true, although there's no denying highly customized old SM sites will take more effort and some things won't carry over. I personally like the new SM quite a bit (save some gaps I've complained about elsewhere). But selling flashy newness and breathless enthusiasm to an audience that needs reassurance and perhaps some extra help -- and not making it crystal clear what's going on -- just misses.
.... about losses like embedded badges & slideshows either. ...
Embedded slideshows? I have one embedded on my blog. You can put slideshows all over NewSmug.
What is a badge? Got a link to one? I can't remember exactly what it was.
Is this it? I'm running many, maybe a 100, of these on my blog.
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="600" height="400"> <param
name="movie" value="http://cdn.smugmug.com/swfs/badge/flashbadge.swf?....
Yes, I completely agree... the attempt to be opaque at this point with people like me makes me mad, is a bit ridiculous, and has just made me completely lose trust. Note that there's no Admin answering me... in many hours.
To be fair, this forum is a users forum which the Smugmug employees check in on - however they don't monitor it 24/7
If you have a problem and you need Smugmug to fix it, I'd suggest you contact them directly at http://help.smugmug.com/
My opinion does not necessarily make it true. What you do with my opinion is entirely up to you. www.acecootephotography.com
To be fair, this forum is a users forum which the Smugmug employees check in on - however they don't monitor it 24/7
If you have a problem and you need Smugmug to fix it, I'd suggest you contact them directly at http://help.smugmug.com/
erm no, dgrin is run by smug. This subforum name is "smugmug support". They should be monitoring it as thoroughly as any other page they may have for support which users don't know about...
What would be really nice is when in migration transition mode, not published yet, that Smugmug would have
available a "guest password", set by owner, so others can log in see the site "in work". This would go a long
way with helping folks setting up their site before Publishing. Perhaps only show in "view only" with a "log out".
erm no, dgrin is run by smug. This subforum name is "smugmug support". They should be monitoring it as thoroughly as any other page they may have for support which users don't know about...
erm OK?
The fact is, they DON'T monitor this 24/7 so people can get frustrated at what they think they SHOULD be doing ... or they can go directly to the help desk where there ARE people 24/7 and get their problem sorted out more quickly (with less frustration waiting for a reply) http://help.smugmug.com/
My opinion does not necessarily make it true. What you do with my opinion is entirely up to you. www.acecootephotography.com
erm OK?
The fact is, they DON'T monitor this 24/7 so people can get frustrated at what they think they SHOULD be doing ... or they can go directly to the help desk where there ARE people 24/7 and get their problem sorted out more quickly (with less frustration waiting for a reply) http://help.smugmug.com/
Ok, your view. Having worked in frontline support for more time than I want to remember, you do *everything* you can to keep your customers happy.
This is a constant source of aggravation for me. It seems an easy enough feature to re-implement but smugmug just refuses to do it.
My pet gripe with the new smugmug!
I'll add this to our list of Feature Requests for uploading/organizing. Keep in mind that just because we don't implement it, doesn't mean we're not listening (we are!) but there might be deeper rooted reasons. In this case, though, I can't come up with any reason why this should be an issue, other than personal preference and that we've been working on a number of other features.
I'm a little concerned because I haven't gotten an email on either of the two accounts that I have. I only found out about the October 15th date because I happened to check in on this forum. If other people aren't getting emails they may be in for a surprise in October.
We've been phasing the announcement and slowly moving people over to the "New SmugMug Preview" (sandbox, playground, etc ... it has many names). All users in Legacy SmugMug should now have received a notification.
I tried New Smug less than a week after it was rolled out, and I knew within the first hour that it wasn't going to meet my needs.
We've done a number of things since New SmugMug was first announced to improve the process of upgrading to the New SmugMug. I understand that we didn't fix all (or even many) of your concerns but we have made the process better. We're also holding a number of webinars to help familiarize legacy SM'ers with the New SmugMug.
a number of the heroes and DGrin users kept repeating the "just give it a try, you'll find you love it" mantra. The claim was also made here, multiple times, that SmugMug Corp would add the missing features so that folks trapped on Old Smug could migrate. I trusted these people. So I stuck at it -- 40+ hours of work.
As we've moved towards the retirement of Old SM we reviewd all the features on Legacy SM that were not implemented in New SmugMug and attempted to add many of that functionality back in. While we weren't able to, or chose not to re-implement some things, a number of features (like full-screen background slideshows, "All Galleries" view, etc) have been added. One of the major gripes: JavaScript will not be brought back.
Are there specific feature requests that impact the majority of SmugMug'ers that we're still missing?
The announcement that Old Smug would shut down with only 60 days warning -- with almost none of my issues resolved -- was quite a shock. I believed the Heroes when they said they'd add the missing features; I believed them when they said if I stuck with it I'd like it; I believed them when they said I'd get "plenty" of warning. None of that proved to be true. Now I'm in a mad scramble, with the new school year already started. I'm a volunteer; so I really wish I could get back that 40+ hours is spent trying to get New Smug to work for me.
As many people have already chimed in, the New SmugMug just celebrated its 2 year anniversary. And again, as many people have chimed in, they concur with the sentiment that if you stick with it, most people are generally happy. Yes, some functionality has been removed with the loss of JavaScript but there are a number of great things built in that don't require you to have to lookup/create/implement custom code.
I did not receive any warnings and emails - if not accidentally looking at this thread I would be screwed on October 15. I am not complaining about old SM going, thank you for keeping the old SM for two years and so on and so forth. I want to know how the previous smugmug's promise that you will give plenty of warning before initiating the shut down goes along with the current situation. I did NOT get a warning from you at all. Anyone from Smugmug care to explain? A simple "sorry" might work too.
We've been slowly rolling out the move and announcements to users. Everyone should have received an email. We'll also be adding some messaging within SmugMug to announce the date. We're also holding a number of webinars to help with the upgrade to New SmugMug and have also created a dedicated New SmugMug Help Center to help with the process.
Thank you, Jtring, for letting me know that we're basically migrating if we even click on that blue pop up now...that's what I wasn't sure of. (Migrating was once called just that. Then it was sneakily called "Previewing", now it's just "Hold onto your eyeballs"). I was finally able, after going off my site a bunch of times, to get an iteration of it without that blue pop-up.
Everyone's site was migrated behind the scene when we released the New SmugMug 2 years ago. The only difference is that we've now revealed it to you. All of your photos, videos, comments, etc will be automatically converted to work with the New SmugMug. The process of jumping to New SmugMug should be nearly instantaneous.
That pop-up should say clearly "when you hit this button, you're starting the migration" if that's the deal. It should also tell me roughly how long that's gonna take. In other words, I have 100s & 100s of galleries, & 1000s of archives. If I hit the blue box, I may have to wait hours or days until I can even access my site again. I should be informed about that. Why is SmugMug trying to be so coy & not telling me any of this & instead trying to force me to click on that stupid box? It feels very patronizing, like we're babies who might just crawl around pressing buttons to see what they do.
The blue guides and welcome messages were meant to give you a heads-up that we've revealed the New SmugMug and teach you about where many of the tools you were familiar with have moved to. You've been upgraded (migrated) to the New SmugMug long ago and having your photos and galleries show up is instantaneous ... no work needed on your part. All your photos have stayed the same, we're just wrapping a new user interface around it. We've explored a number of ways of teaching customers about the new SmugMug, and the guides, pointing out the tools, has been shown to be a great way at getting users familiarized with the tools in New SmugMug. We wanted to make it obvious how to upload, organize and personalize your New SmugMug site.
I normally monitor dgrin several times a-day and must apologize that I was out of town when this thread was created. I'm here now and able to answer any questions and/or concerns.
And I want to know how much time my site will be inaccessible!! That's pretty important. Through all this, I can barely sit at a computer due to back problems, & I'm ticked at the assumptions & lack of empathy Smug admins have for a situation like that. And ticked that they feel they have to try to trick people who've been long-time loyal customers. I used to frequently try to talk people into getting a Smug site, but all this opaqueness has for a long time kept me from even wanting to tell anyone about it. There's no empathy or answers or caring about losses like embedded badges & slideshows either. I just don't get that. Sad state of affairs.
I'm sorry you feel this way. Throughout this whole process we've tried to remain the SmugMug that we always have been and strive to continue being. We've delayed the retirement of Old SM for 2 years, something most companies would never think to do, and I've spent the last 8 months developing tools to help make the migration as easy as possible.
Your site will have no down-time. Everything works right away. Your visitors will continue to see your old SM site until you publish, so you've got 1.5 months to play with the New SmugMug, personalize it, and get used to it. When you publish, your visitors will instantaneously see the New SmugMug without your site being down for any time.
To be fair, this forum is a users forum which the Smugmug employees check in on - however they don't monitor it 24/7
If you have a problem and you need Smugmug to fix it, I'd suggest you contact them directly at http://help.smugmug.com/
Thanks Ace! I'm usually here several times a day but I was out of town for a friends wedding and did not have access to dgrin. I should have made sure the Heroes were monitoring it while I was gone. I'll make sure in the future to have the Heroes on call when I'm unable to be here.
erm no, dgrin is run by smug. This subforum name is "smugmug support". They should be monitoring it as thoroughly as any other page they may have for support which users don't know about...
Having worked in frontline support for more time than I want to remember, you do *everything* you can to keep your customers happy.
We completely agree with you BigAl! As mentioned above, I was out of town this weekend when the thread was started. I should have had the Heroes monitoring this in my stead. I'll make sure we have all of our forums monitored when I'm inaccessible. As you know, we take support extremely seriously here at SmugMug (it's why we call our support staff "Heroes") and this thread should not have gone this long without someone from SM responding. I'm here and able to answer any questions/concerns.
This is a constant source of aggravation for me. It seems an easy enough feature to re-implement but smugmug just refuses to do it.
Hi Dennis,
I just ran a test on Old SM... I created a gallery and uploaded some photos. I set the sort order to "Date Taken" descending (newest photo on top). I then clicked "Arrange Mode" and moved a few of the last photos to the top. It asked if I wanted to break the auto-sort and I said yes. I confirmed afterwards that the Gallery Settings showed "Auto-Sort" set to "None". When I uploaded new photos to Old SM, they too were placed at the end.
Did I do something different in my test to make it not work as you expected, with new photos at the top?
Hi Dennis,
I just ran a test on Old SM... I created a gallery and uploaded some photos. I set the sort order to "Date Taken" descending (newest photo on top). I then clicked "Arrange Mode" and moved a few of the last photos to the top. It asked if I wanted to break the auto-sort and I said yes. I confirmed afterwards that the Gallery Settings showed "Auto-Sort" set to "None". When I uploaded new photos to Old SM, they too were placed at the end.
Did I do something different in my test to make it not work as you expected, with new photos at the top?
In Old SM the toggle sort direction button (1-9) / (9-1) was not grayed out and newly uploaded pictures could be uploaded to the top or bottom in manual mode depending on how it was set.
This may seem unimportant with a small gallery, but in a gallery with hundreds of pictures you have to wait for all the icons to appear and drag the new picture all the way up to the top!
There is also still the issue that everyone who unveils from the old smugmug with a gallery setting of Manual Sort and Descending will get their picture order scrambled when they use Gallery Settings and from then on uploaded pictures are sent to the bottom of the gallery!
We've been slowly rolling out the move and announcements to users. Everyone should have received an email. We'll also be adding some messaging within SmugMug to announce the date. We're also holding a number of webinars to help with the upgrade to New SmugMug and have also created a dedicated New SmugMug Help Center to help with the process.
.....
Apparently I am not in the "Everyone"'s group. No email, no notification. And, yes, I checked my Spam folder. And, no, I did not accidentally delete it. Please, tell me on what date my current, legacy website will be discontinued.
Apparently I am not in the "Everyone"'s group. No email, no notification. And, yes, I checked my Spam folder. And, no, I did not accidentally delete it. Please, tell me on what date my current, legacy website will be discontinued.
Well I'll be darned, in the words of Davey Crockett, I'm going to have to eat my hat! You've been in New SmugMug Preview for some time now; an email was sent to all users previewing the New SmugMug on August 14th, announcing the retirement and inviting you to attend one of several webinars. It appears that the email was set as a marketing email, which means anyone who has Unsubscribed from our emails was not included. You had previously unsubscribed to our newsletters and thus did not receive the email. This announcement should have been sent to everyone, including those who unsubscribed.
Starting on September 15th, you'll start receiving notices within SmugMug about the Old SmugMug's retirement. Your Old SmugMug site will be retired on October 15th. As always, I'm here to help you make the transition successful. We also have a dedicated Help Center to answer any questions you might have.
Well I'll be darned, in the words of Davey Crockett, I'm going to have to eat my hat! You've been in New SmugMug Preview for some time now; an email was sent to all users previewing the New SmugMug on August 14th, announcing the retirement and inviting you to attend one of several webinars. It appears that the email was set as a marketing email, which means anyone who has Unsubscribed from our emails was not included. You had previously unsubscribed to our newsletters and thus did not receive the email. This announcement should have been sent to everyone, including those who unsubscribed.
Starting on September 15th, you'll start receiving notices within SmugMug about the Old SmugMug's retirement. Your Old SmugMug site will be retired on October 15th. As always, I'm here to help you make the transition successful. We also have a dedicated Help Center to answer any questions you might have.
Wow. As far as I know, I would not have unsubscribed even to marketing emails from Smug. But I too have not seen an email about the retirement. I'll double-check my spam folder, but now that I know, I guess it's a bit of a moot point. However, I would still like to have that email if there are links to webinars, etc. etc. that I could use? If it could be re-sent to me, that would help.
Comments?
LeftQuark (Aaron) in your answers below, you said something about comments even being migrated. I thought all our comments would get lost when Legacy SmugMug is retired? I thought there was a whole new thing about comments... people have to use their FB logins etc.... I can't find the threads right now. Also, are you honestly, truly saying that there's not one thing I can't "go back" to when toggling back to my Legacy site (up til Oct. 14) if I hit any of those "Preview" buttons? I'm asking for the whole transparent truth here.. because, this was not the case even several months ago. There were permanent losses. Has the gallery settings presets titles issue been fixed (in which it's impossible to see the entire title of your preset in NewSmug)? I hope admins will be going through the entire bugs list & making public note of what is & isn't fixed, to alleviate a lot of these concerns (if things have been fixed & not notated).
I"m talking about comments under photos, or comments on galleries... don't people have to log in w/ FB or SMug or something in order to be allowed to leave comments now? Whatever comments I have under photos or on galleries would only make sense if they stay under those photos...
Wow. As far as I know, I would not have unsubscribed even to marketing emails from Smug. But I too have not seen an email about the retirement. I'll double-check my spam folder, but now that I know, I guess it's a bit of a moot point. However, I would still like to have that email if there are links to webinars, etc. etc. that I could use? If it could be re-sent to me, that would help.
LeftQuark (Aaron) in your answers below, you said something about comments even being migrated. I thought all our comments would get lost when Legacy SmugMug is retired? I thought there was a whole new thing about comments... people have to use their FB logins etc.... I can't find the threads right now.
As Allen mentioned, all your comments that existed in Legacy SM are still there in New SmugMug. However, you and Allen are also correct, in order to leave new comments, the user must be logged into a social media site or with a SmugMug site. We'll be improving comments in the future and realize that this isn't a good experience. We don't want SmugMug to be the place where your photos go into a big black hole.
Also, are you honestly, truly saying that there's not one thing I can't "go back" to when toggling back to my Legacy site (up til Oct. 14) if I hit any of those "Preview" buttons? I'm asking for the whole transparent truth here.. because, this was not the case even several months ago. There were permanent losses. Has the gallery settings presets titles issue been fixed (in which it's impossible to see the entire title of your preset in NewSmug)? I hope admins will be going through the entire bugs list & making public note of what is & isn't fixed, to alleviate a lot of these concerns (if things have been fixed & not notated).
Quick Settings work in New SmugMug. Perhaps the one major item is that Gallery Passwords are now hashed (replaced with ****'s) for security purposes. If you need your gallery passwords sent to you, we can generate a secure file and send it to you. While in Sandbox ("New SmugMug Preview") your gallery passwords will appear as "*****". Comments, photos, themes, videos, etc all can come over.
As I see it the two MAJOR roadblocks are no javascript and PayPal buttons. Also no <iframe> usage is close. Minor is removing the old journal style where you could tell a story. Although there is a work-around using the New Journal style with some CSS moving the text next to the photo. Example
I keep hearing about other things, but no one supplies any details what they are. I'm guessing most of
these can be worked out on NewSmug. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ear.gif" border="0" alt="" >
That's because once you get away from your short list, you quickly get into a morass of different features needed by different people. Ask 10 Old Smuggers for their "top 10" list of why they haven't migrated, and you'll get 50 different items. That's the whole problem: New Smug doesn't just have a different feature set; it has a fundamentally different approach to how to present and navigate a collection of photos. Trying to plug the feature gaps is a non sequitur; they're different products, designed for different markets.
FWIW, here's my top missing features:
Support for long folder and gallery names. New Smug arbitrarily truncates long names; old Smug wrapped them.
When thumbnails at irregular aspect ratios are presented in folder view, the thumbnails are cropped in unpredictable and sometimes embarrassing ways. Old Smug maintained a square grid and presented the thumbnail as originally cropped within that grid.
HTML markup in folder names, gallery names, descriptions, and comments.
Linux command line uploader, e.g., something like SmugUp. FTP or ssh would be fine.
SmugMug View needs to do a better job of scaling the thumbnails and large images, and managing the other elements on the page. This alone has caused me to avoid the work of one of my pool photographers who switched to New Smug early.
Drag and drop from SmugMug View to desktop applications works poorly. (I use drag and drop from SmugMug View to client Email quite heavily. Again, this bites me every time I try to use my one New Smug pool photographer's photos.)
Need gallery descriptions on the folder few; folder descriptions on the folder view would be a plus.
Yes, there's CSS to fix some of these. But why should I do that? Since it's going to take as much work to migrate to New Smug as to migrate to a different service entirely, why shouldn't I go looking for a platform that was designed for my needs?
Since it's going to take as much work to migrate to New Smug as to migrate to a different service entirely, why shouldn't I go looking for a platform that was designed for my needs?
Well... any other service you might join could do the same right after you have migrated from smugmug to your new host: You get a new API and feature set and have to rework your hole site. So ... what is better? Rework your site on a platform you know already or switch over to a new host and hope they will not apply massive changes like SmugMug did long ago?
Well... any other service you might join could do the same right after you have migrated from smugmug to your new host: You get a new API and feature set and have to rework your hole site. So ... what is better? Rework your site on a platform you know already or switch over to a new host and hope they will not apply massive changes like SmugMug did long ago?
It's a legit question. More than legit: a bunch of the SmugMug competitors are closing their doors entirely, some with very little warning; and several of the best known FOSS packages (e.g., Gallery 3) have been recently abandoned by their creators. OpenPhoto raised some ridiculous amount of money on kickstarter, only to whimper away and die like a deflated balloon. I've also reviewed a dozen different services, and built working demo sites on five. I can say with complete confidence that New Smug is a better platform than any of them. For that reason, I've been advising all my pool photographers to at least give New Smug a serious try.
That said: what platform I know already? The one I know already is the one that's shutting down on October 15.
In my specific case, I'm going back to self-hosted, specifically so I have control over the problem. But very few people should even consider that.
And, I simply detest the marketing tones of the emails telling me that everything is amazing and fabulous and dismissing my concerns -- particularly when the answer to a question I've answered is simply NO, you can't do that.
I totally share your frustration about the quality of the support. Why do I care that the answer is comes in 10 minutes if it's useless. For quite some time I had a feeling that smugmug is much more about marketing rather than really solving problems.
Forcing an "upgrade" on the customers and even upgrading the basic accounts without a warning is unheard of for a paid service. Yes, they will not loose me a customer completely, but we will do all our best to consolidate several site into one or two.
Aaron, thanks for your responses below. I'm adding a couple clarifying questions in-between. Most importantly tho, I now need the latest & greatest clarity about what the latest blue buttons mean on my site (when logged in). Neither one has so far helped me know what to do first, as far as beginning work on my new site. (I suggested some explanation on hovering over them, but so far, nada...) So, when logged in, & looking at a cat page on my OldSmug, I see 2 blue buttons in the upper right: 1. "Learn about New SmugMug" & 2. "Return to New SmugMug" . Could you please enlighten me as to the differences between these 2 buttons? I want to know exactly what happens if I click either one. I'm not sure how I would "return", since I've never on my own accord done anything in my own site in NewSmug. (Oh, & for the record, I'm still getting logged out several times a week)
But anyway, just the facts... what happens w/ each button, & what, if anything, am I shutting a door to, for good? That's the bottom line. If you guys could just help us all over that "honestly, what am I losing?" threshold, you'd save us & SmugMug Help a lot of time. (And if you'd put that info in a hover-message rather than only in a forum post, just think how many more stragglers it would help?!) What is unclear to me is: once I've hit some button, can I continue to use tools in both OldSmug & NewSmug in order to get my site looking how I want before publishing? (Yes, I know I'll have to be in different browsers, which is actually a real pain for me w/ others using my computer, but anyway... the question remains... is it a problem to use both sets of tools? Yes, I also know I should only upload or make new galleries on OldSmug until just before Publishing. But other people may not know this.)
Now & then, I see those other blue pop-up boxes. I don't know what to do with them, or if that depends what I do with the other 2 ever-present buttons I just mentioned?
As Allen mentioned, all your comments that existed in Legacy SM are still there in New SmugMug. However, you and Allen are also correct, in order to leave new comments, the user must be logged into a social media site or with a SmugMug site. We'll be improving comments in the future and realize that this isn't a good experience. We don't want SmugMug to be the place where your photos go into a big black hole.
When you say all old comments are still "there" in NewSmug... do you mean they'll stay basically where they were, under a photo in a gallery? (Last I saw samples, comments in NewSmug were, inexplicably, on the right side under where the preview & caption is, & therefore well below the fold, rather than on the left side where there was plenty of space, but anyway... I just want to understand whether they stay basically in place, or go to some other spot.)
Quick Settings work in New SmugMug. Perhaps the one major item is that Gallery Passwords are now hashed (replaced with ****'s) for security purposes. If you need your gallery passwords sent to you, we can generate a secure file and send it to you. While in Sandbox ("New SmugMug Preview") your gallery passwords will appear as "*****". Comments, photos, themes, videos, etc all can come over.
About Quick Settings issues.. (& sorry, I suddenly couldn't think what they were called).. I was referring not to a concern that they don't work. It was that, the last I saw, Quick Settings titles/names (which we create to save them) were getting severely truncated like some other stuff in NewSmug, so that people couldn't tell one Quick Setting from another. If that hasn't been fixed, we'd want to re-name our Quick Settings with very short names before doing much with our NewSmug site.
Also, somewhere (maybe another thread) I'd asked whether our visitors are stuck seeing that word "Folders"? I'm hoping there's some other name we can give our categories, as I find that word extremely unattractive & meaningless to many of our sites.
Lastly, for now-- clarity about titles / captions / descriptions will help people too. We will want to know where our captions in OldSmug go. (what are they called in NewSmug?) And what will happen to photos that had what are called "Titles" and "Descriptions" put on them in PhotoShop, then uploaded to OldSmug & not edited on-site by us? I was always frustrated that OldSmug ignored my PS titles (which should've become my captions) & instead stuck my whole description (which was often meant only for stock photography!) in there as the caption. Many times (but not all) I edited that long "caption" (really description) & put in what should've been there instead, the PS "Title" field. I don't know how NewSmug will handle any of that..for the future, I hope it handles things the way every other site does & uses the correct & related PS fields for the correct fields under a photo.
On Legacy "Return to New SmugMug" is the toggle back to NewSmug. On NewSmug there is another toggle back to Legacy.
These toggles just take you back and forth between old and new so you can work on either, nothing else.
And the "learn about New SmugMug" button simply opens a drop down menu with different help links.
The only action that can't be undone, is if you're on New SmugMug, click on "publish New SmugMug" and then on the confirmation dialog manually type in the word "publish". That would publish your New SmugMug site replacing the old site so that visitors can also see and use your new site. Once you've done that, there's no going back to the old SmugMug. However, it's not possible to do this by accident as you have to type in the letters publish and also click on the "publish it" button. If you just click on cancel, nothing happens. So you don't have to worry at all.
In my specific case, I'm going back to self-hosted, specifically so I have control over the problem. But very few people should even consider that.
And now -- for the 3rd or 4th time -- I'm rethinking trying to self-host. The platforms I've prototyped have features I want that aren't in New Smug, which of course is the whole point. But New Smug also has features I want that I can't get in the alternatives. :-( So now I'm just back to desperately wishing I could keep Old Smug.
And now -- for the 3rd or 4th time -- I'm rethinking trying to self-host. The platforms I've prototyped have features I want that aren't in New Smug, which of course is the whole point. But New Smug also has features I want that I can't get in the alternatives. :-( So now I'm just back to desperately wishing I could keep Old Smug.
Why not go ahead and publish your new smug site? You may find that you like it; if you don't you can continue working on your self-hosted site and switch at your convenience.
Why not go ahead and publish your new smug site? You may find that you like it; if you don't you can continue working on your self-hosted site and switch at your convenience.
--- Denise
I was thinking the same thing, Denise.
Alemeth, you may not get the same exact look, but you can customize with CSS so much, site-wide, folders, etc., that you may find a new(ish) new look that you really like.
In fact - can't you play behind the scenes now? In the "sandbox"?
Comments
Yes, I completely agree... the attempt to be opaque at this point with people like me makes me mad, is a bit ridiculous, and has just made me completely lose trust. Note that there's no Admin answering me... in many hours. That pop-up should say clearly "when you hit this button, you're starting the migration" if that's the deal. It should also tell me roughly how long that's gonna take. In other words, I have 100s & 100s of galleries, & 1000s of archives. If I hit the blue box, I may have to wait hours or days until I can even access my site again. I should be informed about that. Why is SmugMug trying to be so coy & not telling me any of this & instead trying to force me to click on that stupid box? It feels very patronizing, like we're babies who might just crawl around pressing buttons to see what they do.
I completely understand that I can play around with stuff (after migrating), and not publish til I'm ready (or til Oct. 15 at this point), & that no one else will see anything new til I want them to (or til Oct. 15) However, there are some ducks I need to get in a row in Legacy before starting any migration. And I want to know how much time my site will be inaccessible!! That's pretty important. Through all this, I can barely sit at a computer due to back problems, & I'm ticked at the assumptions & lack of empathy Smug admins have for a situation like that. And ticked that they feel they have to try to trick people who've been long-time loyal customers. I used to frequently try to talk people into getting a Smug site, but all this opaqueness has for a long time kept me from even wanting to tell anyone about it. There's no empathy or answers or caring about losses like embedded badges & slideshows either. I just don't get that. Sad state of affairs.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
What is a badge? Got a link to one? I can't remember exactly what it was.
Is this it? I'm running many, maybe a 100, of these on my blog.
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="600" height="400"> <param
name="movie" value="http://cdn.smugmug.com/swfs/badge/flashbadge.swf?....
It's flash so won't run on Smug.
My Website index | My Blog
To be fair, this forum is a users forum which the Smugmug employees check in on - however they don't monitor it 24/7
If you have a problem and you need Smugmug to fix it, I'd suggest you contact them directly at http://help.smugmug.com/
www.acecootephotography.com
Bugs
Spiders
Flowers
available a "guest password", set by owner, so others can log in see the site "in work". This would go a long
way with helping folks setting up their site before Publishing. Perhaps only show in "view only" with a "log out".
My Website index | My Blog
http://blog.photosbyat.com/2015/07/horseshoe-lake.html
My Website index | My Blog
erm OK?
The fact is, they DON'T monitor this 24/7 so people can get frustrated at what they think they SHOULD be doing ... or they can go directly to the help desk where there ARE people 24/7 and get their problem sorted out more quickly (with less frustration waiting for a reply)
http://help.smugmug.com/
www.acecootephotography.com
Bugs
Spiders
Flowers
We've been phasing the announcement and slowly moving people over to the "New SmugMug Preview" (sandbox, playground, etc ... it has many names). All users in Legacy SmugMug should now have received a notification.
We've done a number of things since New SmugMug was first announced to improve the process of upgrading to the New SmugMug. I understand that we didn't fix all (or even many) of your concerns but we have made the process better. We're also holding a number of webinars to help familiarize legacy SM'ers with the New SmugMug.
As we've moved towards the retirement of Old SM we reviewd all the features on Legacy SM that were not implemented in New SmugMug and attempted to add many of that functionality back in. While we weren't able to, or chose not to re-implement some things, a number of features (like full-screen background slideshows, "All Galleries" view, etc) have been added. One of the major gripes: JavaScript will not be brought back.
Are there specific feature requests that impact the majority of SmugMug'ers that we're still missing?
As many people have already chimed in, the New SmugMug just celebrated its 2 year anniversary. And again, as many people have chimed in, they concur with the sentiment that if you stick with it, most people are generally happy. Yes, some functionality has been removed with the loss of JavaScript but there are a number of great things built in that don't require you to have to lookup/create/implement custom code.
We've been slowly rolling out the move and announcements to users. Everyone should have received an email. We'll also be adding some messaging within SmugMug to announce the date. We're also holding a number of webinars to help with the upgrade to New SmugMug and have also created a dedicated New SmugMug Help Center to help with the process.
You got it! Yes, we were staggering the roll-over. She should have received an email last week.
Everyone's site was migrated behind the scene when we released the New SmugMug 2 years ago. The only difference is that we've now revealed it to you. All of your photos, videos, comments, etc will be automatically converted to work with the New SmugMug. The process of jumping to New SmugMug should be nearly instantaneous.
The blue guides and welcome messages were meant to give you a heads-up that we've revealed the New SmugMug and teach you about where many of the tools you were familiar with have moved to. You've been upgraded (migrated) to the New SmugMug long ago and having your photos and galleries show up is instantaneous ... no work needed on your part. All your photos have stayed the same, we're just wrapping a new user interface around it. We've explored a number of ways of teaching customers about the new SmugMug, and the guides, pointing out the tools, has been shown to be a great way at getting users familiarized with the tools in New SmugMug. We wanted to make it obvious how to upload, organize and personalize your New SmugMug site.
I normally monitor dgrin several times a-day and must apologize that I was out of town when this thread was created. I'm here now and able to answer any questions and/or concerns.
I'm sorry you feel this way. Throughout this whole process we've tried to remain the SmugMug that we always have been and strive to continue being. We've delayed the retirement of Old SM for 2 years, something most companies would never think to do, and I've spent the last 8 months developing tools to help make the migration as easy as possible.
Your site will have no down-time. Everything works right away. Your visitors will continue to see your old SM site until you publish, so you've got 1.5 months to play with the New SmugMug, personalize it, and get used to it. When you publish, your visitors will instantaneously see the New SmugMug without your site being down for any time.
Thanks Ace! I'm usually here several times a day but I was out of town for a friends wedding and did not have access to dgrin. I should have made sure the Heroes were monitoring it while I was gone. I'll make sure in the future to have the Heroes on call when I'm unable to be here.
We completely agree with you BigAl! As mentioned above, I was out of town this weekend when the thread was started. I should have had the Heroes monitoring this in my stead. I'll make sure we have all of our forums monitored when I'm inaccessible. As you know, we take support extremely seriously here at SmugMug (it's why we call our support staff "Heroes") and this thread should not have gone this long without someone from SM responding. I'm here and able to answer any questions/concerns.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Hi Dennis,
I just ran a test on Old SM... I created a gallery and uploaded some photos. I set the sort order to "Date Taken" descending (newest photo on top). I then clicked "Arrange Mode" and moved a few of the last photos to the top. It asked if I wanted to break the auto-sort and I said yes. I confirmed afterwards that the Gallery Settings showed "Auto-Sort" set to "None". When I uploaded new photos to Old SM, they too were placed at the end.
Did I do something different in my test to make it not work as you expected, with new photos at the top?
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
In Old SM the toggle sort direction button (1-9) / (9-1) was not grayed out and newly uploaded pictures could be uploaded to the top or bottom in manual mode depending on how it was set.
This may seem unimportant with a small gallery, but in a gallery with hundreds of pictures you have to wait for all the icons to appear and drag the new picture all the way up to the top!
There is also still the issue that everyone who unveils from the old smugmug with a gallery setting of Manual Sort and Descending will get their picture order scrambled when they use Gallery Settings and from then on uploaded pictures are sent to the bottom of the gallery!
. See this link...
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=240012
Cheers,
Apparently I am not in the "Everyone"'s group. No email, no notification. And, yes, I checked my Spam folder. And, no, I did not accidentally delete it. Please, tell me on what date my current, legacy website will be discontinued.
Thank you.
tailoredportraits.com
Well I'll be darned, in the words of Davey Crockett, I'm going to have to eat my hat! You've been in New SmugMug Preview for some time now; an email was sent to all users previewing the New SmugMug on August 14th, announcing the retirement and inviting you to attend one of several webinars. It appears that the email was set as a marketing email, which means anyone who has Unsubscribed from our emails was not included. You had previously unsubscribed to our newsletters and thus did not receive the email. This announcement should have been sent to everyone, including those who unsubscribed.
Starting on September 15th, you'll start receiving notices within SmugMug about the Old SmugMug's retirement. Your Old SmugMug site will be retired on October 15th. As always, I'm here to help you make the transition successful. We also have a dedicated Help Center to answer any questions you might have.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I'll take this topic over to that thread and respond!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Wow. As far as I know, I would not have unsubscribed even to marketing emails from Smug. But I too have not seen an email about the retirement. I'll double-check my spam folder, but now that I know, I guess it's a bit of a moot point. However, I would still like to have that email if there are links to webinars, etc. etc. that I could use? If it could be re-sent to me, that would help.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
LeftQuark (Aaron) in your answers below, you said something about comments even being migrated. I thought all our comments would get lost when Legacy SmugMug is retired? I thought there was a whole new thing about comments... people have to use their FB logins etc.... I can't find the threads right now. Also, are you honestly, truly saying that there's not one thing I can't "go back" to when toggling back to my Legacy site (up til Oct. 14) if I hit any of those "Preview" buttons? I'm asking for the whole transparent truth here.. because, this was not the case even several months ago. There were permanent losses. Has the gallery settings presets titles issue been fixed (in which it's impossible to see the entire title of your preset in NewSmug)? I hope admins will be going through the entire bugs list & making public note of what is & isn't fixed, to alleviate a lot of these concerns (if things have been fixed & not notated).
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Comments do come over to NewSmug.
On NewSmug I'd make the Guestbook a new Page. You can add a comment widget and
transfer your Legacy comments to it.
My Website index | My Blog
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Check my popular gallery, there's comments under the photos.
BUT, comments have basically ceased since requiring a log in.
My Website index | My Blog
We're working on sending out another batch of emails to everyone, which will include more information and the links to register for the webinars. For reference, all webinars can be found and registered to from here: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1078673-webinars-and-live-events
Additionally, our New SmugMug Help Center can be found here: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/2079954-new-smugmug-help-center?b_id=1644
As Allen mentioned, all your comments that existed in Legacy SM are still there in New SmugMug. However, you and Allen are also correct, in order to leave new comments, the user must be logged into a social media site or with a SmugMug site. We'll be improving comments in the future and realize that this isn't a good experience. We don't want SmugMug to be the place where your photos go into a big black hole.
Quick Settings work in New SmugMug. Perhaps the one major item is that Gallery Passwords are now hashed (replaced with ****'s) for security purposes. If you need your gallery passwords sent to you, we can generate a secure file and send it to you. While in Sandbox ("New SmugMug Preview") your gallery passwords will appear as "*****". Comments, photos, themes, videos, etc all can come over.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
That's because once you get away from your short list, you quickly get into a morass of different features needed by different people. Ask 10 Old Smuggers for their "top 10" list of why they haven't migrated, and you'll get 50 different items. That's the whole problem: New Smug doesn't just have a different feature set; it has a fundamentally different approach to how to present and navigate a collection of photos. Trying to plug the feature gaps is a non sequitur; they're different products, designed for different markets.
FWIW, here's my top missing features:
- Support for long folder and gallery names. New Smug arbitrarily truncates long names; old Smug wrapped them.
- When thumbnails at irregular aspect ratios are presented in folder view, the thumbnails are cropped in unpredictable and sometimes embarrassing ways. Old Smug maintained a square grid and presented the thumbnail as originally cropped within that grid.
- HTML markup in folder names, gallery names, descriptions, and comments.
- Linux command line uploader, e.g., something like SmugUp. FTP or ssh would be fine.
- SmugMug View needs to do a better job of scaling the thumbnails and large images, and managing the other elements on the page. This alone has caused me to avoid the work of one of my pool photographers who switched to New Smug early.
- Drag and drop from SmugMug View to desktop applications works poorly. (I use drag and drop from SmugMug View to client Email quite heavily. Again, this bites me every time I try to use my one New Smug pool photographer's photos.)
- Need gallery descriptions on the folder few; folder descriptions on the folder view would be a plus.
Yes, there's CSS to fix some of these. But why should I do that? Since it's going to take as much work to migrate to New Smug as to migrate to a different service entirely, why shouldn't I go looking for a platform that was designed for my needs?It's a legit question. More than legit: a bunch of the SmugMug competitors are closing their doors entirely, some with very little warning; and several of the best known FOSS packages (e.g., Gallery 3) have been recently abandoned by their creators. OpenPhoto raised some ridiculous amount of money on kickstarter, only to whimper away and die like a deflated balloon. I've also reviewed a dozen different services, and built working demo sites on five. I can say with complete confidence that New Smug is a better platform than any of them. For that reason, I've been advising all my pool photographers to at least give New Smug a serious try.
That said: what platform I know already? The one I know already is the one that's shutting down on October 15.
In my specific case, I'm going back to self-hosted, specifically so I have control over the problem. But very few people should even consider that.
Forcing an "upgrade" on the customers and even upgrading the basic accounts without a warning is unheard of for a paid service. Yes, they will not loose me a customer completely, but we will do all our best to consolidate several site into one or two.
But anyway, just the facts... what happens w/ each button, & what, if anything, am I shutting a door to, for good? That's the bottom line. If you guys could just help us all over that "honestly, what am I losing?" threshold, you'd save us & SmugMug Help a lot of time. (And if you'd put that info in a hover-message rather than only in a forum post, just think how many more stragglers it would help?!) What is unclear to me is: once I've hit some button, can I continue to use tools in both OldSmug & NewSmug in order to get my site looking how I want before publishing? (Yes, I know I'll have to be in different browsers, which is actually a real pain for me w/ others using my computer, but anyway... the question remains... is it a problem to use both sets of tools? Yes, I also know I should only upload or make new galleries on OldSmug until just before Publishing. But other people may not know this.)
Now & then, I see those other blue pop-up boxes. I don't know what to do with them, or if that depends what I do with the other 2 ever-present buttons I just mentioned?
About Quick Settings issues.. (& sorry, I suddenly couldn't think what they were called).. I was referring not to a concern that they don't work. It was that, the last I saw, Quick Settings titles/names (which we create to save them) were getting severely truncated like some other stuff in NewSmug, so that people couldn't tell one Quick Setting from another. If that hasn't been fixed, we'd want to re-name our Quick Settings with very short names before doing much with our NewSmug site.
Also, somewhere (maybe another thread) I'd asked whether our visitors are stuck seeing that word "Folders"? I'm hoping there's some other name we can give our categories, as I find that word extremely unattractive & meaningless to many of our sites.
Lastly, for now-- clarity about titles / captions / descriptions will help people too. We will want to know where our captions in OldSmug go. (what are they called in NewSmug?) And what will happen to photos that had what are called "Titles" and "Descriptions" put on them in PhotoShop, then uploaded to OldSmug & not edited on-site by us? I was always frustrated that OldSmug ignored my PS titles (which should've become my captions) & instead stuck my whole description (which was often meant only for stock photography!) in there as the caption. Many times (but not all) I edited that long "caption" (really description) & put in what should've been there instead, the PS "Title" field. I don't know how NewSmug will handle any of that..for the future, I hope it handles things the way every other site does & uses the correct & related PS fields for the correct fields under a photo.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
These toggles just take you back and forth between old and new so you can work on either, nothing else.
My Website index | My Blog
The only action that can't be undone, is if you're on New SmugMug, click on "publish New SmugMug" and then on the confirmation dialog manually type in the word "publish". That would publish your New SmugMug site replacing the old site so that visitors can also see and use your new site. Once you've done that, there's no going back to the old SmugMug. However, it's not possible to do this by accident as you have to type in the letters publish and also click on the "publish it" button. If you just click on cancel, nothing happens. So you don't have to worry at all.
SmugMug Support Hero
And now -- for the 3rd or 4th time -- I'm rethinking trying to self-host. The platforms I've prototyped have features I want that aren't in New Smug, which of course is the whole point. But New Smug also has features I want that I can't get in the alternatives. :-( So now I'm just back to desperately wishing I could keep Old Smug.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I was thinking the same thing, Denise.
Alemeth, you may not get the same exact look, but you can customize with CSS so much, site-wide, folders, etc., that you may find a new(ish) new look that you really like.
In fact - can't you play behind the scenes now? In the "sandbox"?