1. I don't like new Smug Mug. Every time I log on and it gives me a preview of the New Smug Mug, I go, "gaaaaaaaaaa....that's ugly," and get out of there as fast as possible.
2. I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO SET UP A WHOLE NEW SITE THAT INVOLVES SEVEN YEARS' WORTH OF GALLERIES AND PHOTOS.
Just as a heads up, we're working on pushing out a change that will display 2 lines of Gallery / Folder titles, so that longer titles can be seen better.
I already have multi-line gallery names on folder page grids.
.sm-tiles-grid ul li a p {
font-size:95%!important;
padding-left:0!important;
padding-right:0!important;
color:gold!important;
text-align:center;
overflow:visible!important;
white-space:normal!important;
height:auto!important}
I already have multi-line gallery names on folder page grids.
.sm-tiles-grid ul li a p {
font-size:95%!important;
padding-left:0!important;
padding-right:0!important;
color:gold!important;
text-align:center;
overflow:visible!important;
white-space:normal!important;
height:auto!important}
While that works for you, we can't force everyone to have multi-line titles shown on every tile, even for ones that don't have multiple lines. Our fix will handle the case where there's mixed single and multi-lines. If people want to extend it further they can use similar CSS to yours. Thanks for posting that!
While that works for you, we can't force everyone to have multi-line titles shown on every tile, even for ones that don't have multiple lines. Our fix will handle the case where there's mixed single and multi-lines. If people want to extend it further they can use similar CSS to yours. Thanks for posting that!
I added code that extends lines to 1, 2, or 3. As usual {rolls eyes] I'm not sure where the code is for it, but at least it works.
I now need the latest & greatest clarity about what the latest blue buttons mean on my site (when logged in). 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.
As Allen mentioned, clicking "Learn About New SmugMug" will open a drop-down menu with links to our help pages. Those help pages would be a good place for you to learn about many of the features of New SmugMug. It seems like you have a number of questions, which some of could be answered in the help pages / videos.
Clicking on "Return to New SmugMug" will bring your interface back to New SmugMug. We say "Back" because you either went there on your own, or we forced you into it over the last month. If you're seeing Old SmugMug it's because you clicked the "Back to Old SmugMug" button. Clicking these buttons takes you back and forth and you can switch back and forth any time until your New SmugMug site is published, at which point you will only see New SmugMug.
Until you publish (or on October 15th) you'll still have access to everything you had on Old SmugMug. New SmugMug also adds a lot of features that weren't available in the Old SmugMug, so you're gaining a lot of things.
We've made it difficult to accidentally publish, so feel free to switch yourself as you get comfortable!
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.
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.)
You've pretty much got it. You can switch back and forth all you want and still have access to everything until you publish.
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?
The blue buttons either tell you something (a notification) that you're supposed to read, then dismiss, or they point to a specific section of the site to try to teach you where things are in New SmugMug. They're attempting to help familiarize you with the new site. You only interact with the blue buttons and you click from one to the next. You don't have to click anywhere on the site. They're just little pointers. In fact, if you try to click on anything else we don't let you and display a small "no can do" icon (kinda like the no-smoking sign).
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.
It doesn't appear that we truncate normal-sized Quick-Settings names. I tried a few with fairly long names like "Aaron's Default Settings" and it displayed the entire length. I've asked our QA team to double check this for me.
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.
Yep! All of those titles can be changed by entering the Customizer (Customize -> Content and Design) and then clicking on the content block (or clicking on the wrench by the content block) to bring up its settings. You can change, or even remove the text, to whatever you'd like!
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 "[/I]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.
Great questions ... and you've got it nailed down. We do what you'd expect: whatever Title, Caption, and Keywords were stored in the photos metadata will be used in New SmugMug. Titles are one of those new features for New SmugMug that it sounds like you'll enjoy. I certainly loved having that added. In Old SmugMug I was using HTML to create a "Title" as part of the caption. Now I don't have to do that anymore! Yay!
Titles, captions and keywords all remain underneath the photo, at least on SmugMug and Journal Style galleries. For the new Collage style they'll be displayed as part of an "Info Bar" at the bottom or underneath the photo. Additional information, with all of the text displayed, is shown in the Lightbox (clicking on the photo). Initially they're hidden under the photo, but mousing over the title / caption will bring it up. This makes it so that the photo is the center of attention until the viewer decides to view the caption/keywords.
For most designs, the title should always be visible and part of the captions will also be displayed. Keywords will be hidden below if there are titles / long captions. Some designs, particularly ones with a Top Header, captions may be slightly hidden, below the screen, depending upon the screen size. We're trying to show off your images and make sure they're as large and beautiful as possible. The intention was to make sure some of the captions are always displayed but that's not happening for all designs. We'll be working on this in the future (though I cannot say when).
Comments are shown below all the others. They're a bit hidden now, especially on Collage style galleries, and we have it in our roadmap to fix this. We want your photos to flourish on SM and we'll be adding better interaction with your photos in the future.
It doesn't appear that we truncate normal-sized Quick-Settings names. I tried a few with fairly long names like "Aaron's Default Settings" and it displayed the entire length. I've asked our QA team to double check this for me.
We checked and it looks like it shows ~25 characters, then adds "...".
It seems that even for the Basic account there several features of an old Smugmug that are missing in the new one.
For each of the one below, could you tell if this is thoughtful decision, an oversight that we should not expect to be correct or I guess a bug that will be corrected someday?
1. If featured photo is not specified, it's defaults to the first image. No way to make a random photo from the gallery shown.
2. No way to show original (not squared) thumbnails in the folder that lists galleries.
3. Description of the gallery are much less important. They are not shown in the list of galleries, or even in the arrange mode.
4. "square" vs "original" thumbnails option does not really work for videos.
Also, if you're unable to attend one of the Live Webinars, we have a recording of the last one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXkQ6Doi3hk. Feel free to watch it at your convenience!
How will New SmugMug handle Old Smug on-site Caption edits for its Titles & Captions?
Aaron, thank you so much for your thoroughness & clear answers in Post #68 of this thread. This truly helps a lot. (Now if I can just find all these helpful tidbits when I'm switching..!) Ok, I wasn't sure how to quote a small snippet, so just a question about this part of what you said: "...We do what you'd expect: whatever Title, Caption, and Keywords were stored in the photos metadata will be used in New SmugMug. Titles are one of those new features for New SmugMug that it sounds like you'll enjoy. I certainly loved having that added. In Old SmugMug I was using HTML to create a "Title" as part of the caption. Now I don't have to do that anymore! Yay..."
Yes, in the long run, this should help lots. But my question (and this is an issue on only some of my photos, but it'll affect a high percentage of my best ones, i.e. Portfolio, etc.)-- - What's not clear to me is what happens to photos on which I'd edited the captions on my SmugMug site even after I'd put Titles & Descriptions in their Metadata in Photoshop? Like I said before, OldSmug was taking the Description fields that I'd created in PS & using them as the Caption. So in many cases, I then edited those captions under such photos on my SmugMug site and replaced them with what should've been there in the first place (but it may not have been precisely the Title I'd given it in PS). So, what is NewSmug going to do with them? Will it revert those Titles / Captions to what's in the metadata from PS, or will it recognize that I've edited it & keep my old Caption as a Title & leave the Description field blank?
One reason this is a biggie for me (besides all the obvious ones) is thatI sometimes edit photos on PicMonkey or right on SmugMug too, & I notate that for myself by editing its caption & keywords with a little abbreviation. That would all disappear if NewSmug takes every Title & Caption from PS (or LR or other) metadata.
Related to the above question / issue, what does the "Replace" function now do with Titles, Captions, same / different metadata in the replaced image, changed filenames, etc.? Thanks for any help on this!
My question (and this is an issue on only some of my photos, but it'll affect a high percentage of my best ones, i.e. Portfolio, etc.) - What's not clear to me is what happens to photos on which I'd edited the captions on my SmugMug site even after I'd put Titles & Descriptions in their Metadata in Photoshop? So, what is NewSmug going to do with them? Will it revert those Titles / Captions to what's in the metadata from PS, or will it recognize that I've edited it & keep my old Caption as a Title & leave the Description field blank?
We're smart about it -- if you've updated the Titles, Captions, and Keywords on SmugMug, after uploading the photo, we'll always use the version that was on SmugMug. So if you've updated your captions / keywords because you tweaked them or adding things, we'll always keep that and display it on SmugMug. We don't write it back into your photo's metadata: the photo you uploaded to us will always be the exact same when you download the original back (but again, we'll store any updates you made on SmugMug separately and display those).
Related to the above question / issue, what does the "Replace" function now do with Titles, Captions, same / different metadata in the replaced image, changed filenames, etc.?
Right now replacing a photo actually does nothing except replace the image files. All the metadata including keywords, captions and titles stay the same as the original upload. This has been frustrating some users, who make changes in photoshop or bridge or another EXIF editor, then replace the file, hoping the metadata will be updated but find it isn't!
I've proposed a change (but it's not being worked on right now), that would update all the metadata with the replaced version's metadata, except if the SmugMug title, caption and keywords were updated in SmugMug, then we'll keep the SmugMug version. Again, if you ever update them on SmugMug, we'll assume that's the version you want and keep those.
It's fairly easy, though sneaky. I hit the "reply" button and it gives me the big long
text. I then chop it up. Any time I want to end a snippet, I just add in "[ / quote ]" and then when I want to start it again, I add in the original "[ quote = WinsomeWorks ]"
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"?
I enabled the sandbox the same week New Smug was announced. I guestimate that over the past two years I've spent over 50 hours trying to get it to do something I could live with, in three different hard pushes (the last with leftquark's help), without success. I wrote quite a bit of CSS, too, but had trouble with it breaking or having odd side effects. Note that over the past 8 years I think I've only spent at most 20 hours customizing and doing other "meta tasks" with Old Smug.
That's why I want to scream and bang my head against the wall every time someone insinuates that the only reason I haven't switched to New Smug is I haven't tried it. (The "change is hard" thing annoys me just as much. I've been writing software professionally for 41 years; I get the whole "change" thing, sonny. Try dealing with a multi-million dollar customer who badgered you for a product change for years, only to decide after you've shipped it to their precise specifications that they didn't really want it, and can you put it back the old way? (*SIGH*))
But I'm starting to feel like I don't have a choice. The alternatives I've tried all have their own show-stopper problems, and some of them are design features that can't be fixed. There's just a staggering number of small details that SmugMug gets right that no one else does. Which.... is why I keep lamenting the death of Old Smug, because I was completely satisfied with it.
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
Because I'm not sure I can adequately support my users that way. But, yes, it's something I've been seriously considering. Ironically, what makes it plausible is the switch from old to new doesn't break deep links.
2. I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO SET UP A WHOLE NEW SITE THAT INVOLVES SEVEN YEARS' WORTH OF GALLERIES AND PHOTOS.
Yep. Especially after I realized that, after customization, I would still need to add a bunch of CSS, review every folder and every gallery one by one, adjust thumbnails, and fix things that were no longer navigable, and deal with a lot of stuff that just doesn't work, like drag and drop to my Email client.
That said, you should take a look at the sites of some of the frequent posters here. Allen Smith's site is such a marriage of beauty and ease-of-use that I'm surprised SmugMug doesn't pay him to promote it. If that doesn't get you inspired, nothing will.
... deal with a lot of stuff that just doesn't work, like drag and drop to my Email client.
And, I was just painfully reminded by going to look at Allen's site, New Smug is DOA on old Macs. You either get a blank screen or a "Bad Bot" message from the CDN.
And, I was just painfully reminded by going to look at Allen's site, New Smug is DOA on old Macs. You either get a blank screen or a "Bad Bot" message from the CDN.
When you reference "old Macs", I assume they are running a no longer supported by smug operating system or browser.
When you reference "old Macs", I assume they are running a no longer supported by smug operating system or browser.
--- Denise
Correct. Old Smug is, again, unique in this respect. Arguably this is because it hasn't been maintained; but for whatever reason it still works splendidly with older browsers and computers. The "classic" mode of PhotoShelter is the same, the difference being that PhotoShelter swears they will continue to maintain both their "New" and "Classic" looks. Since Smug is better than either of them it's a moot point.
(My workaround for this problem was to install Chrome.)
With new toggle buttons, still a reason to use 2 different browsers, or not?
With the new toggle buttons "Learn about New SmugMug", "Back to Old SmugMug, etc... does this mean that I now have no real reason to use 2 different browsers as I start working on the switch-over, one for Old & one for New Smug? Or is having 2 browsers open still the only way to have both Old & New open at once? (I'm not sure I'm correctly picturing how best to go about this..) For instance, can (or should) I use FireFox to have OldSmug open on my desktop, & then open another instance of FF & toggle that one to NewSmug, as a way to keep them / see them both easily while working?
Or... would I need to use FF for one (say, New Smug) & IE (shudder) or a different browser for the other (say, Old Smug)? I just don't know whether most people feel there's a real advantage anymore to having both Old & New open at once, but I can't really picture doing it another way, with the hugeness of my site. I mean, I'm guessing just toggling between New & Old, only having one version open at once, would feel very very clumsy, at least initially?
Incidentally, the first view New Smug is showing me is large thumbs of each category, But the categories are in the exact opposite order from how I have them showing on Old Smug. Why? Good heavens, if even stuff like that is all screwed up, this job is going to become incredibly unwieldy, especially for someone who physically can't sit in a chair for long. The crops on these square cat thumbs are horrible too, & why are they square...ugh. What a great intro to the fantabulous New Smug.:
... Incidentally, the first view New Smug is showing me is large thumbs of each category, But the categories are in the exact opposite order from how I have them showing on Old Smug. Why? Good heavens, if even stuff like that is all screwed up, this job is going to become incredibly unwieldy, especially for someone who physically can't sit in a chair for long. The crops on these square cat thumbs are horrible too, & why are they square...ugh. What a great intro to the fantabulous New Smug.:
I think you are referring the the "grid" view with square "thumbs" (actually the center of the whole
photo) in a folder. Most of these will work but for the ones I didn't like I made a special square image
with the crop I want to show. I put these in an unlisted gallery and point to them for feature
gallery/folder photos.
The "thumbs" do not have to be square, try college portrait and landscape.
Any of these "thumbs" can be sorted any way you want, even manually, in Organizer.
New Smug All Galleries page has order completely switched from Old Smug Yes, I see now that the square thumbs is on what was once my...what did we call it... my "all galleries" page or something? Oddly, those are all square. Then you click on one of those (which are essentially all my categories), & you get to a page with large thumbs in horizontal format (but not showing the whole image, oddly) Then if any of those have sub-categories & you click on them, you get to its sub-cat (sub-folder.. puke) page, which again has horizontal thumbs showing partial images. So... yeah, there's a lot of work to clean all that up, but it sounds like the horizontal thumbs can't even be cleaned up because they're arbitrary? As to sorting them any way I want, well, my point is that I already had them sorted the way I want, & NewSmug took them & switched them exactly the opposite of how I had them. (I had my most important categories first, & had them in order of how my header tabs were). But NewSmug movied the first ones to the bottom & the last ones are now first. I shouldn't have to go through all that-- why is it that stupid, causing people a lot of needless work? Now I assume if I change them in New, they'll be messed up in Old. And vice versa. So I don't even know where to start. Feeling very discouraged.
I think you are referring the the "grid" view with square "thumbs" (actually the center of the whole
photo) in a folder. Most of these will work but for the ones I didn't like I made a special square image
with the crop I want to show. I put these in an unlisted gallery and point to them for feature
gallery/folder photos.
The "thumbs" do not have to be square, try college portrait and landscape.
Any of these "thumbs" can be sorted any way you want, even manually, in Organizer.
I would absolutely love to know about these things too. They're some of the first things I noticed, along with a bunch of other things, that are distressing about New SmugMug.
It seems that even for the Basic account there several features of an old Smugmug that are missing in the new one.
For each of the one below, could you tell if this is thoughtful decision, an oversight that we should not expect to be correct or I guess a bug that will be corrected someday?
1. If featured photo is not specified, it's defaults to the first image. No way to make a random photo from the gallery shown.
2. No way to show original (not squared) thumbnails in the folder that lists galleries.
3. Description of the gallery are much less important. They are not shown in the list of galleries, or even in the arrange mode.
4. "square" vs "original" thumbnails option does not really work for videos.
Well, New Smug Mug may being smart about photo titles, captions, descriptions, whatever...that I've edited on Old Smug. However, it is sadly being very stupid about what it's importing (or rather, not importing) directly from metadata entered in PhotoShop. This is extremely discouraging and a gross oversight on SmugMug's part, especially since several of us brought this to attention a long time ago & begged that it be implemented in New Smug. I've been searching and searching, and cannot find even one title that has been imported from files that were edited & had titles and descriptions added in PhotoShop. Not one!!
I looked at galleries in my archives, which are full of photos with titles & descriptions (which should've become titles & descriptions on New Smug). They've got keywords, and the descriptions are in the right place, in the description field under the photo on New Smug. But they've got no titles. They all say "Add Title". This should absolutely be fixed before October 15. It's pretty inexcusable. This is supposed to be a pro site. Now I'm wondering... what about LightRoom... is New SmugMug importing those titles correctly?? Sigh. Along with that, I found so many other things that got me so frustrated with the new site that I'm just cooked for the day... have to go work on other stuff.
Sadly, back when they were asking for feedback about the new look, most of the things that bothered people got carried through anyway. I don't get that. Why ask for feedback? The fact that all the important info is completely below the fold, while the number of the photo (which used to be small, above to the left, & unobtrusive) has this prominent position right below the photo, with gobs of space around it... & then the caption is invisible & way below.... AAaaaargh!! We fed that back, long long ago. Ok, I'm going now. I have to breathe.
We're smart about it -- if you've updated the Titles, Captions, and Keywords on SmugMug, after uploading the photo, we'll always use the version that was on SmugMug. So if you've updated your captions / keywords because you tweaked them or adding things, we'll always keep that and display it on SmugMug. We don't write it back into your photo's metadata: the photo you uploaded to us will always be the exact same when you download the original back (but again, we'll store any updates you made on SmugMug separately and display those).
Well, New Smug Mug may being smart about photo titles, captions, descriptions, whatever...that I've edited on Old Smug. However, it is sadly being very stupid about what it's importing (or rather, not importing) directly from metadata entered in PhotoShop. This is extremely discouraging and a gross oversight on SmugMug's part, especially since several of us brought this to attention a long time ago & begged that it be implemented in New Smug. I've been searching and searching, and cannot find even one title that has been imported from files that were edited & had titles and descriptions added in PhotoShop. Not one!!
Titles should work fine. When you say importing, do you mean uploading? Are you trying to see titles from photos you uploaded to old smug, or are you uploading new photos to new smug with titles in the metadata?
I can't / shouldn't upload to New Smug until I publish, from what I understand, because it's going to mess with my organization, etc. So I haven't tried that yet. I'm talking about all the photos I already have there in Old Smug. But the metadata hasn't changed except on the small percentage I've edited on-site, so New Smug should be grabbing those titles (the ones I haven't edited).
Titles should work fine. When you say importing, do you mean uploading? Are you trying to see titles from photos you uploaded to old smug, or are you uploading new photos to new smug with titles in the metadata?
Put me down as another SmugMug user that isn't remotely happy about being forced to switch to the "new" SmugMug. Don't get me wrong, the Heroes have been fantastic. One of them even spent a little time to make my new SmugMug site somewhat resemble my old SmugMug site. But the important resemblance in features and layout simply isn't there. And now I've discovered something even more annoying....
When visiting my site on my iPhone, I am being FORCED to view the mobile version of my site. I mean, even in Safari (web browser on the iPhone), only the mobile version of my site will be displayed (and now only the NEW SmugMug version, there appears to be no way to go back to the OLD SmugMug on my iPhone). The mobile version of my site (via Safari on iPhone) looks pretty similar to the SmugMug app.
I have a VERY large hidden gallery on my site where I upload a bunch of random photos for various purposes (outside linking, etc.). It's not uncommon for me to use the SmugMug CAMERA! app to upload photos to this large gallery from my iPhone. But then I need to access those photos within the gallery on the iPhone so I can get an "owner share" direct URL link to the specific photo (a URL that I can use to link ONLY that photo on another site, such as inline on a forum). With the mobile version of the new SmugMug, I am forced to wade through HUNDREDS of thumbnails to get to the photo I just uploaded (to get to the end of the gallery). There are NO jump buttons to enable to to jump to the very end of the gallery. The thumbnails load a few at a time and it literally takes FOREVER for hundreds of thumbnails to load. I let my iPhone sit for 10 minutes and I kept scrolling to force load more thumbnails and I didn't even make it 1/10 the way through the gallery! It's a huge waste of bandwidth and time. And, once I get to the photo, I don't seem to be able to find a way to do any sort of "owner share" for that individual photo within the mobile version of the site.
The mobile view of SmugMug on my iPhone is completely USELESS to me now! And since the SmugMug app works exactly the same, I no longer have ANY useful access to my site from my iPhone.
Why can't *I* be the one to choose whether I view a mobile version or a desktop version of MY OWN SITE??????
This is beyond frustrating. SmugMug isn't just forcing me to change the way my site looks, it is eliminating (or making extremely difficult) things that I do nearly every day!
I've asked a Hero for help, I'll see what they have to say. For everyone else, if you haven't visited your site (logged in as owner) via Safari on an iPhone lately, you might take a look. If you dislike the SmugMug app, you won't like the mobile version of SmugMug that is being forced upon you in your mobile browser.
Can you sort the gallery by date taken descending? Latest would be first.
Thanks, that might help me access the photo much more quickly, I'll try it.
But even if it works (and don't have to wade through hundreds of photos), once I get to the photo using the FORCED mobile version of my site on my iPhone under Safari, there seems to be no possible way to get to this feature:
I need to get to Owner Share "Get A Link" on my iPhone under the Safari browser. The SmugMug mobile app doesn't allow access to that feature either.
I need the DESKTOP version of my site back for viewing on my iPhone!
EDIT: In comparing the "old" SmugMug's Account Settings to the "new" SmugMug Account Settings, it appears the ability to turn off Mobile view of your site has been removed from the new SmugMug. That, or it is buried somewhere where i can't find it. I have Mobile View turned OFF on my old SmugMug.
This is so amazingly frustrating. Forcing customers to change the appearance of their site is one thing (and frustrating enough) but forcing the removal of features goes too far. I'm screwed if the Heroes don't have a fix for me.
I can't / shouldn't upload to New Smug until I publish, from what I understand, because it's going to mess with my organization, etc. So I haven't tried that yet. I'm talking about all the photos I already have there in Old Smug. But the metadata hasn't changed except on the small percentage I've edited on-site, so New Smug should be grabbing those titles (the ones I haven't edited).
Titles will work for new photos uploaded to newsmug.
Comments
2. I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO SET UP A WHOLE NEW SITE THAT INVOLVES SEVEN YEARS' WORTH OF GALLERIES AND PHOTOS.
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Ana
SmugMug Support Hero
SmugMug Support Hero Manager
My website: anapogacar.smugmug.com
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
.sm-tiles-grid ul li a p {
font-size:95%!important;
padding-left:0!important;
padding-right:0!important;
color:gold!important;
text-align:center;
overflow:visible!important;
white-space:normal!important;
height:auto!important}
My Website index | My Blog
While that works for you, we can't force everyone to have multi-line titles shown on every tile, even for ones that don't have multiple lines. Our fix will handle the case where there's mixed single and multi-lines. If people want to extend it further they can use similar CSS to yours. Thanks for posting that!
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 added code that extends lines to 1, 2, or 3. As usual {rolls eyes] I'm not sure where the code is for it, but at least it works.
Oops, left out the example page: http://www.joinrats.com/ModifyBehavior
As Allen mentioned, clicking "Learn About New SmugMug" will open a drop-down menu with links to our help pages. Those help pages would be a good place for you to learn about many of the features of New SmugMug. It seems like you have a number of questions, which some of could be answered in the help pages / videos.
Clicking on "Return to New SmugMug" will bring your interface back to New SmugMug. We say "Back" because you either went there on your own, or we forced you into it over the last month. If you're seeing Old SmugMug it's because you clicked the "Back to Old SmugMug" button. Clicking these buttons takes you back and forth and you can switch back and forth any time until your New SmugMug site is published, at which point you will only see New SmugMug.
Until you publish (or on October 15th) you'll still have access to everything you had on Old SmugMug. New SmugMug also adds a lot of features that weren't available in the Old SmugMug, so you're gaining a lot of things.
We've made it difficult to accidentally publish, so feel free to switch yourself as you get comfortable!
Our New SmugMug FAQ has a section for "Is there anything that won’t be in New SmugMug?" It should list the features that were not incorporated into New SmugMug: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/2080012#11
You've pretty much got it. You can switch back and forth all you want and still have access to everything until you publish.
The blue buttons either tell you something (a notification) that you're supposed to read, then dismiss, or they point to a specific section of the site to try to teach you where things are in New SmugMug. They're attempting to help familiarize you with the new site. You only interact with the blue buttons and you click from one to the next. You don't have to click anywhere on the site. They're just little pointers. In fact, if you try to click on anything else we don't let you and display a small "no can do" icon (kinda like the no-smoking sign).
It doesn't appear that we truncate normal-sized Quick-Settings names. I tried a few with fairly long names like "Aaron's Default Settings" and it displayed the entire length. I've asked our QA team to double check this for me.
Yep! All of those titles can be changed by entering the Customizer (Customize -> Content and Design) and then clicking on the content block (or clicking on the wrench by the content block) to bring up its settings. You can change, or even remove the text, to whatever you'd like!
Great questions ... and you've got it nailed down. We do what you'd expect: whatever Title, Caption, and Keywords were stored in the photos metadata will be used in New SmugMug. Titles are one of those new features for New SmugMug that it sounds like you'll enjoy. I certainly loved having that added. In Old SmugMug I was using HTML to create a "Title" as part of the caption. Now I don't have to do that anymore! Yay!
Titles, captions and keywords all remain underneath the photo, at least on SmugMug and Journal Style galleries. For the new Collage style they'll be displayed as part of an "Info Bar" at the bottom or underneath the photo. Additional information, with all of the text displayed, is shown in the Lightbox (clicking on the photo). Initially they're hidden under the photo, but mousing over the title / caption will bring it up. This makes it so that the photo is the center of attention until the viewer decides to view the caption/keywords.
For most designs, the title should always be visible and part of the captions will also be displayed. Keywords will be hidden below if there are titles / long captions. Some designs, particularly ones with a Top Header, captions may be slightly hidden, below the screen, depending upon the screen size. We're trying to show off your images and make sure they're as large and beautiful as possible. The intention was to make sure some of the captions are always displayed but that's not happening for all designs. We'll be working on this in the future (though I cannot say when).
Comments are shown below all the others. They're a bit hidden now, especially on Collage style galleries, and we have it in our roadmap to fix this. We want your photos to flourish on SM and we'll be adding better interaction with your photos in the future.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
We checked and it looks like it shows ~25 characters, then adds "...".
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
It seems that even for the Basic account there several features of an old Smugmug that are missing in the new one.
For each of the one below, could you tell if this is thoughtful decision, an oversight that we should not expect to be correct or I guess a bug that will be corrected someday?
1. If featured photo is not specified, it's defaults to the first image. No way to make a random photo from the gallery shown.
2. No way to show original (not squared) thumbnails in the folder that lists galleries.
3. Description of the gallery are much less important. They are not shown in the list of galleries, or even in the arrange mode.
4. "square" vs "original" thumbnails option does not really work for videos.
Thank you,
Dmitry
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Aaron, thank you so much for your thoroughness & clear answers in Post #68 of this thread. This truly helps a lot. (Now if I can just find all these helpful tidbits when I'm switching..!) Ok, I wasn't sure how to quote a small snippet, so just a question about this part of what you said: "...We do what you'd expect: whatever Title, Caption, and Keywords were stored in the photos metadata will be used in New SmugMug. Titles are one of those new features for New SmugMug that it sounds like you'll enjoy. I certainly loved having that added. In Old SmugMug I was using HTML to create a "Title" as part of the caption. Now I don't have to do that anymore! Yay..."
Yes, in the long run, this should help lots. But my question (and this is an issue on only some of my photos, but it'll affect a high percentage of my best ones, i.e. Portfolio, etc.)-- - What's not clear to me is what happens to photos on which I'd edited the captions on my SmugMug site even after I'd put Titles & Descriptions in their Metadata in Photoshop? Like I said before, OldSmug was taking the Description fields that I'd created in PS & using them as the Caption. So in many cases, I then edited those captions under such photos on my SmugMug site and replaced them with what should've been there in the first place (but it may not have been precisely the Title I'd given it in PS). So, what is NewSmug going to do with them? Will it revert those Titles / Captions to what's in the metadata from PS, or will it recognize that I've edited it & keep my old Caption as a Title & leave the Description field blank?
One reason this is a biggie for me (besides all the obvious ones) is thatI sometimes edit photos on PicMonkey or right on SmugMug too, & I notate that for myself by editing its caption & keywords with a little abbreviation. That would all disappear if NewSmug takes every Title & Caption from PS (or LR or other) metadata.
Related to the above question / issue, what does the "Replace" function now do with Titles, Captions, same / different metadata in the replaced image, changed filenames, etc.? Thanks for any help on this!
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
These are all excellent questions, by the way!
We're smart about it -- if you've updated the Titles, Captions, and Keywords on SmugMug, after uploading the photo, we'll always use the version that was on SmugMug. So if you've updated your captions / keywords because you tweaked them or adding things, we'll always keep that and display it on SmugMug. We don't write it back into your photo's metadata: the photo you uploaded to us will always be the exact same when you download the original back (but again, we'll store any updates you made on SmugMug separately and display those).
Right now replacing a photo actually does nothing except replace the image files. All the metadata including keywords, captions and titles stay the same as the original upload. This has been frustrating some users, who make changes in photoshop or bridge or another EXIF editor, then replace the file, hoping the metadata will be updated but find it isn't!
I've proposed a change (but it's not being worked on right now), that would update all the metadata with the replaced version's metadata, except if the SmugMug title, caption and keywords were updated in SmugMug, then we'll keep the SmugMug version. Again, if you ever update them on SmugMug, we'll assume that's the version you want and keep those.
It's fairly easy, though sneaky. I hit the "reply" button and it gives me the big long text. I then chop it up. Any time I want to end a snippet, I just add in "[ / quote ]" and then when I want to start it again, I add in the original "[ quote = WinsomeWorks ]"
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 enabled the sandbox the same week New Smug was announced. I guestimate that over the past two years I've spent over 50 hours trying to get it to do something I could live with, in three different hard pushes (the last with leftquark's help), without success. I wrote quite a bit of CSS, too, but had trouble with it breaking or having odd side effects. Note that over the past 8 years I think I've only spent at most 20 hours customizing and doing other "meta tasks" with Old Smug.
That's why I want to scream and bang my head against the wall every time someone insinuates that the only reason I haven't switched to New Smug is I haven't tried it. (The "change is hard" thing annoys me just as much. I've been writing software professionally for 41 years; I get the whole "change" thing, sonny. Try dealing with a multi-million dollar customer who badgered you for a product change for years, only to decide after you've shipped it to their precise specifications that they didn't really want it, and can you put it back the old way? (*SIGH*))
But I'm starting to feel like I don't have a choice. The alternatives I've tried all have their own show-stopper problems, and some of them are design features that can't be fixed. There's just a staggering number of small details that SmugMug gets right that no one else does. Which.... is why I keep lamenting the death of Old Smug, because I was completely satisfied with it.
Because I'm not sure I can adequately support my users that way. But, yes, it's something I've been seriously considering. Ironically, what makes it plausible is the switch from old to new doesn't break deep links.
Yep. Especially after I realized that, after customization, I would still need to add a bunch of CSS, review every folder and every gallery one by one, adjust thumbnails, and fix things that were no longer navigable, and deal with a lot of stuff that just doesn't work, like drag and drop to my Email client.
That said, you should take a look at the sites of some of the frequent posters here. Allen Smith's site is such a marriage of beauty and ease-of-use that I'm surprised SmugMug doesn't pay him to promote it. If that doesn't get you inspired, nothing will.
And, I was just painfully reminded by going to look at Allen's site, New Smug is DOA on old Macs. You either get a blank screen or a "Bad Bot" message from the CDN.
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/en/portal/articles/93252-what-operating-systems-and-browsers-are-supported-by-smugmug-.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Correct. Old Smug is, again, unique in this respect. Arguably this is because it hasn't been maintained; but for whatever reason it still works splendidly with older browsers and computers. The "classic" mode of PhotoShelter is the same, the difference being that PhotoShelter swears they will continue to maintain both their "New" and "Classic" looks. Since Smug is better than either of them it's a moot point.
(My workaround for this problem was to install Chrome.)
With the new toggle buttons "Learn about New SmugMug", "Back to Old SmugMug, etc... does this mean that I now have no real reason to use 2 different browsers as I start working on the switch-over, one for Old & one for New Smug? Or is having 2 browsers open still the only way to have both Old & New open at once? (I'm not sure I'm correctly picturing how best to go about this..) For instance, can (or should) I use FireFox to have OldSmug open on my desktop, & then open another instance of FF & toggle that one to NewSmug, as a way to keep them / see them both easily while working?
Or... would I need to use FF for one (say, New Smug) & IE (shudder) or a different browser for the other (say, Old Smug)? I just don't know whether most people feel there's a real advantage anymore to having both Old & New open at once, but I can't really picture doing it another way, with the hugeness of my site. I mean, I'm guessing just toggling between New & Old, only having one version open at once, would feel very very clumsy, at least initially?
Incidentally, the first view New Smug is showing me is large thumbs of each category, But the categories are in the exact opposite order from how I have them showing on Old Smug. Why? Good heavens, if even stuff like that is all screwed up, this job is going to become incredibly unwieldy, especially for someone who physically can't sit in a chair for long. The crops on these square cat thumbs are horrible too, & why are they square...ugh. What a great intro to the fantabulous New Smug.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
photo) in a folder. Most of these will work but for the ones I didn't like I made a special square image
with the crop I want to show. I put these in an unlisted gallery and point to them for feature
gallery/folder photos.
The "thumbs" do not have to be square, try college portrait and landscape.
Any of these "thumbs" can be sorted any way you want, even manually, in Organizer.
My Website index | My Blog
Yes, I see now that the square thumbs is on what was once my...what did we call it... my "all galleries" page or something? Oddly, those are all square. Then you click on one of those (which are essentially all my categories), & you get to a page with large thumbs in horizontal format (but not showing the whole image, oddly) Then if any of those have sub-categories & you click on them, you get to its sub-cat (sub-folder.. puke) page, which again has horizontal thumbs showing partial images. So... yeah, there's a lot of work to clean all that up, but it sounds like the horizontal thumbs can't even be cleaned up because they're arbitrary? As to sorting them any way I want, well, my point is that I already had them sorted the way I want, & NewSmug took them & switched them exactly the opposite of how I had them. (I had my most important categories first, & had them in order of how my header tabs were). But NewSmug movied the first ones to the bottom & the last ones are now first. I shouldn't have to go through all that-- why is it that stupid, causing people a lot of needless work? Now I assume if I change them in New, they'll be messed up in Old. And vice versa. So I don't even know where to start. Feeling very discouraged.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
I looked at galleries in my archives, which are full of photos with titles & descriptions (which should've become titles & descriptions on New Smug). They've got keywords, and the descriptions are in the right place, in the description field under the photo on New Smug. But they've got no titles. They all say "Add Title". This should absolutely be fixed before October 15. It's pretty inexcusable. This is supposed to be a pro site. Now I'm wondering... what about LightRoom... is New SmugMug importing those titles correctly?? Sigh. Along with that, I found so many other things that got me so frustrated with the new site that I'm just cooked for the day... have to go work on other stuff.
Sadly, back when they were asking for feedback about the new look, most of the things that bothered people got carried through anyway. I don't get that. Why ask for feedback? The fact that all the important info is completely below the fold, while the number of the photo (which used to be small, above to the left, & unobtrusive) has this prominent position right below the photo, with gobs of space around it... & then the caption is invisible & way below.... AAaaaargh!! We fed that back, long long ago. Ok, I'm going now. I have to breathe.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Titles should work fine. When you say importing, do you mean uploading? Are you trying to see titles from photos you uploaded to old smug, or are you uploading new photos to new smug with titles in the metadata?
Dave
My Website index | My Blog
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
When visiting my site on my iPhone, I am being FORCED to view the mobile version of my site. I mean, even in Safari (web browser on the iPhone), only the mobile version of my site will be displayed (and now only the NEW SmugMug version, there appears to be no way to go back to the OLD SmugMug on my iPhone). The mobile version of my site (via Safari on iPhone) looks pretty similar to the SmugMug app.
I have a VERY large hidden gallery on my site where I upload a bunch of random photos for various purposes (outside linking, etc.). It's not uncommon for me to use the SmugMug CAMERA! app to upload photos to this large gallery from my iPhone. But then I need to access those photos within the gallery on the iPhone so I can get an "owner share" direct URL link to the specific photo (a URL that I can use to link ONLY that photo on another site, such as inline on a forum). With the mobile version of the new SmugMug, I am forced to wade through HUNDREDS of thumbnails to get to the photo I just uploaded (to get to the end of the gallery). There are NO jump buttons to enable to to jump to the very end of the gallery. The thumbnails load a few at a time and it literally takes FOREVER for hundreds of thumbnails to load. I let my iPhone sit for 10 minutes and I kept scrolling to force load more thumbnails and I didn't even make it 1/10 the way through the gallery! It's a huge waste of bandwidth and time. And, once I get to the photo, I don't seem to be able to find a way to do any sort of "owner share" for that individual photo within the mobile version of the site.
The mobile view of SmugMug on my iPhone is completely USELESS to me now! And since the SmugMug app works exactly the same, I no longer have ANY useful access to my site from my iPhone.
Why can't *I* be the one to choose whether I view a mobile version or a desktop version of MY OWN SITE??????
This is beyond frustrating. SmugMug isn't just forcing me to change the way my site looks, it is eliminating (or making extremely difficult) things that I do nearly every day!
I've asked a Hero for help, I'll see what they have to say. For everyone else, if you haven't visited your site (logged in as owner) via Safari on an iPhone lately, you might take a look. If you dislike the SmugMug app, you won't like the mobile version of SmugMug that is being forced upon you in your mobile browser.
Mark
My Website index | My Blog
Thanks, that might help me access the photo much more quickly, I'll try it.
But even if it works (and don't have to wade through hundreds of photos), once I get to the photo using the FORCED mobile version of my site on my iPhone under Safari, there seems to be no possible way to get to this feature:
I need to get to Owner Share "Get A Link" on my iPhone under the Safari browser. The SmugMug mobile app doesn't allow access to that feature either.
I need the DESKTOP version of my site back for viewing on my iPhone!
EDIT: In comparing the "old" SmugMug's Account Settings to the "new" SmugMug Account Settings, it appears the ability to turn off Mobile view of your site has been removed from the new SmugMug. That, or it is buried somewhere where i can't find it. I have Mobile View turned OFF on my old SmugMug.
This is so amazingly frustrating. Forcing customers to change the appearance of their site is one thing (and frustrating enough) but forcing the removal of features goes too far. I'm screwed if the Heroes don't have a fix for me.
Mark
Titles will work for new photos uploaded to newsmug.
Dave