SmugMug Release Notes

Sell more, price less: Packages for Pros

This week is pay dirt for Pros. Sell groups of prints and products for totally pain-free purchasing. Packages are here!

Create and configure them from the Pros tab of your Control Panel. Choose your print lab, products, and applicable galleries. Then name your price. When your customers buy one they’ll just need to select their images and check out. Questions? See our full help pages. Did we get it right? Speak your mind on our forums.

Pros please note:

• The print lab you specify for a package trumps the lab you’ve set in each gallery’s custom pricing. If they are different, a photo ordered through a Bay Photo package will print through Bay, while a regular order from the same gallery could print through EZ Prints.

• At this time, digital downloads and custom photo cards are not available for purchase through packages.

• Color correction is currently applied to ALL items ordered through packages. As we improve this feature we’ll let you specify your desired settings, so stay tuned.

Event Marketing and Choosing Favorites

Our Pros have shown us incredible patience through the last year and we hope that this moment has been worth the wait. Introducing Event Marketing and Favorites:

Events are Sharegroups on steroids. Create an Event and assign galleries to it. You get a link to the page to share with any person you wish. They’ll see all of those galleries on one handy page.

Additionally, you can enter a list of key clients (say, the bride). For each Participant you add, we’ll generate a custom version of the page that also contains a Favorites folder specific to them. When each Participant browses those event galleries, they can tag the photos they like best. A copy of each gets placed in that Favorites gallery, and both of you can review their selections at any time.

You can start managing your Events right now from your Pros tab. Visit our full help pages, send your customers to our visitor help, and as always — let us know what you think on our forums.

Last but not least, we brushed up the site with a slew of bug fixes:

• We tightened up the layout of our recently-added Sales Tax tool, so things should look neater in that space. You can also enter tax rates with up to three decimal places.

• Keyworders rejoice! Editing keywords now won’t unexpectedly clear them.

• Keywords links work properly from the lightbox again. (Whoops)

• Browsing by date on an invalid user’s site now redirects back to our general homepage.

• Sepia and Tanning Salon are back in service. Find it under your gallery Tools button > Color Effects.

• We added another great deal on our ClubSmug page for those wanting to try a Showit Website. Log in and check it out!
  

And a couple updates to our beta Stats feature:

• Video views are more accurate and are recorded more quickly.

• Single day views should appear as a dot on the graph.

• You can now grab a permalink to the page if you’re viewing stats for a single day.

We hope our fans love these new additions and will stay tuned for lots more. If you’re attending WPPI next week, don’t be shy. Please come see us in booth #1518 and say hello!

Happy marketing,
The SmugMug Family

Simple Sales Tax

Some states require Pros to collect sales tax. If you fit that bill you can now specify a tax rate and we’ll automatically apply it in the shopping cart for orders shipping to your selected state. Find the Sales Tax Tool right in your Control Panel, under the Pros tab.

You’ll also see that your Sales History records will reflect the amount of tax you collect. Read all about this feature here.

Please note that SmugMug does not assume responsibility for the management of sales tax you collect and we recommend you consult with your tax advisor if you have any questions.

Profit Handling

If you are a saver or a spender, we now offer a little something extra in our new Profit Handling feature. We give you the option to request payment or hold payment in the Pros tab of your Control Panel.

1. We’ll pay all pros that have at least $500 in profits once a month. If you make no changes in your Control Panel, your Payment Handling will be set to this option.

2. Previously, if your unpaid profit was less than $500 but you wanted to be included in our next payment cycle, you had to contact us via email. You can now trigger a one-time payout of all your profits yourself by clicking the top option. You will be included in our next payment cycle, then the normal schedule will resume.

3. If you prefer to bankroll, you can put all your future payments on hold until you change your mind. Choose the third option and savor your new holiday savings fund.

Need a refresher on reporting? Look here.

Fixes and improvements

Our Smart Galleries just got smarter:

• Smart Galleries no longer fall into an infinite loop if two galleries pull photos from each other.
• Switching rules from ‘Any’ to ‘All’ will properly return valid results.
• Smuggers using IE7 can now join the fun and add/remove rules.
• You can set a Smart rule to apply to a single day.

There were other important bug fixes, too:

• The W9 form accepts routing numbers that begin with 08 and 09. We also added a “Government” option to the filing status list.
• Be Social Tweeters were sometimes presented with an erroneous confirmation message if their post failed. This now works perfectly.
• Arranging photo by number saves the order you set.
• Keyword searchers are rewarded with a nicer message if there are no search results.

And last but not least, we heard your reviews about our beta Stats and made a few refinements:

• Click a calendar date twice to view data for a single day.
• The gallery choice sticks when you click through the other tabs. Get all the details.
• We added filenames to image pickers and gallery details.
• Gallery names now accept non-English characters.
• The graph should load properly each time you change tabs or adjust settings.

Thanks to everyone who offered their generous feedback. If you have a gripe or a comment, please make sure to tell us about it.

All the best,
The SmugMug Family

Pros: Let your customers design cards.

The #1 request from pros was, let my customers design cards.   They can now, with some caveats:

1. If you set prices for cards at the Portfolio or Gallery levels, your visitors will see the Create a Card option in the Buy Menu.
2. When they click the Photos Tab in the card creator, they will only see photos from the gallery they were viewing when they chose Create a Card.
3. When they click the Create Tab, they’ll see your pro prices and be prompted to choose quantities.   Then they can add to cart.
4. The card will be saved to a Guest Card private gallery in the category My SmugMug Creations on your site.
5. Your guests won’t see a link to that gallery.

Reminder: Cards are fulfilled by EZ Prints, so they only show up in your pricing tool if you have EZ Prints selected.  Once prices are set for cards, you can revert back to Bay Photo if you want the other products from the gallery to be printed there.

All subscribers: Keyword upgrades.

• A new option has been added to the Bulk Caption/Keyword tool.  It lets you remove all numeric keywords from a gallery.
• You’ll find a setting in your Control Panel to enable or disable automatic keyword generation from filenames (default: enabled).
• There is a Design Rule for Camera File Systems (DCF) that lets us ignore filenames generated by your camera.  We do not create keywords from filenames like IMG_001.JPG.
• Multi-word keywords no longer need to be quoted as long as they are followed by a comma or semi-colon.  For example, we used to require you to put quotes around “New York” to make one keyword phrase.  Now you can enter New York, or New York;
• 1 and 2-character keywords used to require quotes, but no more.  For example, 12, 5, would be added as keywords.

U.S. Pros:  Direct Deposit.

Get paid the fast, secure, convenient, environmentally-friendly way: direct to your bank.

If you haven’t already, please fill out our online “Tax & Payment Info.”  We’re sorry to say that even if you’ve sent us a W-9 by another method, we’ll need the online form to enable direct deposit.

You’ll find the online form in your SmugMug Control Panel, in the Pros tab. Click the edit link next to Tax & payment info.

Payment schedules will remain unchanged, but electrons should reach you faster than postmen.  Payments begin in January.

Bug fixes and enhancements.

• iPhone feeds and settings are handled correctly in IE8 now.
• Search results now correctly take you to the image selected instead of the first page of a gallery.
• The lightbox link in comment emails now takes you to the correct lightbox view.
• Name is now required on the billing page of the cart.
• Full screen images now appear faster in the full screen slideshow.
• The Bulk Caption/Keyword tool acted erratically in some instances.  Fixed.
• Add to cart in lightbox view now only requires one click.
• No more problems creating a gallery when a category name is in quotes.
• The slideshow pop-up on password-protected galleries is fixed.
• Better read-only message for SmugMug’s maintenance windows.
• You can now go to Batch Add via a direct URL even if there is a site-wide or gallery password, if you know the password.

Merry Christmas!

The SmugMug Family