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Hikin Mike
26th of March 2011 (Sat), 22:25
I just found your site. Interesting....nothing there. I've had my site officially up for about 6 months and I recently (3 weeks), I renamed all of my jpgs for better SEO. Those are being indexed now.

Do you have your own domain?
Bob_A
27th of March 2011 (Sun), 00:42
I just found your site. Interesting....nothing there. I've had my site officially up for about 6 months and I recently (3 weeks), I renamed all of my jpgs for better SEO. Those are being indexed now.

Do you have your own domain?

Nope, I only have the Smugmug site, which is a problem. I'll bet that the only reason any of your images are getting indexed is because of your Facebook account :)

I have a few tiny images that show up under Google Images only because they somehow ended up on Fwix.
Hikin Mike
27th of March 2011 (Sun), 01:14
Nope, I only have the Smugmug site, which is a problem. I'll bet that the only reason any of your images are getting indexed is because of your Facebook account :)

I have a few tiny images that show up under Google Images only because they somehow ended up on Fwix.

No, none of my Facebook images were uploaded via Smugmug. I'm going to guess it may have something to do with you not having a regular domain, but it's only a guess.
Bob_A
27th of March 2011 (Sun), 13:28
No, none of my Facebook images were uploaded via Smugmug. I'm going to guess it may have something to do with you not having a regular domain, but it's only a guess.

Could be. And it sounds like you are changing your image filenames to something with keywords, which probably helps.

If you look at Andy Williams site he's getting images indexed, but most don't have filenames containing keywords. Also, two thirds of the 189 images he has indexed are tiny thumbnails and many are from his blog, not Smugmug.

I also noticed that for many of the images indexed that are actually from Smugmug he places a link to the his Smugmug site in the gallery description. I may try that.
Hikin Mike
27th of March 2011 (Sun), 16:52
Could be. And it sounds like you are changing your image filenames to something with keywords, which probably helps.

If you look at Andy Williams site he's getting images indexed, but most don't have filenames containing keywords. Also, two thirds of the 189 images he has indexed are tiny thumbnails and many are from his blog, not Smugmug.

I also noticed that for many of the images indexed that are actually from Smugmug he places a link to the his Smugmug site in the gallery description. I may try that.

When I first uploaded my pictures, I used my normal part numbers, like "01-096". Google started to index my images. A few months ago, I decided to change my jpgs for both my regular site and my Smugmug site. I used my part number and a few key words. As an example, '01-096-tunnel-view-yosemite.jpg'.

Google is now re-indexing my jpgs. Remember though, Smugmug doesn't use your file numbers. They use their own file numbers, but they include your original jpg file number as a folder. Using my example, I upload "01-096-tunnel-view-yosemite.jpg" to my Landscape category, Yosemite gallery: http://mike.imagesinthebackcountry.com/Landscapes/yosemite-landscape/01-096-tunnel-view-yosemite/1191638666_EsmVY-M-1.jpg.

You can see in red, my original file name is not a "folder' and the new file number that Smugmug assigns is in green.

Renaming your jpgs is good for SEO only. It isn't going to "help" you with the indexing part.

Hope this makes sense. :lol:
Martin.D
29th of March 2011 (Tue), 06:34
As per the original question and having experienced both I would go with Zenfolio..
328iGuy
2nd of April 2011 (Sat), 08:38
Here's my code for a $5 savings: Referral Code: V5A-2ZW-U2Q

Thanks methodical, I just used your savings code! :cool:
ridindirty
5th of October 2011 (Wed), 19:39
Read through this thread... I dont see anyone commenting on an important aspect, IMO: The printing options.


BayPhoto vs Mpix? Any difference? I see Mpix Pro, which according to threads on here is much better than the standard Mpix, is not available unless you have the "Premium Business" $250 dollar account.
Hikin Mike
6th of October 2011 (Thu), 14:08
Read through this thread... I dont see anyone commenting on an important aspect, IMO: The printing options.


BayPhoto vs Mpix? Any difference? I see Mpix Pro, which according to threads on here is much better than the standard Mpix, is not available unless you have the "Premium Business" $250 dollar account.

I've used both BayPhoto and Mpix, not a side-to-side test, but I would use either one. I've never used Mpix Pro, but I think the difference is the extra services, not the printing/printer itself.
ridindirty
8th of October 2011 (Sat), 12:45
I've used both BayPhoto and Mpix, not a side-to-side test, but I would use either one. I've never used Mpix Pro, but I think the difference is the extra services, not the printing/printer itself.

Thank you for the response, I ended up going with zenfolio, as although I havent used both for printing, I couldnt find a discernible difference between the two.


Slightly off topic: Is there a way to disable sharing totally? I can't find it.
Methodical
14th of October 2011 (Fri), 09:25
I've been experiencing slow loads on my Zen pages lately and a for the slideshows forget it; they take forever to load and then every so often it stops and the swirling thing goes on and on and on. So I contacted Zen and was told to clear the cache and other temporary files etc. I did all that and to no avail. I started checking Zen's forums and noticed many others having similar issues. I'm thinking it's because of some of the latest upgrades, particularly video hosting. I for one can't fanthom sitting and waiting 20-30 seconds for an image to load, so I know it has affected my sells because the customers are experiencing it, too. Other than the slow loads and problems with the slideshows, I've had no issues with Zen; these issues just started recently.

Just wanted to let those who are debating know.

Btw, if anyone here have any other solutions to solve the slow load, I am all ears.

Just wanted to provide an update to the problems I was experiencing.

Update: I submit a thread in Zen's Problem forum and one of the employees responded and it appears they fixed the problem. I did some more testing and determined that my galleries without Zen's copyright logo loaded almost instantly, but the galleries with Zen's copyright logo , the sports galleries, was slow to load. So it seemed it was the copyright logos that was slowing things down quite a bit. All galleries are loading quickly now, so I think they address the issue.

Update - 11.5.11: Zenfolio seem to have solved the problem. Things are moving along pretty smoothly now.
mmgoodies
5th of November 2011 (Sat), 01:21
I have tried out both, I like Zenfolio better because it has more products to sell and the navigations are intuitive, not to mention it's cheaper =)
Moose408
5th of November 2011 (Sat), 19:58
I have been using Smugmug and 2 different accounts there. I just started using Zenfolio (6 days ago) and I'm very impressed with how easy it is to do customization. They added a bunch of features on Nov 1st which make it super easy to customize. With Smugmug it is a pain in the ass to customize and every time I want to tweak something it seems to take hours because I don't remember where I tweaked it last time. Smugmug has infinite customization capabilities, but the user interface was designed by engineers for engineers. Very poor in my option.

I'm doing a couple of more tweaks on the Zenfolio site then switching over permanently.

Here are the sites
http://www.boudoirphotographybycraig.com/ (customized SmugMug)
http://www.craigcolvinphotography.com/ (minimally customized SmugMug)
http://craigcolvinphotography.zenfolio.com (this took 20 mins to customize)