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Sandbox my @ss! Preview ruined my Legacy Smugmug Site
HamsterHuey
Registered Users Posts: 73 Big grins
I migrated to preview the new features but have decided that I prefer legacy smugmug. I have never gone live with the new Smugmug and made no edits to gallery/folder structure in the Sandbox.
Yet, much to my surprise, I found that one of my Subcategory names has automatically changed.
It seems that the entire navigation structure has been changed even though the Sandbox was supposed to leave my legacy site untouched. I am deeply disappointed by this.
For example: http://smandal.smugmug.com/Other/2012-1
Firstly, it is really annoying that my "Family" Category no longer shows in the URL when it used to in the past. Instead the URL has now changed to "Other". What apparently has happened is my "Events" category has also been remapped to "other" and since it had a "2012" subcategory, they have been renamed to avoid a clash.
This is just absolutely unacceptable. It defeats the entire purpose of a "Sandbox" when previewing the new Smugmug and has completely destroyed the layout of all my galleries and categories/sub categories. Not to mention that the breadcrumbs for navigation is also completely useless. People click on "Family", yet when they enter into the Family Subcategory, the breadcrumb for the parent is "Other" instead of "Family". WTF Smugmug? How did this pass QA and how can you claim that this is a Sandbox mode when simply previewing the new Smugmug completely ruins my existing Legacy Smugmug site?
Not to mention that I am also getting "No Gallery Found" errors when logged out and viewing my legacy smugmug site.
I am about ready to throw in the towel and cancel my account. I am incredibly frustrated that what was promised to be a sandbox mode is really not one and it has ruined my perfectly functional smugmug site. Is there any way to revert my site URLs and organization back to the way it was?
Yet, much to my surprise, I found that one of my Subcategory names has automatically changed.
It seems that the entire navigation structure has been changed even though the Sandbox was supposed to leave my legacy site untouched. I am deeply disappointed by this.
For example: http://smandal.smugmug.com/Other/2012-1
Firstly, it is really annoying that my "Family" Category no longer shows in the URL when it used to in the past. Instead the URL has now changed to "Other". What apparently has happened is my "Events" category has also been remapped to "other" and since it had a "2012" subcategory, they have been renamed to avoid a clash.
This is just absolutely unacceptable. It defeats the entire purpose of a "Sandbox" when previewing the new Smugmug and has completely destroyed the layout of all my galleries and categories/sub categories. Not to mention that the breadcrumbs for navigation is also completely useless. People click on "Family", yet when they enter into the Family Subcategory, the breadcrumb for the parent is "Other" instead of "Family". WTF Smugmug? How did this pass QA and how can you claim that this is a Sandbox mode when simply previewing the new Smugmug completely ruins my existing Legacy Smugmug site?
Not to mention that I am also getting "No Gallery Found" errors when logged out and viewing my legacy smugmug site.
I am about ready to throw in the towel and cancel my account. I am incredibly frustrated that what was promised to be a sandbox mode is really not one and it has ruined my perfectly functional smugmug site. Is there any way to revert my site URLs and organization back to the way it was?
Unhappy SmugMug beta tester - http://smandal.smugmug.com
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Examples:
http://alexisom.smugmug.com/Arts-and-Crafts
http://janetvuong.smugmug.com/Other/Submerge
http://www.miche-events.com/M-Power
http://www.kylerphotography.com/Weddings
I could keep going on. I can't believe that something of this magnitude was not caught by QA for such a big update to SM. Leaves me with very little faith in SmugMug, but we'll see what the Support Heroes have to say about this.
http://smandal.smugmug.com/Family
http://smandal.smugmug.com/Events
Some of them are protected and some are not.
Are you saying that this Family and Events categories should be in a different location?
anything can be amazing
1) Custom categories redirected to "Other": If you notice the subcategories shown in the Family and Events category page, the URL they point to is for example:http://smandal.smugmug.com/Other/2011 when it used to be: http://smandal.smugmug.com/Events/2011
2) Automatic renaming of subcategories with the same name whose top level categories were merged into "Other": You can see this on this page: http://smandal.smugmug.com/Family . It used to have a subcategory called "2012" but even though I never went live with the new SM, merely the act of migrating so I could test the new Smugmug messed things up, where they merged my Events and Family categories under "Other" and then renamed any sub-directories across both top level categories with the same name. In this case, both Family and Events had a "2012" subcategory, but SM went ahead and renamed my subcategory to "2012-1" during the migration
3) No Gallery Found error for Galleries under top level categories that were merged to "Other": This is pretty self explanatory and is obviously very alarming.
Weirdly enough, in my Preview of the new Smugmug, all the galleries and breadcrumbs, etc behave as expected. Family and Events categories work fine, and the subcategory in both is titled "2012". However, I have no intention of going live with the new Smugmug as I think it has taken major steps backwards on the usability and ease of use front. Hopefully Smugmug addresses this issue. Clearly I'm not the only one affected by this. I've noticed tons of other SM accounts with the same issue. If this is irreversible, then I am going to be very very upset. I'm also afraid to start up Lightroom as I'm sure it is going to be yelling at me about missing galleries on Smugmug.
Our team has not found any indication that we moved your site content around automatically. Perhaps you moved some galleries in New SmugMug, and didn't realize it would affect your Legacy structure, too.
When all of the galleries within a link are unlisted, the result will be no galleries found. That has always been the case. You will see your unlisted galleries on those links, when logged in.
I hope this helps!
Lindy
SmugMug Support Hero
I think it would be helpful if someone spelled out more clearly just what the limits of the sandbox are. Clearly, one can get undesired side effects in the legacy site, but I think we need more detailed guidance to avoid shooting ourselves in the foot.
Also the galleries within the link were NEVER unlisted. They worked just fine right up until the new SmugMug release. In fact, they still do not show up as "Unlisted" when logged in and previewing within the new Smugmug, but yet they do not appear to visitors. My original unlisted galleries do infact still say "Unlisted" when viewing in the preview mode, so I can assure you that the case of missing galleries for me is not as simple as all the galleries being unlisted.
The Subcategory renaming also happened without my input...and there is another forum user who has also posted the same issue. See this thread: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=237066
So I would request a real solution or some ideas rather than simply placing the blame on me. I know what I have done and what I haven't and I never once made any changes to any galleries as I was well aware that that was likely to cause issues with my legacy site.
It's at these links:
http://www.pmbimages.com/Animals
http://www.pmbimages.com/People
I NEVER moved any of my content around. I looked at the various designs for 1/2 hour and logged off, after seeing other people with problems and I just left it. Only to see now...
I will be sending an email to Smugmug Help about it.
Film/TV Stills Photography
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt." ~ Henry J. Kaiser
Indeed. I emailed them, and I'm waiting for the blame game. If I even get so much as a whiff of an attempt to say *I* did something to mess this up, I am gone.
It's a good thing I was already building my own sites elsewhere the last few weeks (which was why I only spent a 1/2 hour looking around here in the first place).
Film/TV Stills Photography
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt." ~ Henry J. Kaiser
http://www.jpsmock.com/Family
Cuong
There are so many who have had this issue. Every time I was customizing in the preview, my legacy site would change in some small or major way. Most of the time it was doing something simple like changing the gallery style. That seemed to throw off my legacy site something fierce.
So it's not just you. Lots of us have suffered through this.
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DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
I'd received a response from the Help crew. At least I didn't get the "blame" line like others have. This is what the email read,
Based on the other responses in this thread and others, plus on the Smugmug News page (wow!), this particular problem is growing, apparently.
I will not be logging in to move anything around or explore any features at all until this is resolved, because I'm afraid more problems could crop up that I won't know about. I don;t have time to be exploring, and checking the legacy site to see what has 'disappeared' again.
I will continue to work on building my other site that I will host myself, as was always planned. I have to have a Plan B (and Plan C) to show my work elsewhere.
Film/TV Stills Photography
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt." ~ Henry J. Kaiser
I have not even entered Preview mode and I just found out MY site has been screwed with in the same way (-1-1-1-1 junk added).
I thought leaving my site in Legacy mode meant that NOTHING would be changed.
So what else has changed for people that NEVER ENTERED PREVIEW MODE that nobody is telling us?
It also appears like I can't rename or delete these abortions.
No changes until we are ready means NO CHANGES UNTIL WE ARE READY!!!
I am very, very very pissed off right now SmugMug.
Looks like they have identified the issue and are working to try and fix it.
Dan owes each and every Smugmug customer an apology for launching a site that wasn't ready for prime time. I wonder how many customers they are going to lose over this upgrade?
I am having the Sub category disappeared problem and have not yet experimented with the New Smugmug at all. I have been too busy to play with it. Clients are not Happy. Cannot access anything that I sent them.
The response from the help desk is awful. Thanks for posting the info that they are aware of it.
Correct.
I knew the initial release would be a huge mess, so I intentionally did absolutely nothing to my site (haven't even added a new photo since before 7/30).
Issues like this really make me wonder how much was tested before release and how much this release was rushed out because the one year anniversary of the monster price hike was looming.
Sandboxes, by definition, can't affect items outside the sandbox. Obviously, this isn't a sandbox, more of a suggestion-box that has it's lid open, and delivers a shock to you each time you try to use it. But, it's ok because they doubled your price for this!
I wish I had a better answer. Sorry.
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Your anger and frustration are completely understood. We promised that your existing sites would not be affected and we let you down.
This is entirely on us and offer our sincere apologies if any of our previous responses presumed differently.
Will update when things are back to normal.
The most appalling thing is that I never even started the process.
I can understand (some what) bugs cropping up if you opt to enter preview mode and create a sandbox. True, that goes against the spirit of a sandbox, but unless they were going to keep duplicate copies of everyone's site while in Preview mode, it's bound to happen
But until you do that your site should remain untouched by the "migration" (and we were told as much by SM).
Obviously that wasn't the case.
I have the same problem, more or less. Except this morning they just didn't work, e.g. it used "Other" in the link, but the gallery wasn't there and you got an empty page. I opened a help desk ticket, and they said "we're working on subcategories". This afternoon it still says "Other" but the links work, so there is some progress. I don't know if it's wise to change anything in organize to clean this up or not.
Again this is simply not true. The same thing happened to my site. the only thing i did was hit the migrate button. That was it. i then spent the rest of the day waiting to hear that the migration was done. but i did not hear back until late than night.
The next morning before getting in to work i was already receiving phone calls from upset customers that their galleries were gone.
I tried contacting support about this but did not hear a peek for another 8 hours or so. but by then i was forced to find a solution which was to convert to the new site.
I then had to spend the next day redesigning a useable website. Not how i wanted to spend my week.
Edit to add - read this earlier in the thread and responded right away -
Now 3 days later someone finally admits to a bug. This just adds to the frustration of this transition.
Almost without exception when someone has reported an error occurring, they are basically told that they are the reason for the error.
I realize that you guys have a lot on your plate, but it's hard not to wonder if this whole process was rushed and we are simply the unwitting guinea pigs beta testing for you.
The only reason I made the switch yesterday was because my legacy site was experiencing issues that were being blamed on me.
Yesterday I had to email over 100 clients to let them know that their passwords did not survive the move to this new and improved site. This is the first time in my career that I had to apologize to my clients and ask for their patience and consideration all while customer service is telling me that I did something wrong.
SM has done a lot of great things over the years and I have been proud to say that I used their service, but this whole week has left a very bitter taste in mouth.
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