Give users the ability to create groups with arbitrary 'labels' e.g. : family, friends, work colleagues, parents, etc.

Allow a different password to be set for each of these groups, and perhaps even some generic settings (what size photos they get to see, for example)

In gallery settings allow a tick box to tick which 'groups' may see this gallery. (include an "all" tick box too)

When someone goes to the site, they type in the password they were given, which is the one of the group they're in. Then they get to see only what galleries have been checked for their given group with the settings assigned to their group (e.g. can only seem small photos).

So I've created a category called "Just for Family," with sub-categories of years (2009, 2008, 2007). I've password protected every gallery within the category with the SAME password so they only have to enter a password one time. And say I want to create galleries like, "New job search" or "My trip to Las Vegas" without my employer or co-workers being able to even read the existence of such galleries (and see the feature thumbnail). It's OK that every visitor knows I have a locked category called "just for family" but I don't want them browsing the history of my life via gallery titles ... Sharegroups are not sufficient to solve my need, for several reasons.

I share quite a bit with family and friends, and it can get frustrating when someone puts up pictures you'd like to save to your computer or add to one of your albums (perhaps from the same event).

I propose one of two options: either a user-specific sharing system that allows specified SmugMug users to have full-download access to another user's gallery, or a simple on-off switch (in gallery settings) for full-download functionality.

As an example, a few of us go on vacation. We all have different cameras and upload pictures to our respective SmugMug pages. I would like my family/friends to see ALL the pictures from my trip regardless of who took them, but to download each photo one at a time from three other galleries gets quite tedious.

Similarly, I may want to put together an album (a real one, not digital) of all the photos from our trip. Again, bulk downloads would be great in this case.

Comments are welcome. I know there are some similar suggestions but I felt this merited its own post.

Having a global password for a gallery is inadequate -- it makes it too easy for users to share the password with others. Also, if I want to cut off a person's access, the only way to do that is change the password for everyone.

Since Smugmug is already an OpenID provider, it would be great if it could also be an OpenID consumer and allow me to grant Gallery access for individual users. This would be more granular than Sharegroups -- individual friends/family members/clients could have their own custom view activated by a login they already have via Google, Yahoo, or some other OpenID provider.

I've struggled to set my site up with two Homepage views - one private and the other public. I'm not a Pro managing separate clients and events (although this solution could apply there as well). I'm an amateur photographer and dad who uses Smugmug primarily to share memories with my family and friends (aka the private view). However I also like to display some small portion of content to the anonymous public visitor (aka the public view). This suggestion is for people who want to have their Homepage and all content display in one of these two modes depending on who the visitor might be. First a few of the problems:

1) Unlisted galleries are a good idea, but they blow the whole Categorical structure. If I have private content I now need to send someone a link, which they'll likely loose in time. I can't send them a private 'Family' category link, and let them browse all of my private family content. But then there's...

2) Sharegroups, which almost solve the above problem, but come with their own. For one they only allow galleries to be added, and since I cannot put a Category in a Sharegroup, I cannot simply say - okay here's all my Family stuff, with all of its subcategories and galleries, and one unlisted link to all of it. On top of that, the entries are static, so I have to manually add galleries as they become available.

3) Site-wide passwords. We all know passwords blow, last thing we want is yet another password to forget. Site-wide passwords are almost cool, except they blow the whole concept of a Homepage, so then, there's no way for me to display any of my public stuff to the anonymous visitor... Or maybe I just want a couple smart galleries to display on my Homepage to people who don't have the site-wide password.

4) Then there's gallery-passwords. So I could just put a password on all my private galleries, and not put one on my public galleries. That might work! But wait, then my Homepage, which I'd like to include Gallery Categories on, would even let people without the passwords browse the whole structure, see all my gallery names, maybe even find some information I didn't want them to see! So now I guess it's back to unlisted galleries and sharegroups again, and back to square 1.

It's a bit maddening. There currently seems to be no easy way to display separate Public and Private views on the Homepage in a way that offers the following:

Private
- full navigation of private content, ability to use categories and see protected galleries.

Public
- limited navigation of private content, ability to see Public categories and public galleries only.

I guess a lot of this comes down to Categories. They're useful for organization and navigation, and I want to be able to use them in more secure and private way by setting properties on them.

But there might be a simple answer, and now I present you with my suggestion for a better solution, which consists of two parts - Authorization, and Presentation:

* Authorization *

I want to be able to let my visitors register, just like they can for Events, but with more control - I want to moderate either by sending invites or approving/rejecting people who just show up and request to register for the private site.

I'd go so far as to suggest some role-based access security, where I can group those people into roles. But we won't go there - let's just keep it simply binary. Most people visiting my site will have either a Windows Live ID (Hotmail, etc.), a Google, Twitter, or Facebook account. It would simply be fannnnnntastic right now if Smugmug would integrate OAuth and authentication with the major providers to let me authorize my personal, private visitors. The interface should present me with a list where I can see who is authorized and add/remove as necessary.

Then, to support the two views public vs private, the site-wide password could be supplemented or replaced with site-wide auth. The auth model would be much stronger and more private than the site-wide password model, as you know.

* Presentation *

The Homepage will always load, but the presentation depends on whether the visitor is authorized or anonymous. Maybe an additional property, call it RequiresAuth, willl be set at the Category and Gallery level to support this. Content will only display depending on whether or not it is marked as RequiresAuth and if the visitor is authorized. If they are not, all content marked RequiresAuth will be both treated as 'unlisted' so it doesn't show up in navigation, and as protected from viewing directly. Content not marked as RequiresAuth will display freely to anyone, so the Homepage can still show Categories and/or Galleries not marked as RequiresAuth, plus any content stored therein.

It took me a bit of time to put this together, and a few days of customizing and playing around with the control panel and different security/privacy configurations. I think the Authorization component would be quite useful for managing access to the site as well as events. It could be replaced though by a similar model using the existing site-wide password, in combination with the Presentation change and RequiresAuth property at the Category and Gallery level. I hope you'll consider some of these changes, thanks for reading!

For Popular Photos, SmugMug is clearly storing votes on my photos somewhere - since I can give a photo thumbs-up and when I return the next day SmugMug still knows I had given thumbs-up on that photo... so, that leads me to believe that it can't be all that complicated to allow my homepage to have a filled in Popular Photos section while still excluding my popular photos from other SmugMug sites.

While I understand that it helps to build SmugMug's brand by having everyone share their photos with everyone - I have zero interest in letting complete strangers view photos of me or my children, and thus my only option is the site-wide password... it just kills me to know that a lot of the fantastic features of SmugMug don't work unless I choose to share my photos with the world.

I am creating a gallery for the use of our company. For our purposes, it would be wonderful to have multiple logins with tracking, and the ability to select which login has access to certain functions. For example, it would be nice to say Bob has access to the payment info and editing, but not to gallery arrangement, while sam can edit comments but not payment, passwords or galleries. Claire can upload photos, but only delete what she herself uploaded, I have full access to everything, and joe can edit various settings. -In the master account, I could see who made what changes and possibly have the option to approve/deny, or restore.

Something like that.

Right now, I can only set 1 assistant password at a time, and they can only access stats in account settings. That would be perfect for Jane, but everyone else needs other access permissions.

Could this be a (near) future option?

Thanks

It would be nice to see photos full size and without watermarks when logged in instead of having to owner save them. The new SM IPad app is great but it still limits the size and leaves the watermark even though you are logged in. I think this would be nice to add this feature on the main site as well. Sometimes I like to show my clients full size slideshows. To do this I must change the gallery settings even though I'm logged into the site. And sometimes I forget to change it back :( I can't think of an instance I would want any viewing restrictions when I'm logged in. A suggestion would be to add the option in the site setup to allow for specifying a different size and no watermark when logged on this way people have the option. It can default to the gallery settings if not set.