The new Smugmug?

There seems to be quite a few members using Smugmug. They unveiled a new format yesterday that is supposed to offer more customization with less hassle. I have played around a little with previews of my old site, and so far am not impressed. I have not yet explored all the possibilities, but so far the templates actually look less appealing than the simple web site I had eventually worked up. Has any one had a chance to experiment?

I'm a long time Smugmug user. I've migrated my site. At this point, viewers will still see my old site as I customize the new one. I think it is a very nice improvement. So far I'm impressed with what I'm seeing and the flexibility of customization.

The new smugmug is essentially a content management system, much like Mura. Luckily, I have had some exposure to that type of system. I am not a computer person and there is still alot of stuff that I don't understand. I have tried out the new site in "preview mode" and find that with their templates, you actually have less customization than the old version. For example, you can not change the text colours if you pick their templates. By setting up a dummy site for practice, I am actually understanding some of the changes without doing any damage to my site. The issue I have is that as soon as I went into their preview mode, my original site, which is the one that clients are supposed to still see until I fully migrate over, lost my logo and title and header. It shows up on my customizable pages but has disappeared from the "visitor view" Not so good for business. Due to the new update, their usual first rate tech support still has not gotten back to me.

If anyone is thinking of changing to the new templates, i would highly recommend setting up a dummy site and figuring it all out before moving any of your good work over, unless of course you are a computer person who understands all this stuff.

I have been a Pro SmugMug user since 2006. This rollout seems to have been pushed ahead of schedule to combat or pick up users from another site that had "upgraded" recently. I have been pouring through the forums and there are alot of unhappy Pro users who have spent countless hours customising their sites. The NEW SmugMug will not import any of these customizations. Also, SmugMug is putting in a Branding that you cannot remove without finding the forum that has a CSS solution. The SmugMug heros say you will not be able to remove the branding at the bottom of your pages - the CSS trick will do it for now. When paying $300 for a Pro account, you should not have to have their branding. People have had trouble when selecting a second or third template to play with in sandbox mode. It seems to be stuck on your first template. The answer when in the 2nd or 3rd template is to select the Publish Now. You have two options, Publish Now or Publish Later. The Publish Now actually only selects your current template and makes it the "current" template when you come back. It also saves changes to THAT template. It DOES NOT actually publish your new site. Your legacy system is still there.

I have seen multiple posts where changes made in the sandbox have indeed affected the legacy website. So, beware as stated in the above post. I actually like one or two of the new templates. A couple of critics, my wife and daughter, like the new template I am working on better than my legacy site. I am reserving judgement until I can see what I can really do with the new system. I know that I will not be able to get the new system to look and work anyway near my legacy system and that has me ticked off right now. I spent umpteen hours customising it to where I liked it. All that effort is now gone.

The old way of customizing SmugMug was complex and you did need a good working knowledge of CSS and HTML, but it still looked and smelled like SmugMug. I was getting ready to shell out $375 to FastLine Media for a template to un-SmugMug it. NO need for that now. I forced myself to do the same thing I did with Windows 8: spent an hour trying everything everywhere. Now I'm sold on both. I figured out how to completely customize Smugmug exactly how I want it and am very happy about that, and $375 richer (or less poor, lol). It's got a few odd quirks to the UI but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty flexible. Here's my site with a theme I am NOT going to use: http://www.expressimagemedia.com. This format was actually a white theme that I just picked for fun and customized it to look like what you see, and it took 40 minutes. Does it look like SmugMug? Hardly, which is pretty awesome. And I didn't write one line of CSS, it's all the new UI. Again, I'm not keeping this theme, but for 40 minutes investment it's a good-enough temp site until I finish my real theme. Oh, they actually have added "Add to Cart" buttons next to each image instead of that DORKY tiny "Buy" pulldown menu. Finally!

I was extremely irritated to find after the rollout that the slideshow on my home page disappeared (requires a password?!) and apparently that feature is permanently disabled. Spent a lot of time customizing that and the look of my pages so a little disappointed all that time was for naught. The server was overloaded the other night when I tried to "preview" anything so have no idea what any of the new templates even look like. I'm hoping this weekend I can sit down and take a good look and figure out what's going on. I was also irritated when I tried to post a thread on the help forum and it wouldn't allow me to do it. I did re-up for another year just a few months ago, so that's really annoying me I'll reserve judgment until I see the new looks, but honestly - I was happy with what I had but all that's probably going to have to go by the wayside now

I'm DOOMED... I think I'm the only NPN member who really likes Windows 8, the Adobe CC subscriptions and the new SmugMug. Jim will need to make a new Member Dungeon where I can reside... just slide some food and my monthly Adobe subscription bill under the door for me.

I think the final word is that there are many changes to SmugMug that will help let you customize SM without having to add CSS or HTML code like we have been used to. On the other hand, some of the code we used to customize our sites used Java Script which is NO LONGER SUPPORTED. If you had a highly customized site, you will probably be disappointed. If you did not, then you will find ways to add to your site without having to use code. Also, the general opinion "as I have seen" is that they rolled this out way to fast to take advantage of another site's "upgrade" gone bad. So, beware. If you never have used SM and are willing to spend $300 for a Pro account, you will find a way to have a very nice site with options not given by other sites. But you may have to use the DGRIN companion site to get tips how to customize your site to where you want it (like getting rid of SmugMug branding). Also, there are multiple bugs due to the early (before ready in my opinion) rollout. Folks who have already been on SM have legacy sites that are still operational. However, there are numerous complaints that once you "try" the new SmugMug in a Preview mode (not live to your customers), some features of your legacy system are broken. Go to Digital Grin (search that) website to see what is happening.

Rather than renew my Smugmug account earlier this year after the fee increase, I switched to another host for less cash than I was paying before the increase.

I re-did mine when the new version came out and am actually considering moving my main site to SmugMug I like it that much! You can see what all I've done to it here:

http://ramblinlamb.smugmug.com