09-12-2007, 07:00 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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If You're a Smugmug User, Read This
If you're a Smugmug user (and if you're not, you really should check it out, they even have a Flickr migration discount), I'd like your input on a feature I've proposed in the Dgrin forums. I've also added a poll to my post in that forum, so please vote. Below is what I proposed. I'd be interested in hearing from Digital Media Thoughts readers who are aware of other photo sharing services that have this feature I'm looking for (though it would take a lot for me to leave Smugmug).
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I'd like to see more granularity in the Smugmug approach to album privacy and security. Right now Smugmug is great for two things: completely public albums where any random user can see every picture, or completely secure albums where only someone with the password can see any of the images. The current method is too binary (secure or not secure) and is fraught with difficulties and frustrations for me as a Smugmug user.
So I have one specific feature request: I want to have the ability to flag certain photos within a gallery as private, using an easy and fast batch-mode "click to make private" function. The rationale here is that if there are pictures as part of a gallery that I'd like only friends/family to see (usually the ones where people are acting goofy or slightly embarrassing), I don't want random people to be able to see those images - but I don't mind them looking through all of the other images in the gallery. If friends and family come visit the gallery and enter the password, it "unlocks" all the other images for them, so they can see and order every photo. It's the best of both worlds!
SmugIslands is a great step forward for those people who are concerned about hiding their images from search engines, but SmugIslands doesn't deal with the human factor and all of the issues I raised. I don't mind my images being discovered by Google and other search engines, but I'd love to have the ability to have a single album that would contain all of the photos I want friends and family to see, yet still have the more generic, non-personal photos I don't mind the world seeing. The only workaround right now is to have two galleries, one public and one hidden, then delete the personal photos from the public gallery. That's an ugly hack and wastes Smugmug storage space and resources.
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Hybrid Mode
