Smugmug

I am looking for a site to host the pictures that I take for my church on a weekly basis, as well as some personal and family stuff. I've checked out Smugmug as I've noticed a number of people using it here. I would like to stay around $50-$75 per year for the service.

For the church I would like for it to be easy for the different departments to be able to view and download images that they like for web use and brochures. I would also like to be able to easily distinguish categories by date of the shoot and the ministry represented. Something like: 3-1-07 with a few sub menus like singers, speakers, youth ministry...

Any suggestions?

I use www.photosite.com... I think the package was $60/year and you get your own url. Not very fancy but servicable. You can also set up your galleries so that images can be dowloaded or not - you can also password galleries. Good luck, Dennis

Pbase is $23 a year.

If you email them, Smugmug offers free pro (I think, not the lowest level anyway) accounts for non-profit organizations. I believe there's something about it in their FAQs about non-profits, and then email link is there - if you can't find it, post back and I'll dig it up in my email (our church got one).

Hope that helps!

Here is the information:

http://www.smugmug.com​/help/non-profit-free-accounts

I use SmugMug, PBase and Zenfolio. For your needs I would recommend www.zenfolio.com

I just started using phanfare.com, and have been really happy with it.

stoph wrote in post #2796147
I am looking for a site to host the pictures that I take for my church on a weekly basis, as well as some personal and family stuff. I've checked out Smugmug as I've noticed a number of people using it here. I would like to stay around $50-$75 per year for the service.

For the church I would like for it to be easy for the different departments to be able to view and download images that they like for web use and brochures. I would also like to be able to easily distinguish categories by date of the shoot and the ministry represented. Something like: 3-1-07 with a few sub menus like singers, speakers, youth ministry...

Any suggestions?

I take pictures for my church as well. What we have is a website and I have access to the website editing area. We use a private Flickr account, then link the slideshow for a set of photos to the website on a photo web page. It works great. As far as downloading the pictures, we limit this because they are not for consumption privately by the congregation, just simply to assist the ministry of the church and the congregation can simply direct their friends and family to the website for nice viewing. They can easily contact me or the director of the communications area if they want a particular picture and then something can be arranged.

Perhaps that helps.

I've been an avid smugmug user for several years, first as a place to put family and friend pictures (the lowest level account), and more recently for my fledgling photography business. This one is a pro account. Links are:
http://www.tnicol.net
http://www.tomnicolpho​tography.com
I've been very happy with both. The nice thing about smugmug is their unlimited storage and they respond to email questions very fast. Their interface is very flexible. You'll easily be able to make galleries for different days, different events, that sort of thing. I'm also the webmaster for my church and we're wresting with a space for pictures too. If you want the ability to post personal as well as church pictures, my advice would be to keep them separate. That way people can upload pictures to the church site and stay clear of your personal ones.

I did have a Smugmug account, but got fed up with the upload feature (it was saying I couldn't upload a ton of photos at one time.) I wanted to be able to upload a bunch (but they are all big files.)

I had a paid account (not sure which level), but I ended up cancelling it.

Was I missing something? Do the other levels of accounts let you upload a bunch of photos at one time? (This wouldn't happen ongoing, but definitely to get "caught up.")

The most I've done with smugmug is upload around 200 4-7mb jpgs. Took an age, but no problems.

*shrugs*

Could have been the luck of the draw and I had no internet issues that caused my upload to fail.

And, no, I don't think there is any difference in uploading between account types.

koalagurl wrote in post #2802016
I did have a Smugmug account, but got fed up with the upload feature (it was saying I couldn't upload a ton of photos at one time.) I wanted to be able to upload a bunch (but they are all big files.)

I had a paid account (not sure which level), but I ended up cancelling it.

Was I missing something? Do the other levels of accounts let you upload a bunch of photos at one time? (This wouldn't happen ongoing, but definitely to get "caught up.")

There are a ton of ways to upload pics to smugmug, and they are making more all the time. When I first created my account in 04 the easiest way was their drag and drop IE method that had a limit of 50 files. Now they have some really neat and free windows plugins that let you upload as many files as you want to a gallery at one time. Some other people have also created other uploaders that work really well too.

My problem is that it was telling me a MB limit per upload (I do it overnight, so I don't care how long it takes).

It was taking me forever to figure out the limit, then to remember what I uploaded, etc...not very user friendly.

It all depends on how long ago that was, and what method of uploading you were using. Things have changed a lot and even in the beginning there were quite a few ways to upload some had limits other did not.

There are still many ways to upload, some single file only, others like the one I use allows me to fill multiple galleries at once and if it has a mb limit I've never reached it and I've sent probably 1/2 a gig at one time if not more. (I really don't keep track.)

As said above, sometimes uploading can be slow. I had it crash once or twice which is painful because you don't know what went and what didn't, plus if you just redo it, you get doubles of those that went the first time. Mostly it's fine, just slow. I've uploaded a couple hundred 2 MB or so files without incident. And all account levels use the same uploader. I use the default where you drag files into the green smuggy. Patience is a virtue.