The SmugMug Blog

Backups with a Click: Download All

Our heroes get questions every day asking about how to retrieve their original photos easily.

The Download All feature is already built into every SmugMug gallery. So log in, open up a gallery and look for the “Download All” link under the Tools menu.

How do they work?

Once you request the download, we’ll smoosh that gallery’s photos, videos and SmugVault archives and hidden images (if you have any) into a compressed zip file. When it’s ready, we’ll email you a link to retrieve it.

Once you get the email, the download link is valid for two whole weeks so you (or anyone you share it with) can get it in that time.

FYI: The photos in the zip file are your Originals, not the smaller display copies you see in your galleries. See more about sizes.

Share Whole Galleries

Backups are a no-brainer. But here are some other ways Smuggers have been using their zip files:

• Share your memories with friends and family. Maximize the fun from that reunion, trip or when you tailgated the Superbowl.

• Thrill clients with every shot in the shoot. Perfect for pros who wrap the cost of digital downloads into their session pricing.

The sweet thing about these backup files is that you don’t need a password to grab the goodies. So forward the email and spread the love with a click.

Anything Else to Remember?

• It goes both ways: You – the owner – don’t need a password to download and open the zip file, but neither does anyone else. Be aware when you share the link, and be sure you’re OK sharing ALL the contents of that gallery.

• Most Macs and PCs have built-in compression utilities to unzip your file, but if want something new, try 7zip.com. We hear it’s a great option… and it’s free.

• If you upload more photos into the gallery, you’ll need to request a new backup file to be sure the new stuff gets zipped up, too.

Want to sell your downloads, instead? Pros should check out Gallery Downloads and set their own pricing for the whole shebang.

Have you been using Download All in other ways? Share your ideas here!

SmugMug’s default look gives you both big photos and thumbnails, but did you know that we have others that you can choose from?

Four, to be exact.

Where to find them 

Look at the top of your gallery and you should see a Style button. Click that to see all of our current gallery styles. Each one is a little different but all are gorgeous! And they all stretch to fit the width of your screen, up to the max size of the photo or the size that you’ve specified.

If you don’t see it, you probably changed your Gallery Settings to stick to one specific style. You can always do this if you don’t want your fans to pick the style, dictating the experience for anyone who visits.

As long as the gallery is set to Viewer Controlled, we’ll remember the gallery style you chose in your browser. It’ll stick that way until you change it again.

1. SmugMug

This is our default, and the one you probably know and love. It’s a great mix between seeing photos big and seeing what else is in the gallery. Click on any thumbnail to switch the pic and click the big photo on the right to open up the lightbox.

2. Thumbnails

People love this style because it’s closest to the proof sheets that traditional photographers are used to. You can click “Show all on one page” at the top and see everything at once, or you can break up the gallery into multiple pages. Either way you’ll be able to quickly preview and click on just the one you want.

3. Slideshow

Our beautiful, buttery-smooth slideshows are a style all their own. The photos will play on their own at three different speeds or you can click a thumbnail at the top to skip to your favorite photo.

4. Journal

The style that takes “juicy” to the next level. It uses the largest photo size you’ve allowed for that gallery and puts it smack dab on the page, leaving you plenty of room to write as much as you wish in the caption field below it. This style looks particularly jawdropping for landscape-shaped photos and panoramas.

Other Styles

As a gallery owner you can use our older, classic styles, too. Those are tucked away in your Gallery Settings, under Look & Feel > Gallery Style. We’re talking about SmugMug Small, All Thumbs, Traditional, Journal (Old), Filmstrip and Critique. We put those there because some Smuggers still love using them, but we won’t be updating them and they don’t stretch to fit your screen, either.

Play around and we hope that you’ll find a style that suits you (and your photos) best.

Enjoy!

Other tricks to easily change up your site:

• Sorting Your Homepage
• Get a Custom URL in Three Steps
• SmugMug’s Customization Options
• Themes!

While Get a Link is one of our more popular sharing features for sharing a photo, don’t forget that you’ve got snazzier ways of telling the world what you’ve been up to.

Look under the Owner Only section of your Share button and check out the Show Off options: Badges and Slideshows.

Fun-sized Slideshows

You can drop a mini customizable slideshow into any blog, forum or other website that accepts HTML code. Can you think of a better way to give them a playful, color taste of what’s to come? It’s a portable version of our smooth, deliciously slick slideshows that you’ve already seen as our viewing style or in full-screen mode.

Just customize the settings to taste, click to Copy Embed Code and paste it into your website. You can customize it to open to your gallery when clicked, or you can simply leave it as a standalone slideshow.

Moveable Badges

Our badges are light on their feet. Not familiar with badges? They’re are dancing mosaics of joy, a veritable kaleidoscope of color that just beg to be clicked.

You can always customize these to your heart’s content, right down to the background color so it blends seamlessly with whatever page you’re dropping it into. We’ll start you off with a standard size, but you can choose one of our preset Sources or Styles and tweak it from there.

Again, you can customize it so that your gallery opens when a square is clicked, or leave it as just a badge.

Trouble?

If your fans are having trouble viewing the badge or slideshow, have them visit Adobe’s site and download the latest version of Flash. For everything else, check out our info page.

And if you’re not able to get the code to work, check to see if the website allows embeddable objects. Contact them and ask if you’re not sure.

Show us your Shares!

We hope you enjoy these little treats and that they’ll make it easier (and more fun) for you to share your photos with friends. For more details on the different settings you can apply to slideshows and badges, make sure to read our help pages.

Where have you shared a badge or slideshow lately? We’d love to see where they’re being used and what great pics you’ve shot so far this summer.

One of the most powerful features on SmugMug are the customizable privacy options found on every gallery in your account. We get a lot of questions from fresh new Smuggers about how this works so here’s a rundown of what those are. We’ll show you how to pick and choose your settings and dial in the perfect amount that suits you best.

Site, Gallery and Photo-level Options

There are three basic ways of protecting your stuff:

SITE-WIDE

The quickest way to stop prying eyes is to add a password to your site. This way, no one can see a thing until they say (well, type) the word.

Just go into your Control Panel‘s Settings tab and look under “Site-Wide Settings.” You’ll see a place to add a site-wide password there.

EACH GALLERY

Privacy come in two flavors: passwords and visibility. You can set a viewing password so anyone who tries to open the gallery will need to enter that password to see any photos. Or, make the gallery Unlisted (our term for “private” or “hidden”) and people browsing your site won’t be able to find it.

These settings aren’t connected so you can have an unlisted, unlocked gallery, a public passworded one, or any combination of the two.

Remember! If you’re the logged-in gallery owner we won’t ask you to enter the viewing password to open your own galleries. But you can always tell that it’s locked by the little yellow lock icon next to the gallery title. Don’t believe us? Log out and hit the link and you’ll see the password prompt.

EACH PHOTO

Generally if you can open a gallery you can see the photos in it, but we’ve included the Hide Photo option just in case you’re unsure something’s fit for consumption. Find that checkbox under the image when you’re using the SmugMug viewing style, and only you will see that photo when logged in as the gallery owner. (Power and Pro Smuggers: Don’t do this for useful site images like your banner or watermark!)

Tip: While there isn’t a Category or Sub-category level password, you can set the same password on every gallery in a Category if you wish. We can sense when you do this and  – voilà! – automagically unlock all galleries with the same password after your guest has entered it once.

What Are SmugIslands?

You can also opt out of internet searches (like Google) and out of SmugMug’s search results for when people use the search box in our header.  This is the idea behind SmugIslands and it makes your site hidden away like your own private retreat. Set it for your whole site from the Settings tab in your Control Panel.

If you ever change your mind and want specific galleries to be found, toggle the Hello World or Hello Smuggers option to “No”  in that gallery’s Settings page. That overrides whatever you set in your Control Panel, just for that gallery.

Remember that flipping the switch either way and going from private to public (or vice versa) takes time, so be patient and wait a few days before worrying you did something wrong!

More Stuff: Sharegroups

If you’re keen on sharing a group of galleries with special protections, try Sharegroups. You can pick which galleries belong in the group and we’ll save a special place on your site where people can click once and see them all. The link is only visible to the people you share it with, but you can apply an additional viewing password to the whole group just to be safe. Check it out here.

Events and Favorites work a similar way with a few additional features, so if you have a Pro account, give that a try, too.

Going Public

On the flip side, we have lots of other great features for people who want to be found. Check out this page with tips on maximizing your search engine mojo, and see what other things you can do to market yourself to potential customers.

Privacy Checklist

To sum up:

• If you don’t want anyone but your friends to see your site, use a site-wide password.
• If you want just special folks to see a gallery, make it unlisted or add a viewing password.
• If you want to make just a few photos private for your eyes only, click Hide Photo.
• If you don’t want to be found on Google, set Hello World! to No.
• If you don’t want to be found in SmugMug searches, set Hello Smuggers! to No.

Enjoy, and remember to check out our help center if you’ve got questions we haven’t answered. Or better yet, drop us a note. We’d love to hear from you.

We’re back with a quick (but useful) Smug Tip this week: Sorting your homepage.

Find it Fast: Display Galleries or Just Categories

We get a lot of people who don’t realize that you can switch between the two and often wonder what happened to their homepage. Don’t worry! It’s easy to toggle from one to the other so you can pick which works best for you and change it in an instant.

Find that option in the top right corner of your Galleries box. The one that is not underlined is what you’re currently using:

If you like to show everything on your site up front and center, then the default Galleries option will be perfect (shown above).

But if you’re a prolific shooter  and don’t want your viewers to get lost trying to find a specific gallery, try the Categories view instead:

Auto Sort or Manual Sort

While you’re at it, you  may also want to change what order things appear on your site. Look on the other side of that box:

By default we’ll automatically bump the freshest gallery to the top. But click that “Position” link and try arranging them however you wish.

Adding and Hiding Stuff

As a bonus, take a look at that Homepage Layout button you see up there:

We start you off with a Bio box and a Galleries box, but you’ll see that there are a whole lot of other things you can click to display to your fans. Just look at the menu and select what you want.

Change your mind? That’s ok, just pick it again from the list or click the “hide” link in the top right corner of the box you want gone:

Remember that only you, the logged-in gallery owner, are able to see and make any of these changes. Play around with them, find what works best for you and enjoy!

Related links:

• Get Organized with Categories
• Use Visitor View to preview your site
• All about arranging galleries
• All about your homepage

Whether you’re seeking total photo-fame or fear peeping toms on your private site, our powerful built-in Stats features help you keep on top of your game.

Find Your Stats

You can view them at any time by visiting your Control Panel in the Stats tab:

… or from inside any gallery by clicking the Tools button and looking under This Gallery:

How to Interpret Those Numbers

We give you 6 tabs across the top that let you see just what’s going on around your site. You can get as general or as specific as you wish, pulling numbers from your whole site or from just one gallery. Don’t forget to adjust the calendar at the top to pick a date range, too. More details.

For simplicity we give you a row of four quick links (“today”, “yesterday”, etc.) across the top so you can get the most-requested date spans with a click:

• Every time an image (or video) is loaded onto someone else’s screen, that counts as a hit. When you’re logged in and view your galleries as the site owner, we won’t count those.

• If you have ever shared the link  to an unlisted or passworded gallery with someone, they can continue to generate hits if as long as they have access to the gallery. So if you want to cut them off, add or change the viewing password.

• Views to your photos, hosted from your galleries, will generate hit counts. Lots of them! Remember this if you’ve ever posted an image to an external site like blogs and forums.  To foil this, you may want to disable External Linking in your Gallery Settings.

What doesn’t get counted:

• How many times an image was downloaded.

• How many times a video was played through to the end. We do count how many times it was started, and hits to the preview JPG.

Harness Google

For statistical superpowers you can sign up for a free Google Analytics account here. You’ll get a Web Property ID number (Hint: It starts with a “UA” and is followed by numbers and dashes) that you should copy. Paste it into the “External Visitor Tracking” section in your SmugMug Control Panel.

Give it a day or so to start collecting data and get ready to crunch some numbers!

We like pretty pictures, so one of our favorite features that Google offers is the Map Overlay. This shows you from which countries (and towns) your fans are viewing your site:

Dig around and see what other cool features they offer. Don’t forget that while you can check your SmugMug stats at any time at SmugMug, you’ll need to log in at Google to view your Analytics.

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:

• How to get your new Pro site up and running
• Intro to Advanced Customization at SmugMug
• How to customize your Navigation Bar using Advanced Customization
• Get started with customization on Digital Grin
• A handy collection of Javascript tweaks
• Advanced Customization FAQ on Digital Grin

We do everything we can to deliver you blazing speed so you can browse galleries and upload unlimited photos to your site. But we do know that sometimes things happen.

Are you having trouble with uploads, or is your site moving slower than usual? There are many possible causes for these types of issues, but the most common reason is rooted in the connection between your computer and us.

Try This First!

Keep these four tips handy. It’s a good idea to try the following if you notice a sudden change in performance on your site or on the rest of the web:

1. Check to see if you get the same behavior in a different browser than the one you usually use. See our list of supported browsers right here.

2. Clear your cache. Don’t know how to do this in your favorite browser? Just email us!

3. Reboot your computer and unplug your router and cable modem for a few seconds. Then re-plug them in to re-sync your connection.

4. If you’re online using a wireless network, try plugging in instead. This can help get you a “cleaner” connection that isn’t dependent on the airwaves.

Run Some Tests

No go? Next, log in at SmugMug and check your connection at one of these two links:

• If site navigation seems sluggish, go here.

• If your uploads aren’t working, run this test.

Be sure to run the correct test for the issues that you’re seeing! If you’re familiar with the data in those results, then great. You can use that data to troubleshoot your home network, or when you talk to your ISP.

But if it’s all Greek to you, no sweat: Just use the Share button shown at the end of the test to grab your results and email that to us.

Include some info about what kinds of problems or error messages you’re seeing, what you’ve tried already, etc. Give us as many details as you can, like:

- What browser are you using? 
- What uploaders have you tried? 
- Is your internet wireless or wired? 
- Have you tried using another supported browser, or uploader? 
- Have you tried using a different network? We suggest a friend’s house, the library or a local coffee shop with wi-fi.

There’s no such thing as too much info, so don’t be shy. Our marvelous Support Heroes are aways glad to help you (literally!) get back up to speed.

I just set my Pro pricing but the default prices are showing in the shopping cart!

Why are my hidden galleries still showing on my homepage?

We hear both of these regularly on our help desk, but there’s a simple solution to these both: Visitor View!

The very best way is to simply use a second browser (we love Chrome and Firefox), where you aren’t logged in.  But if you don’t want to do this, no problem. Just use the handy Visitor View button that we give you.

See Your Site Like a Customer

When you’re logged in as the site owner, you see tons of features that your fans won’t because you’re the master of them all. You certainly don’t want anyone seeing all your switches and dials, or to be able to make changes to your site.

So use that second browser, hit the Logout link in your header (or footer), or  just hit the Visitor View button at the top of your homepage or category page:

Click it once and you can navigate around your site to make sure every hair is in place for presentation. Some things that you can expect to be not show to your guests are your unlisted (private) galleries and the upload and other buttons at the top of each page. If you have  keyword tags or mapped photos that are located in unlisted or passworded galleries, your visitors won’t see the keywords or pins for those either.

Now You See it… Now You Don’t

Here’s a good example of a site with a little customization on the homepage. This is what you see when you’re logged in as the owner:

… and here’s what the same site looks like when you view it as a visitor. Notice that a lot of the buttons and links are now gone and all you see are clean, beautiful galleries:

Pros: Get a Price Check

A hot tip for the Pros: Use Visitor View to check your custom pricing. You can always hit the Buy button to bring up the shopping cart. We’ll show our default pricing when you’re logged in (with your custom pricing under each line), but doing this in Visitor View will give you the total client experience.

Finally, Power and Pro Smuggers will find the Visitor View button key to customization, too. Be sure that you’re checking it often because your owner-only features can cause things to shift around a bit.

Don’t be afraid to take control of your site and be sure of what you’re showing your adoring fans!

Our Smug Tip for this Week is a friendly reminder and marketing advice for our Pros: Use Coupons!

First, check out this video walkthrough by working Pro and SmugDesigner, Wade Heninger:

Coupons can really help push your print and download sales. Instead of letting your photos just sit on your site, special discounts can sweeten the deal.

Tip: Just remember not to put any exotic characters like dashes or hyphens into the code itself.

1. Create a coupon from your Control Panel, in the Pros tab. You can make them specific to a client, or make one and offer it to several people at a time.

2. Pick a coupon type that fits your marketing style.

3. Set an expiration date to get them buying faster. You can skip it if you wish, but time is money!

4. Strategize. As Wade describes, you can offer a print credit when your client pays you a deposit, or you can offer free shipping for a few days after a special event. These are just two of many ways to incentivize your clients and get your sales rolling.

Send it off to your clients using whatever method works best for you. You may even opt to blend two of our powerful marketing features and drop a coupon code into a Thank You Print.

We hope this helps our Pros discover and maximize the features that come with your account. Give it a try and get selling!