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Galleries on home page with new design?
Randyp1234
Registered Users Posts: 17 Big grins
With all this new stuff is it possible any more to have the home page display all of the listed galleries rather than having to browse, then folders, then see the galleries?
Randy
Randy
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Well, you can do that but not in the way you are probably meaning. The Gallery content block is dependant upon it's location, putting it on the homepage won't display anything but recent galleries or galleries at the root (meaning not in a folder), it needs to be in a folder and will display the galleries from that folder. You certainly could move all the galleries into one folder and the point it to that folder or move them all to the root and display top level only but that's probably not what you're getting at. I would imagine you want them all to display but leave your current organization in place and unfortunately, that's not possible at this time.
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Unlike others here I'm not a professional with a highly organized, heavily customized site. It's just a place to put random and vacation snaps for friends and family. I want people to be able to go to http://www.randy-kim.com and see the galleries just as they do now with the old site. Since it seems that eventually we're going to be force fed this new arrangement I want it to be arranged like the old site. I don't want people to have to click browse then have to navigate through various folders. I want them to go to the main page and click "Hawaii Vacation" and look at the pictures.
Randy
I'm curious...do you mean for you to see for quicker access or for visitors?
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I first contacted Jill V. in April 2011 & I even wrote a poem.
I know I'll be forced to change soon, but if I can't have that arrangement I'll go elsewhere.
I have a very simple site with a small hand full of galleries with various titles and no real organization of categories or whatever because there aren't very many of them and
they were all right there on the front page. If someone wanted to see snaps from our recent vacation they went to the site and clicked "Maui 2013" and there they are. Now they go to the site, see some of the most recently uploaded pictures which just happen to be from the Maui trip so they'll probably stop there. But to see everything they now need to click Browse, then the "Vacations" folder, then the Maui gallery, and there they finally are. Plus now that I actually have done this I see that gallery isn't even any different so why the hell did they bother? Wait - I see the thumbnails are actually smaller and the site seems slower. What a waste.
http://www.calmlightphotos.com/ Smugmug Site
http://www.whimsicalyearsphotography.com/ Other Photography site
Folders are just a collection of galleries so they'd still have to navigate a couple layers down to get to the pictures. This is probably what I'll be stuck with once we're forced to go with the new stuff. I'll play with it, maybe, next weekend.
Not galleries on the main page, but only 1 level down. But, you have one of the issues I'm having (though my site is not unveiled). Some of your folders don't have pictures (for example portraits & weddings), presumably because some of the underlying galleries are password protected. Makes the main page look a bit funky. Have you tried to address this (if you care) and either found or given up on a solution?
You're right, not galleries, but this is what I used to have to do in the old smugmug. All of my portrait sessions or weddings were in those 2 categories and my clients had no problem finding them. What I wasn't aware of that you pointed out was because all of the galleries in those folders ARE password protected that you can't see any photo and it does look like crap! It looked like that when I set up the site and I didn't like it so I went through each gallery to choose a feature picture so my site would look good. I hate bothering them - again - but there must be something they can do to fix it or change it. I might have to choose totally unrelated photos to use as feature photos if they can't fix it, but that seems silly to me. I wonder why I couldn't see this when I was logged out?
http://www.calmlightphotos.com/ Smugmug Site
http://www.whimsicalyearsphotography.com/ Other Photography site
Sorry for the delay replying, I was trying different things to find the solution that would be the simplest to implement. This only took me 15 minutes. We can obviously assume they will design a simple 'one-click' way to do this, but for now here is what I did so that I have a single page of galleries rather than folders that require clicking into:
Upon first try, I used the 'galleries' content block on one page. The problem is, it only allows selection of 48 galleries AND in the future, adding galleries wouldn't be organized. For simplicity, my galleries are organized into top-level folders. Currently 9 of them: Infrared, iPhoneography, Manipulations, Sessions, Events, Sales, Journalism, Nature & Urban. Inside each of these are my galleries that hold the photos. Some are additionally divided into folders. This is still pending organization, but the key to quickly doing this tutorial is to at least have organize your galleries into folders. Unless you have less than 48 galleries.
- Sign in to SmugMug. Go to 'organizer'. Organize your galleries and folders.
- Create a page for all your galleries. Titled 'All Galleries' or something to suit you.
- Make it unlisted so that it only shows up for those who visit the link just in case.
- Save and close the organizer. Ensure you are on the 'All Galleries' page.
- Open 'Customize' > 'Customize Site'. Ensure you are in the 'Just This Page' view. (green square)
- You should see the title 'All Galleries'. Select the content block 'Navigation' > 'Galleries'.
- Drag 'Galleries' content blocks over to your page. As many as there are top-level folders.
- Each of those folders (9 in my case) need to be renamed using the 'tool' icon that displays when you hover on the content block.
- Once renamed and organized in order, click the tool icon for the top one (Infrared for me).
- Select the option: 'Select From' > 'Galleries I Choose'. Then the next menu down 'choose galleries'.
- Navigate to your first top-level folder that matches the name of the content block you are adding galleries to. Navigate inside EACH folder and click it once so that is it highlighted. You will see the selection count at the top right of the selection window changing.
- Once you have selected every gallery in the content block's section, save.
- Do this for each top-level 'galleries' content block.
- You will have a page that has ALL galleries on one page. I chose to use the grid setting with a spacing of 72px for mine so that they appear just as they used to on Legacy SmugMug since that is what you are most used to. Other options are changeable.
Oh and if you ever exceed 48 in a content block, just drag another below it and don't title it. Use it the same way as the one you are continuing. Click the 'dimensions' (ruler) tool to change the spacing between the first and second of that top-level section. For instance, Sessions 1 and Sessions 2 change the spacing between them so they aren't so far apart. Removing the title on the second (and additional ones) will ensure visitors know it's still session galleries they are looking at.To add more in the future, just click the 'tool' icon in the content block you need and add more.
To look cleaner, mark all empty galleries as unlisted so there aren't empty folders visible.
Let me know if you need more detailed assistance. Good luck!
Here's mine for an example:
http://soulgazephotography.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/All-Galleries/n-WLDqN
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I first contacted Jill V. in April 2011 & I even wrote a poem.
How did you create your "Contact" page? I can't find the instructions on how to add text/photos, etc.
Soul Gaze has a contact page that is not part of her SmugMug account, but she can tell you how she set it up. She has been very helpful here the last couple of days.
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Hello! My contact page is actually not a SmugMug page. I'd worked hard to match my main website and the new SmugMug as much as possible.
1. To add text or photos to a page, first ensure you have gone into the organizer and created a 'Contact' page. (if you need help, let me know).
2. Then go into 'Customize' > 'Customize Site' while still on the 'Contact' page. Ensure you have selected 'Just This Page' (green box).
3. Then scroll down to the content box option for 'Text' to select a text box that you can drag & drop. The same process to add photos, galleries and other options - just pay attention to whether or not you are adding the content to the current page or the entire site.
4. For the contact page, add the content box for text and comment. You won't need a title since the breadcrumb will show it.
5. Then go into your Account Settings > Stats > Comments. Check the box to require comment approval.
The created contact page will look like this:
http://soulgazephotography.smugmug.com/SmugMug-Website/Contact/n-6gzhP
The problem is, currently SmugMug only allows comments if you are signed into SmugMug or have a Facebook account. Ideally, until this is changed (vote here) you can just have the text contact page.
Alternately, use a service such as WuFoo to create a page like this:
http://soulgazephotography.wufoo.com/forms/z7x3k1/
Then when you create a navigation menu, use the link as a custom link and have it open in a new window so that visitors can fill it out and then close the window without leaving your site.
OR use SmugMug's classic contact form by selecting 'contact form' from the page options when you create a new link via the content box for menu. Instructions are here:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1248294
Good luck! I hope this helps.
SmugMug setup & customization services. Contact me!
Proud & helpful Smugger since 2009. Please hire me for Support Hero!!
I first contacted Jill V. in April 2011 & I even wrote a poem.
Yes, of course! I hoped to help alleviate frustrations. Thank you for noticing my attempts to assist.
SmugMug setup & customization services. Contact me!
Proud & helpful Smugger since 2009. Please hire me for Support Hero!!
I first contacted Jill V. in April 2011 & I even wrote a poem.
Thanks Soul Gaze,
I didn't see this until tonight (Monday) rather late. I'll look into this the next few days and try this out.
Thanks!!
Randy
You're very welcome! Let me know how this works for you and if you need any additional details.
I look forward to seeing your results. Good luck!
SmugMug setup & customization services. Contact me!
Proud & helpful Smugger since 2009. Please hire me for Support Hero!!
I first contacted Jill V. in April 2011 & I even wrote a poem.
OK - I've got a block titled Travel with all the vacation pictures in there. I'm not seeing how to arrange the galleries inside that block. Can that be done?
Randy
Awesome! Honestly, I'd not tried yet. I just did and I don't think it's possible until SmugMug again has a default all-gallery page option, other than if the content block has few galleries and adding all over again to insert them in order. Of course I could be wrong. I know that the organizer will rearrange galleries, but it can't be used to directly affect the content blocks. I tried to just add mine in order of where I wanted them. I'd assume future galleries would be added at the bottom. Organization would be great, but I was happy to determine a temporary solution. I too wanted a way to provide all galleries on one page.
SmugMug setup & customization services. Contact me!
Proud & helpful Smugger since 2009. Please hire me for Support Hero!!
I first contacted Jill V. in April 2011 & I even wrote a poem.
Darlene, your new Smug Mug site is exactly the organization I was trying to achieve. However, I made the "mistake" of trying the Shadow template first, which seems to be a collection of galleries. Shadow is now listed as my current theme. When I close my new Smug Mug theme, the site defaults to the current theme (Shadow). I can't figure out how to get rid of Shadow. It doesn't work for me. Also, except for the current Shadow theme, I can't see how to organize the "other" SmugMug theme. I don't see an "organize" button. The folder/gallery organization from Shadow doesn't seem to carry over. Did you encounter any such problem in you initial exploration of the new Smug Mug? I guess I'm even less of a techy than you are!
I believe the answer to your second question is that whenever you choose a new theme, it goes out to your legacy system and gathers in whatever it can - meaning it gets most things still supported - like javascript is no longer supported (except for a few sites that SM is working with). So, while you can play with many themes and make many different changes in them, they will not affect any of the other themes you are programming. Something I have not played with is Publish Later in a given theme. My understanding is that the changes you made and then used Publish Later WILL remain changed in THAT theme. It just won't make it the Current Theme. A Feature Request has been made to add another button that says something to the effect of Disregard All changes to the theme I am currently modifying. Hope this helps someone!