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Smug Tip of the Week: SmugMug’s Customization Options with Eric Trimble
Our Support Heroes know how the idea of customizing your Power or Pro site can seem daunting at first, but never fear! We’ve provided a lot of resources and tools to help you get a site that you love. Today we’ll hear from Customization Specialist and Support Hero Eric Trimble about the different options you have at your fingers to get the site of your dreams.
So you have your SmugMug site, uploaded your photos, possibly even made a sale or two. Congrats! But now you’re looking to kick it up a notch and want to go from this:
to this:
Nervous? Don’t be. We’ve got lots of great resources you can use to personalize your page and to make your brand stand out.
Get an Easy Banner and Navbar
First things first. A banner and a navigation bar are two really simple things you can add to your header to instantly improve your site. If you have a graphic you like to use, or just want plain text, you can add them using the Easy Customizer. Try the Navbar Builder (found under the “Header” section) to get a simple navbar in minutes.
Simple Cut-and-Paste Tutorials
So what’s next? When you’ve used the Easy Customizer but still want more, some people start to get worried. You’re on the edge of Advanced Customization territory and now it’s all HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Good news! For most things all you need to do is a simple search through our help pages, then copy and paste of existing code. Some of our top requests include:
1) How to show your galleries to show on a separate page from your homepage. We’ve got an easy tutorial on Dgrin showing how to do just that. Check out the code in yellow on that page and simply copy and paste it into your Advanced Customization as shown.
2) How to get an “About Me” page or a page that shows the services you can provide. What you’re looking for is a simple HTML-only page where you can drop in whatever content you wish; you can add whatever text, links or images that you need. Look here to see step by step instructions on how to do this.
3) How to create your own Contact form. Then for anyone who has ever used our slick, online form to contact the SmugMug Support Heroes, we have that same form built in for our Pro level accounts. We recommend that you use this so that your customers can easily contact you. And it’s so easy to do! Try the code provided here to make the popup contact form appear when you click the link in your navber (or anywhere else on your site).
Get a Knock-Their-Socks-Off Homepage Slideshow
Would you like to have a big, beautiful slideshow of your images that stretches to fill every inch of browser space? We have two ways to do this, created by some of our wonderful volunteers.
Option 1: If you are looking for something to showcase your images, I am a fan of the JFriend HTML 5 slideshow. It’s huge, has great transition effects, and is very simple to implement.
Option 2: But lots of folks swear by the FastLine Media slideshow. It’s just as big, just as beautiful… just a little different.
Either way you choose to go, they’re both great and you can’t go wrong. Neither are Flash-based, so they’re visible even to people who browse your site on iPhones and iPads.
Free Guided Help
SmugMug’s customization lets you have virtually limitless creativity. And much of what you might want to do is already written and waiting for you on our forums at DGrin. Join in, search for a topic and post a new thread if you can’t find the answer!
Not only do we have some very dedicated volunteers, but you can also find our resident customizer (hey, that’s me!) patrolling the forums and helping out ’round the clock.
Customizers For-Hire
But even with all this ready and waiting, maybe you’re not looking to get elbow deep in CSS. We have you covered there as well. We keep a list of third party companies that are our Certified Customizers. You can contact any of the companies here to discuss your ideas and get a quote.
They’re happy to work with you and build the site of your dreams.
Got skills? Come customize for us!
Last but not least, we’re currently seeking out talented web- and graphic designers to be one of our Certified Customizers. If the idea of tweaking sites makes your heart go pitter-patter, come join us in the mission to make every gallery gorgeous. Send us an email with your specs.
Happy customizing,
- Eric
Additional resources:
Be More Social, New Customizer and Bug Fixes
Better Be Social
We’ve revamped our Be Social feature so you popular folks can easily post and share to five glorious social sites: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous and the illustrious WordPress:
We’ve beefed it up so that you can tweak settings such as the pic size and alignment, link style and if you want to attach your geolocation and keywords with your post. Best of all, you can now post to your Facebook Fan Pages in addition to your personal page!
See all the cool changes explained here.
The Share button is now visible to logged-in owners at all times. This means that you’ll see that button and can use all of these great Share features even if you’ve disabled Easy Sharing in your gallery settings. When in doubt, you can always log out for a sec or use the Visitor View button on your homepage to see your site the way guests do.
SmugMug Pros get a little added bonus: You can hook up a Bit.ly Pro account to your SmugMug Control Panel and use that for link shortening. By default everyone gets an awesome http://smu.gs short link in Be Social, but those of you with custom domains can totally flaunt your brand. Find that under the Settings tab.
Okee Doke!
We added another great designer to our list of certified customizers: Say hello to Okee.co!
They offer an arresting array of gorgeous templates as well as full-on custom design. Check out their portfolio and get a clean, beautiful site that shows off your best work.
Don’t forget to see our full list of certified customizers, too.
Bug fixes:
- Share emails were showing funky formatting when you (gallery owner) viewed your sent email stats in your Control Panel. We also made sure that the referral link you’re passing to your friends works a treat the first time and every time.
- Pros: We added a description into your notification emails so when we bill you for features like Boutique Packaging and Order Branding, now you know what it’s for.
Here’s to making great sites to share,
The SmugMug Family
SmugMug’s Certified Customizers
We recently debuted a list of SmugMug Certified Customizers for our Smuggers to have and to hold. Great customization has been a top request of our users for years and we have been listening!
We’ve spent the last few months forging tight relationships with some great folks who’ve proven they deliver consistently gorgeous SmugMug sites to SmugMug photographers.
Here’s seven amazing companies who we trust to get the job done. Check out their sites and more examples below:
4) My Pro Foto
6) BIG Folio - Providing seamless integration of SmugMug galleries with your existing site.
7) Okee.co
What does it mean to be SmugMug Certified?
They’re fun and friendly to work with, but above all these guys know Smuggers and cater to their needs. We’ve done a lot of work with these companies and know that they deliver quality, act with the highest ethical standards and are willing to go the extra mile to satisfy their clients. They also really, really love SmugMug… just like you.
Here’s the criteria we use in our selection process:
- Received consistent, positive reviews from our customers
- Have proven ability to scale and ship designs quickly, without compromising quality
- Outstanding customer service
- Elegant visual aesthetics that appeal to our customers
- Exceptional understanding of SmugMug’s API and website capabilities
Moving Forward
Love what you see? Contact a customizer through the above links to share your ideas and get a quote.
In the coming months we plan to work closely with our certified customizers to build better tools for Smuggers to enjoy. Having partners in touch with so many dedicated customers will help us get great, detailed feedback on what you want and how you want it. We can’t wait!
If you’re looking to get your site customized but are having trouble deciding which designer to use, check out this thread on Digital Grin.
And if you’re a Smugger who wants to recommend a company, or if you’re a customizer who wants us to consider your services, say it right here!
We hope that you’ll give these folks a chance to create the site of your dreams. We promise you’ll love them.
Here’s to building beautiful sites together,
The SmugMug Family
What is SmugMug?
Gorgeous, unlimited photo sharing for everyone. Grab your own website on SmugMug and be ready to archive, share and print the photos you love. From unlimited photo and video uploads to e-commerce tools for Pros, we have it all. Learn more.
