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Posts Tagged ‘customization’

A Bump to Branding: Add a Custom Banner to Your Mobile Site

April 24, 2012 31 comments

We updated your site-wide branding to add a feature that lots of you Power and Pro Smuggers have asked for: Custom banners for your mobile site!

One Easy step in the Easy Customizer

To do this, fire up the Easy Customizer and look for the brand-spanking new “Mobile” section on the right-hand side.

Just upload a 400 x 72 pixel image containing your logo, name or whatever you wish and Publish your changes.

Anyone who views your site on a mobile device will see it at the top of every beautiful page.

Remember that we automatically serve up the lightweight mobile viewing style to people browsing on-the-go. Want your guests to have the exact same experience on a desktop as on a smartphone? Disable the mobile site from your Control Panel, under the Settings tab.

Enjoy!

Extra link love:

Categories: Customization, Galleries, new features, release notes, Site design

New Customization Partner: Photography Blogsites

July 25, 2011 213 comments

Once upon a time in a galaxy not-so-far away, you just needed a website.

Then blogs were all the rage. And now in this modern era of technology, you have to also consider social tools like Twitter and Facebook. If your business has offshoots, each with its own site and blog, you could have four of more different places to log in and update… and your social media sites, too.

It’s time to pause and start thinking of these as pieces of a single web presence. Your main website should be your hub, not your headache.

The Secret Behind Beautiful, Cohesive Online Presence

Our new friend, Photography Blogsites, offers a new way for you to keep it straight, together with SmugMug. Check this out:

Our new seamless integration lets you sync your SmugMug site with your Photography Blogsite, slurping over your galleries and settings and (best of all) pushing your customization from your Blogsite back to SmugMug instantly, with a click. What better way to unify your unique web presence between your portfolio, proofing galleries and your blog?

They’ve even built in a safety feature that lets you restore your old SmugMug customization if you change your mind.

All in One Site Powered By WordPress

The inspiration for the design of Photography Blogsites stemmed from years of working exclusively with photographers to brand and create custom sites. Their strategy was to make pros’ lives easier, boost SEO and give them the power to manage their own online brand.

Their all-in-one portfolio websites are ready-to-go 30 seconds after you sign up and are powered by WordPress, CSS and HTML. This means that your site looks perfectly beautiful and beautifully perfect across all computers and mobile devices. And it’s easy to customize.

Bonus features: Share and Buy

You know that SmugMug already comes fully-equipped with share features, but if you use your Blogsite as your main portal, don’t worry about losing those tools. Their ‘Blaze’ social media tool lets you quickly share and re-share any gallery via Facebook and Twitter. People following those links view the gallery on a re-sharable page, too. Go viral!

While your fans are browsing, they can buy, too. Simply dig into your Blogsite settings and turn on SmugMug’s Buy links so your fans can add items right to the shopping cart. As usual, our print labs will print and ship the orders and all you have to do is collect your profits.

Special Pricing for SmugMuggers

If you’re thinking about setting this up for your business, you’re in for a treat. They’re offering SmugMuggers special discounted pricing at just $29/month or $299/year. (Regular pricing is $39/month and $399/year) Sign up here!

Or if you never want to worry again, try their Lifetime Deal at $499 which includes full access to all of their themes, hosting, support, maintenance, upgrades and so much more. The price is valid until September 15, 2011 and you’ll get no additional charges, ever. If you want peace of mind, act now because this deal won’t stick around for long.

… and a Giveaway for Two Lucky Pros

To celebrate our new partnership and synchronization with Photography BlogSites they are giving away 2 Lifetime Memberships. (Value: $499, no hassle) Here’s how to enter:

1) Like us at Facebook.com/smugmug

2) Like them at Facebook.com/PhotoBlogSites

3) Reply to this post with a link to your SmugMug site.

One entry per person, please. Winners will be picked randomly and announced Friday July 29.

Enjoy your site!

_________

UPDATE: WINNERS!

Wow, we are pumped to see so many folks enter this giveaway. Alas, there can be two winners, and here they are, picked randomly: Lance of Gym Star Photos and Amy of LMZ Photography. Congrats guys! You each win a Lifetime Membership to Photography Blogsites.

Thanks to everyone who put their name in for this giveaway. SmugMug customers get special pricing for a limited time, so even if you didn’t win this giveaway, you can still walk away a winner.

Stay tuned for more fun news and giveaways.

Categories: Customization, Galleries, new features, photography, release notes, Site design

Smug Tip of the Week: SmugMug’s Customization Options with Eric Trimble

May 25, 2011 18 comments

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:

Categories: business, Customization, Site design

SmugMug’s Certified Customizers

February 2, 2011 5 comments

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:

1) FastLine Media

FastLine Media and Richard Silver Photo


2) jR Customization

jR Customization and Jamie Marland

3) The Green Man

The Green Man and Candice Cunningham

4) My Pro Foto

My Pro Foto and Kimberlee Peterson


5) New Skin Media

New Skin Media and Darby M Photography

6) BIG Folio - Providing seamless integration of SmugMug galleries with your existing site.

BIG Folio and J Garner Studios

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

Categories: business, Customization, Galleries, release notes, Site design, SmugMug, Users

Everything, Everywhere

December 1, 2010 3 comments

Introduction: Every now and then, we have the pleasure of featuring guest blog posts from members of our wide community of users.  We’re always delighted to see and hear about the ways you’re using SmugMug to share your picture memories.  We’re excited to feature Gary Arndt from Everything-Everywhere.com.  Four years ago, he decided to leave his job to travel around the world.  He’s been globetrotting, photographing and writing ever since.  Here’s his incredible story.

By Gary Arndt

In March 2007 I sold my house, put my possessions in storage and set out to travel around the world.

I also thought it would be neat to someday cover a wall of my house with photos taken from my trip. So on my way out of the country I purchased a camera which was way over my head: a Nikon D200.

I didn’t know my aperture from my ISO. Like many people new to photography I shot everything in full auto mode, saved everything in jpeg (because it saved space on the memory card) and uploaded every image to Flickr without any post processing or selection. I had never taken a photography course or workshop and had never read a book on the subject. I knew absolutely nothing.

This is a five exposure HDR image taken in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Unlike most HDR images, I let the motion in the photo blur. I like the effect and the impression it gave of movement. Jerusalem is perhaps the most photogenic city I’ve visited in the world. It seemed that no matter where I turned my camera, I could capture a good image.

The first stop on my trip was Hawaii, where almost four years later I’m writing this article. You can still see the first photos I took in all their horrible glory. The composition for most of them is unspectacular and the exposure very sub-par.  I’ve decided to leave them visible to the public as a reminder of how far I’ve come since the start of my travels.

Over time I started to read photography blogs and listen to photography podcasts. I began to look at my travel photos with a more critical eye and tried to understand why my good photos were good and my bad photos bad. I eventually picked up a copy of Photoshop and the readers of my website noticed small, but consistent improvements in my travel photography.

This photo was taken in a moving motor boat. I visited Rennell, one of the more remote islands in the Solomon Islands. The village I visited didn’t get too many western visitors, so the kids had a great time following me around. When I left the village, the kids got in a canoe and started to follow my boat. This is the resulting photo.

In November 2007 I made the decision to start posting a photo every day on my travel blog, something which I’ve been doing every day now for almost three years. This was huge step for me because I had to come up with something reasonably good every day. Not every photo was going to be a home run, but I certainly had to try to not strike out.  Every. Single. Day.

As photography became a bigger and bigger part of my site, I began to look for alternative photo hosting and sharing solutions. I didn’t want to be limited with the size of photos I uploaded, I wanted to fully customize the look and feel of my galleries and I wanted an easier way to integrate photos into my blog.  In addition, I wanted a site that was easily searchable, public in nature and could help drive traffic to my official website.

I eventually decided to move my photo hosting from Flickr to a Gallery2 installation, which I could host myself. This turned out to be a disaster. I didn’t save any money because of the additional storage costs from my web host. Trying to customize Gallery2 was a nightmare and extremely expensive. Worst of all, there was no real SEO benefit to hosting my own images. Self-hosting photos turned out to be a a bigger challenge than I was willing to deal with.

This photo was taken at the Indian Holi festival in Singapore. Much of the festival involves throwing colored dye on other participants. Keeping my camera clean and dye free was a challenge as most of the participants had no problems throwing dye on a man holding an SLR.

I had heard many photographers talk about SmugMug on some of the photography forums I read, and so decided to give them a try. It turned out to be incredibly easy to import all my photos from Flickr, even with a bad Internet connection overseas. I could use my own domain name, which was the main reason why I wanted to host my own images in the first place, and with SmugMug’s many sharing options, I could create images of any dimension just by modifying the URL of the photo (something I couldn’t do on Flickr).

Of all the decisions I’ve made in blogging and photography, moving to SmugMug has been one of the best. Every week or two there are new features being released; the SmugMug elves never seems to be resting on their laurels.

Since my move I’ve become a personal evangelist, telling everyone I know in the travel blogging community about SmugMug.  I know I’ve been responsible for more new SmugMug customers than my referral code would suggest! I wear my SmugMug camera strap wherever I go and make sure to tell everyone about it when they ask me what it is.

I was in Bangkok in 2010 during the redshirt protests. I went out several times to photograph the protesters. I managed to position myself one day between several thousand redshirts and several hundred police officers. The photo of a young boy with the protesters really stuck with me.

There’s still a lot I want to do with my SmugMug account. My system of categories and subcategories needs some tweaking, I need to go through and properly tag my photos and at some point I’d like to hire someone to professionally customize my site.  In 2011 I also hope to redesign my blog to allow readers to order prints of all my daily photos.

I can’t really envision having a serious photography website without having SmugMug as the back end.

To see more of Gary’s daily images subscribe to his blog and visit his SmugMug gallery.  You can also get his free ebook “50 Favorite Travel Photos” by subscribing to his email newsletter

Categories: Galleries, photography, Travel, Users
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