# Flickr, SmugMug, etc



## ·clyde· (Dec 26, 2001)

So, I've seen some discussion here in other threads about the pros and cons of Flickr versus other photo hosting solutions (smugmug, mac.com, pbase, etc). Then there's the rolling your own solution on your own server like "Gallery."

Alex and I have used a bunch. We did Gallery for our Team WTF?! autocross event photos for a couple years. It was a time consuming PITA, but let us do a lot of behind the scense things that we couldn't do with the hosted solutions.

Alex was using smugmug for his personal stuff and we started looking at its "pro" features. The feature set had matured to the point where we decided to use it for the Team WTF?! pics. Uploading the photos and arranging the galleries was much easier than using Gallery, but SmugMug forces you into a very rigid and inflexible structure. It works well on the front end as it allows people to quickly find photos of their cars, but on the back end, if you want to create galleries that use photos from other galleries, it quickly becomes a :banghead: affair. SmugMug stats reporting kinda sticks if you want to see how people are getting to your photos, and once you have more than a handful of photos and galleries, it quickly starts sucking in a major way. OTOH, you can sell prints and other merchandise pretty easily without a lot of effort. The feedback we've gotten from customers that have bought things has been very, very good.

When I started getting interested in HDR, I kept winding up back at Flickr. I'd always kind of disliked Flickr because the more freeform navigational structure wasn't very intuitive. Then, one day, I "got it" and it all started making sense. I threw some of my photos up, started arranging them, adding some groups and pools, and really grew to like it. Being able to easily place a single photo into multiple sets (read: galleries) at once as well as broader pools is really cool. The social interaction with others is MUCH better than via SmugMug (even with their continuous improvements in that area). Recently, I've been exploring how to use it with other things like blogs and forums. At the Toledo Pro Solo this weekend, I was emailing photos to my photostream with titles and descriptions (could have, but didn't, added tags and directed them into sets) then had the photostream rss feed picked up elsewhere where it displayed the photos and text allowing friends and others to comment on them (or yell at me for spamming, or suggest hiring a dialog writer ). Still, though, if you're not familiar with how Flickr works, it can be a frustrating experience for the user. Flickr falls on its face when it comes to easily selling prints in comparison to SmugMug and its stats reporting is only marginally better than SmugMug's.

Overall, if you want to create easy to use galleries for people and maybe sell some stuff with minimal pain, I think SmugMug is probably the best choice.

If you want to share with communities in a more webcentric manner and/or have infintely flexible groupings of photos, Flickr is the best choice.

If you want to keep track of how people get to your photos and where they're embedding them elsewhere on the web, and are willing to put in the effort, using your own self-hosted solution is probably best.

What do you all think?


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## Cliff (Apr 19, 2002)

I'm using the self-hosted solution via Gallery. I like having the control, and I like having the services afforded by a private domain. It is a high cost solution, both in terms of outright dollars and time spent managing the software environment, but it offers the greatest flexibility too. I also use photobucket to host photos in situations where I might want to insert a bit of a firewall between my personal life and the photos, such as ebay or for sale advertisements.


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## Patrick (Dec 23, 2001)

:yikes: *HOLY CRAP* :yikes:

Hello Clyde!!! :thumbup: :bigpimp:

.


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## EdCT (Mar 14, 2002)

Clyde,

I was just joking about the dialogue bit 

I use Flickr and I've gotten used to it, I still find new uses for it and new things it'll do (or allow me to do).

I've learned to click on every icon everywhere on the site, though, as there are many "hidden" features (though I suppose hiding them wasn't the designers' intent).

The best thing I've gotten from the site is meeting up with other local photographers. I've joined Ct Flickr Meetup - we meet once or twice a month at various locations around the state for "shoots" - then post to a pool and discuss one another's shots.

We also meet at a gallery owned by one of the members for a more workshop - oriented get together (tonight in fact). Nice folks, too.

I like being able to search for groups, pools etc on almost any subject. If I'm thinking of going somewhere for pics, I'll sometimes look it up first on Flickr.

What a different world from when I first began to dabble in photography back in the late 70's - you can learn stuff much, much faster today (as with many other things).

Ed


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## ·clyde· (Dec 26, 2001)

Patrick said:


> :yikes: *HOLY CRAP* :yikes:
> 
> Hello Clyde!!! :thumbup: :bigpimp:
> 
> .


:angel:

I'm with you, Cliff, although it's not much of a $ thing if you're already hosting a web site for any other reason. Time and effort, though, is a drag that increases exponentially with photo volume. It's where you want to make the compromises, I guess.

Ed, you did see the "" thing right?  One of the other things with Flickr is that the user can customize their experience a bunch if they're using FireFox by using greasemonkey scripts on both the front end (viewing other people's pics) and the back end (managing your own). It's very extensible, but again, it's one of those things that doesn't help someone that isn't familiar with Flickr.


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## Desiboy (Apr 1, 2005)

Back in the day, I wrote my own PHP gallery solution. Basically, it read files in a directory, created links based on them, and allowed a user to browse. Very simple, but lacked much of the advanced features of today's web enabled galleries. I've never used "Gallery" but I think I might explore it a bit. I've used Picasa and thought it was fairly good. These days, I use Flickr. I used to HATE Flickr, I too didn't get the free form of it, it just made no sense. Then, one day it clicked and it all made sense. Now I have two Pro Flickr accounts (one for personal photos that would ruin any chance of a political career, the other for public safe viewing). 

Here's why I like Flickr:
1. tags, sharing, contact/social networking
2. easy upload, easy management
3. exif support
4. easy to get prints, sell prints, etc.
5. lots of integration with other sites (such as Facebook)


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## Patrick (Dec 23, 2001)

Flickr seems to be popular with a certain element of the Fest's OT crowd... so it must be good.  :eeps:


:rofl:


.


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## ktc (Jan 10, 2005)

I've been using photobucket for a while. Works for me.


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## Cliff (Apr 19, 2002)

·clyde· said:


> I'm with you, Cliff, although it's not much of a $ thing if you're already hosting a web site for any other reason. Time and effort, though, is a drag that increases exponentially with photo volume. It's where you want to make the compromises, I guess.


I had visions of Dave wandering into the thread, hence the $ disclaimer.


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## vexed (Dec 22, 2001)

Patrick said:


> :yikes: *HOLY CRAP* :yikes:
> 
> Hello Clyde!!! :thumbup: :bigpimp:
> 
> .


+1, what are you driving these days:eeps:


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## Dave 330i (Jan 4, 2002)

Cliff said:


> I had visions of Dave wandering into the thread, hence the $ disclaimer.


Flickr is not more difficult to use than bimmerfest.


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## ·clyde· (Dec 26, 2001)

vexed said:


> +1, what are you driving these days:eeps:




:eeps:



Dave 330i said:


> Flickr is not more difficult to use than bimmerfest.


Compared to rocket science, no.


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## sponge_worthy (May 10, 2006)

http://www.phanfare.com/home.aspx :thumbup:


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## obmd1 (Jan 17, 2005)

bumpity. 

Phanfare just increased their price to 99 bucks a year for the basics. Do you guys have any feeling about the import functions on these other sites that would allow easy transition between services? I'm thinking about bailing.


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## chicagofan00 (Feb 10, 2008)

You can upload easily to Flickr (as well as Facebook) with your macbook or iMac using the current versions of iPhoto or Aperture. Not sure if you are using either of those for your photos though.


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## obmd1 (Jan 17, 2005)

Yeah, i know that from home to the web is easy with Those sites. I was interested in moving intact albums between sites rather thatn recreating them. We're talking 8gb of pics and movies. 

Phanfare extended my membership for the current price a month for me to think about it.


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## chicagofan00 (Feb 10, 2008)

obmd1 said:


> Yeah, i know that from home to the web is easy with Those sites. I was interested in moving intact albums between sites rather thatn recreating them. We're talking 8gb of pics and movies.
> 
> Phanfare extended my membership for the current price a month for me to think about it.


Not sure about moving from one site to another. I believe when Trey Ratcliff was moving the majority of his work from Flickr to Smugmug he said they made if fairly painless. Of course he had a company actually design and implement his site on Smugmug for him so results may vary...


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