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GRUBGiven the recent distress Yahoo has been, I am now evaluating my options with using Flickr to host all my images. I am seriously considering moving to Smugmug for these reasons - let me know if you have an alternate opinion.
Flickr:
- Has innovated very little in the last one year, and we all agree that most of its competitors have now better theme layouts and slideshow capabilities. Flickr doesnt allow you to host the website off them, nor do they have capabilities to do so (at least now).
- In favor of Flickr though, its a great community. Managing photos is easy, but what I like best about their site was the ability to have sets and collections, and nested sets. What’s more, its very easy to have same photos in different set and is spiffy.
Smugmug:
- With Smumug I see a whole range of possibilities. The company is already profitable, so the risk of them downing out are less. They are a startup hence more likely to innovate more. They allowed hosted option where I can host my site off them. The themes and slideshow options are awesome and they really seem to have got that look about them that makes it very very appealing.
- On the other hand, I worry what would happen if they were to fold? Their support is awesome, so I am hopeful they don’t just shut shop. I cannot put same photos in multiple galleries, so that is one level of extra work for me. They don’t have that big a community as Flickr, but I guess it has grown over the last years.
Given this, I am not sure I should make a move or not. Smugmug is really calling out to me - and with Yahoo’s problems surmounting, I doubt we’ll see Flickr doing anything innovative for a while. Heck, they would rather be all about surviving right now.
What do you think - should I make a jump to Smugmug?
Hey, I work for SmugMug so obviously I am rather biased, but I think you would really enjoy our service. We have been around for over 5 years now and have been profitable every single year. We’re not going anywhere soon and we are fully aware that innovating is our lifeblood.
Come take a free trial (https://www.smugmug.com/signup.mg) and check out our photography forum (http://www.dgrin.com/) at least.
@Mark - Thanks for stopping by. I have moved nearly 6000 photos (7+ Gb) from flickr to smugmug today and started working on them; Unfortunately I discovered its a mess to get my categories / galleries in the same fashion as collection / sets. There is no “bulk” setting to assign galleries to specific categories or sub categories, and that is really making my task toough, and borderline boring.
Modifying the CSS also seems simple, but so far there are just too many places to enter stuff. Maybe I am just feeling lazy today - but it seems a bit convoluted.
Anyways, day 1 of trial, I am still flickr. Will work on it again and see how it goes, otherwise I will hold off until Smugmug comes up with options for mass categories / sub categories grouping. I thought it should have been done through ajax.
I googled for some tools that could do it using your API, though I haven’t come accross yet that would make my task simpler.
Thanks for stopping by
Suyog
Suyog,
I completely understand on the organization front. It’s too confusing and clunky and we know it. I think our structure is more versatile, but can be more confusing and difficult to initially set up. We are working hard at making that a much better process; it’s definitely one of our top priorities.
Until we make the improvements, you might want to take a look at SmugBrowser. It’s a Firefox extension developed by one of our employees. http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47484
Don’t be afraid to contact our support team. We answer emails very quickly at just about any hour of the day or night, 7 days a week.
@Mark: Great - that is wht i was looking for. I am sold! I will be moving to Smugmug - worked over it over the weekend and I am very impressed by the power account option. I will be buying the account soon. Thanks again for your replies.
[...] my previous post I was dabbling between Flickr and Smugmug. After Mark’s responses and my own playing around [...]