If your passion is hangliding, bulldogs or Zanzibar, you're in luck: communities help you bond with other people like you.
What are they?
A way for you to associate your bulldog galleries with other bulldog lover's galleries. Bulldog fanatics can see — in one place — galleries from you, your friends, clubs, shows, etc.
Communities can be customized with the look and feel of other websites to seamlessly power the photo galleries of message forums, blogs, clubs, etc. Example.
Joining one
Click the Browse Photos link in SmugMug's footer or click here to go straight to a directory of all SmugMug communities. Each will have text beside them saying join, invite only, or leave. Invite only means you'll need to ask for an invitation from the owner.
Associating galleries
At the bottom of your gallery settings, any communities you've joined will appear in a pull-down menu. Choose one.
You'll also be given the option to have your gallery take on the look and feel of the community, provided the community has one.
Note: Galleries associated with a community will either be smug default, or community default. They will not show your customization.
Flaunt 'em on your homepage
When you're logged in, go to your homepage and click the Homepage Layout button. Clicking the Photo Communities option will move to your homepage, if you'd like.
Tell me about creating and managing communities
Click the create your own link near the top of SmugMug's communities.
The Name cannot have spaces, but dashes and CamelCase work. The title must be family-friendly (see the fine print, below).
The URL is optional. If you have a non-SmugMug website that you'd like people to know about, put it here and we'll display a homepage link next to the community's thumbnail that will take visitors to that website.
Membership has three options, which you choose with the pull-down menu: Public (anyone can join), Invitation only, and public but subject to your approval.
If you see the cobranding option, you have a Power or Pro account and you have customized your site. Choose yes if you want to use your site's look and feel for your community's look.
If you own a community, go to its homepage when you're logged in to see edit settings and delete comm. links at the top of the page.
Inviting members
Simply navigate to the SmugMug homepage of the person you'd like to invite. You'll see an invite link by their name if you're logged in.
Removing and banning
Simply navigate to a community you own. You'll see a list of members with a remove link by each. You'll be given the option to ban when you remove them. Their galleries will be dropped from your community.
Choosing a photo to represent your community
On SmugMug's community page, some communities have thumbnail-sized photos by their names. To display one for your community, navigate to a gallery you own that's associated with your community. In the Photo Tools Menu, you'll see an option for Highlight Gallery (community). Choose it.
The Highlight Gallery option will randomly display one of the images in the gallery. To highlight just one image, navigate to the photo you wish to display. Then pick Feature Photo from the Photo Tools Menu.
The fine print
SmugMug reserves the right to disallow community names for any reason, at its sole discretion, effective immediately. We also reserve the right to terminate communities for any reason, at our sole discretion, effective immediately.
