Easy Customizer and Amazon Payments – April 30, 2009
We’re thrilled to announce the release of two of our most requested features: Easy customization SmugMug sites and SmugMug subscription without a credit card.
Our brand spankin’ new Easy Customizer empowers SmugMug’s Professional and Power subscribers to completely change the look and feel of their SmugMug site with a few clicks. No code wrangling required. Find it in your Control Panel on the Customize tab.
Our advanced customization options are still alive and well, for those who do want to dive into code or need to tweak specific galleries… but now the rest of us can still get the look we want without breaking a sweat.
Things to know:
- The Easy Customizer allows complete removal of SmugMug’s footer for Pro subscribers, even the “Powered by SmugMug” bit.
- You’ll see a real-time preview in the Easy Customizer, so you can see how it plays with any advanced code you had previously entered.
- The Start Over button gives you several options for dialing back changes.
- There’s an ongoing discussion over at Digital Grin.
New SmugMuggers can now pay for their SmugMug account by choosing Amazon Subscriptions on the signup page instead of entering a credit card. To go this route, you’ll need to set up an Amazon Payments account and provide either your credit card information or your bank account information to Amazon. If you sign up this way, all future upgrades and renewals will be handled through Amazon Subscriptions as well.
Our apologies, if you already have a paid SmugMug account, you cannot (yet) switch over to Amazon Subscriptions.
Also this week, we’re announcing our sponsorship of the Wiley Photo Contest. Those with a competitive edge may want to check it out for a chance to win sweet prizes.
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Fine. But, what about the stats?
Haven’t fiddled with it yet, but I’m THRILLED that you’ve added the “easy customizer”…I’m quite computer literate…but not an HTML guru…so I was holding off on tweaking my pro site. As I’ve told your “support heroes” by e-mail, my satisfaction with SmugMug (3+ years as a standard/power user, and the past 4 months as a Pro user–but still maintaining the standard account) is sky high. Super quality site, great prints, unmatched customer service.
Sounds like the Wiley contest is just another rights grab where they acquire unlimited rights to every submission and a few people get some prizes. Nice way to build an inventory, but I expect better from SmugMug as a sponsor.
You may retain your license, but they have unlimited perpetual use and you are bound to help them modify the file…just by entering.
Does the new Amazon payments system allow for monthly or quarterly payments instead of a huge up-front fee? That’s the only thing holding me back.
@Cass: The statistics overhaul is a bigger project than we initially anticipated, but it is definitely high priority and continues to be worked on, even though we may continue to roll out unrelated features in the meantime.
@Roger That: Thanks! Please let us know if you have any feedback as you give the Easy Customizer a whirl.
@RPM: Ack! We’ll be looking into this immediately, as that certainly wasn’t our intent in sponsoring the contest. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, though we certainly should have caught this ourselves, sooner.
@Dave: No. SmugMug subscriptions are still yearly and we have no immediate plans to change that. (Though, the 2 week trial is free of course.)
@RPM – I worked with Wiley this Sunday morning and we modified the terms to be much more friendly – they can only use the images in conjunction with the contest, no other rights granted. Thanks for pointing that out to us, we really appreciate it!
Excellent Andy, your responsiveness continues to amaze.
Would love to enter the contest, but I am in Canada – any possibility of opening it to Canadian residents?
I’m with Dave, the only thing holding me back is the big payment all at once. Being a college student and just starting out in my photo career it’s hard for me to justify putting out so much money up front for a pro account. Even a semi-annual payment would be helpful.
Thanks,
My cousin would be amazed this post. We were not too long ago talking about this. hehe