Wednesday
Dec262007
Now With Pictures!
Wednesday, December 26, 2007 at 7:11AM
As you may have noticed, I've added a Photos section to Leoville. I'm hoping I can get pictures uploaded while I'm in Egypt, and if I do this is where they'll appear.
I'm using Smugmug to power the gallery. It's much more powerful than anything I could do myself with, say, Coppermine and I think Smugmug beats Flickr hands down for features. I guess I could put the Flickr gallery in a frame, but Smugmug integrates into the site better.
I wish Smugmug were better known. I like the MacCaskill's, father and son, who founded it and I think they have loaded it with so many superior features. Alas, Flickr still has much the larger community. I've been through the features vs community wars before (remember Jaiku vs Twitter?) and I should know better, but I just can't help backing the underdog, especially when it works better.
The fact that I can upload my videos there, as well, seals the deal. The big negative: it's not free. Smugmug is $40/year, $60 for gallery embedding, video and other features. Pro photographers can watermark and sell their photos and upload hi-def video for $150/year. Unlike Flickr there is no free basic account, but frankly I like the idea that Smugmug's got a long term business model.
There are still a couple of little things I'd like to tweak. I can't seem to get my custom background to appear on the photo pages and the dropdown menus sometimes fall behind elements. But it's pretty close to seamless integration. I've uploaded pictures from Christmas just to test it out. We leave for Egypt tomorrow!
I'm using Smugmug to power the gallery. It's much more powerful than anything I could do myself with, say, Coppermine and I think Smugmug beats Flickr hands down for features. I guess I could put the Flickr gallery in a frame, but Smugmug integrates into the site better.
I wish Smugmug were better known. I like the MacCaskill's, father and son, who founded it and I think they have loaded it with so many superior features. Alas, Flickr still has much the larger community. I've been through the features vs community wars before (remember Jaiku vs Twitter?) and I should know better, but I just can't help backing the underdog, especially when it works better.
The fact that I can upload my videos there, as well, seals the deal. The big negative: it's not free. Smugmug is $40/year, $60 for gallery embedding, video and other features. Pro photographers can watermark and sell their photos and upload hi-def video for $150/year. Unlike Flickr there is no free basic account, but frankly I like the idea that Smugmug's got a long term business model.
There are still a couple of little things I'd like to tweak. I can't seem to get my custom background to appear on the photo pages and the dropdown menus sometimes fall behind elements. But it's pretty close to seamless integration. I've uploaded pictures from Christmas just to test it out. We leave for Egypt tomorrow!