In your sea of galleries, make an island for each event you shoot to allow your clients to select favorites.
Note: This feature is available only with the Pro plan.
- Create your event
- Customize your event settings
- Share
- Favorites
- More about participants, registered guests, and favorites
- Publicize
- Additional details
Our event management tools help simplify browsing and buying so your visitors don't get lost. Let them view their galleries all on one page and easily tag their favorites, even on mobile. (They can only favorite up to 1,000 photos.)
Follow the how to's below to start setting up your own!
Create your event.
Select Selling Tools from the global navigation bar at the top of your account. Next, choose the Manage button for the Events section.
Next, selecting New Event will take you to a page where you can enter details. Give the event a name, a short description, a date, and a location. Your clients will see this information, so make it clear and informative.
We'll automatically incorporate your event name into the event URL, but you can change it to something you like better. Keep it simple and descriptive so your guests can remember the link without a breaking a sweat.
Example: A gallery name like the above example will show the event URL of Croquet-on-the-Lawn. The link becomes nickname.smugmug.com/event/Croquet-on-the-Lawn.
After you've set up the basics, click Add to select the galleries to add to the event. This can be just one or many galleries. You can create Events in the past, present, and the future, so don't be afraid to get started early. If you've got a gig next month, make the event now and ask your clients to not only save the date, but the URL, too.
Customize your event settings.
Dress up your event page with a beautiful slideshow. To take advantage of the Featured on Homepage option, make sure you add a Featured Events content block to your homepage.
Typically, only people you set as Participants can pick and choose Favorite photos. Guest Registration allows you to make this feature available to others.
- Required: Anyone viewing the Event is prompted to register. After they enter their info, they'll be able to start browsing and favoriting immediately. They'll also receive an email with a special link that will take them back to the event and their favorites.
- Suggested: Anyone viewing the Event is prompted to register, but they can decline and continue to browse the Event as a guest. The Event homepage will show a "Register to Pick Favorites" link, which they can click and register to use.
- Optional: Visitors won't be prompted to register unless they click the "Register to Pick Favorites" link at the top. Once they do, they'll get a personalized Event page and the ability to tag Favorites. However, they can decline and continue to browse the Event as a guest.
- Off: Only people you set as Participants can tag Favorites. Everyone else sees the general version of the Event with the ability to browse the photos.
Events are unlisted by default. You can make them public or add a viewing password if you want to secure them further.
When you select Password protect this Event, check the Passworded Gallery Access box if you want to unlock all the galleries in the Event the first time the visitor enters the correct password set for the event, instead of each of the galleries.
Note: If you've opted to leave the Event unlisted, we'll add a code to the end of the URL as a security measure. This way people won't accidentally stumble on your event pages.
Gotcha: Only public events can be Featured on your homepage.
Share it.
After you Save your event, we'll generate a permanent link for general sharing. You'll find it at the bottom of your new event page under Other Guests.
Your recipients will get the Event details and all the galleries you selected. Click that link yourself and you can preview how the Event will look to them.
All guests viewing this general event page can see photos, and share the Event with others. You as the site owner may turn on the shopping cart for the favorites gallery once it is created.
Start playing favorites.
Participants are the guests who can tag Favorites from the Event.
First, add them to your Participants and Registered Guests list. We give you space to enter a name, email addresses, and notes so you can easily identify them.
Tip: When you enter their information, we do not instantly generate their unique Event links. You'll need to hit the Save button at the bottom of the page to "solidify" the process and update all the changes you've made to the page.
More about participants, registered guests, and favorites.
Once you've added a Participant, click their name to edit their info at any time. Click the red X to flag it for deletion. They'll be permanently removed when you save the changes.
When you add your Participants and save the changes, notice that their personal page URL contains their name as well as the Event name. They can feel warm and fuzzy knowing they're looking in the right spot. The code at the end ensures that their page and their Favorites are safe from prying eyes.
Example: If you've created an Event for a party, you'll add the guest of honor's name and email address to your Participant list. When you save the changes, we'll generate a unique, permanent link that you can share with them. Their Personal Page will look just like the general Event page, but with an additional My Favorites gallery where we'll store the photos they like best. As they browse the Event galleries, they'll also see a special heart icon under each photo. Clicking those will place a virtual copy of that image in their Favorites gallery.
Want to see their selections? You can click Selling Tools Events at any time and click the View Favorites link next to their name. Or, in your Organizer, locate their favorites gallery within the Events folder.
Registered Guests are people who find your Event and sign up. Once they do, they get a special Event link to pick and choose Favorites. They work just like Participants, so they'll show up in the same list, but with a blue icon.
Remember that you can control who registers in your Event Settings, detailed above. You can require it of every guest browsing your Event, only people who want to use Favorites, or you can turn off registration altogether and name your own Participants. You also control whether the shopping cart is ON for the favorites gallery. The cart is set to default to OFF for the favorites gallery upon creation.
You can always remove Participants or Registered Guests from your list.
Publicize.
Now go ahead and click the little envelope to create a handy Share message. If you want, you can also send your Participants and Guests a second email that includes the general Event link (without the option to pick or view Favorites). This allows them to easily share the event with their friends.
The macros at the bottom are just shortcuts to save you time. You're free to modify the default wording, but copy and paste one of those macros to keep names and info consistent. You can even save your changes as a template for later use, or send a test message to yourself to see how it'll look to your guests.
Note: If you make an email template change, it will only apply to that specific Event.
Send those off and let your viewers have their fun!
Anything else I should know?
Just keep these tips in mind:
- Communication is key. If you haven't already set up a Contact Page, we recommend doing that with the steps in this article. It's important that your guests can get in touch with you!
- Every person in your Participants and Registered Guests list can see all of the galleries you assign to the event as well as any comments left on the images. In contrast, each person's Favorites gallery is unique and visible only to them. They can see their own Favorites gallery because they are using the special links you gave them.
- All the Favorites galleries are available only to Anyone with the Link (Unlisted) and stored under the Event Favorites Folder. Please don't delete or change this location, otherwise your Participants and Registered Guests can't pick Favorites!
- Each click of a heart will collect the photo from its location into the one Favorites gallery. Don't worry: We link back to the original in the Photo Details so you (and your Participants/Guests) can always find the source.
- If you remove a person from your Participants and Registered Guests list, their Favorites folder will still remain in your Event Favorites Folder. This is just in case they still want to view their selections, but you can delete the gallery if you wish.
- Don't forget to check your Events Management page periodically to add or remove galleries and view your Participants' and Registered Guests' picks.
- Hide Owner: When using Events and Favorites, you'll want to disable Hide Owner on any galleries you include. These two features do not work together.
FYI: Galleries added to events retain the pricing/settings from the original gallery. Collected or smart galleries included in events will also have the pricing/settings of the original source gallery. If you want to block the sales of photos completely, be sure to set a pricelist with no items for sale and apply it to the original source gallery.
The new galleries created by an event when a guest selects favorites will retain the settings of the source gallery. This is important as the new galleries created by the event will show the default settings, so it may appear that the protection settings, etc., are not applied when they automatically come from the source galleries.
Important: If an event guest would like to un-favorite a photo, they will need to do so within the gallery in the event. Un-favoriting is not currently available within the My Favorites gallery where they can view all of their selected favorites. To un-favorite a photo, the guest will need to visit their personal event link, open a gallery in the event, navigate to the photo they want to un-favorite, click on the photo to open it individually and unselect the heart in the upper right hand corner.