Pros will find a time-saving new Replace Multiple Photos button for their Proof & Retouch orders.  It automagically replaces photos from sales with your retouched photos having the same file names.

Badges can now draw from most recent or most popular photos.   They can have captions.  They’re faster-loading.  And they give you a choice of how images initially slide into place.

In your control panel settings tab, you’ll find a new field to enter meta description.  Google will use the words you enter there for their description of your SmugMug site in search results.

Also in the settings tab, you’ll find checkboxes to disable feeds and the iPhone interface.

SmugMug account owners can now see the email addresses of people who leave comments on their SmugMug sites so they can reply.

Comments are now included in the text of comment notification emails.

A dozen bugs were fixed, including:

• Watermarks no longer are imported to Animoto when you make an Animoto video.
• File size reported incorrectly in critique view.
• You sometimes got logged out if you closed your browser.
• Batch add to cart was misbehaving in certain gallery types like popular.
• Bad preview URL in customize gallery under some circumstances.

Example:

You’ll find the beginnings of a pro branding center in your control panel, Pro tab.

The much-loved Old Journal style received some love, so that clicking on a photo displays it in the much-improved new lightbox, with comments.  Example.

Bug fixes:

• The Recent Photos home page box now includes photos uploaded via Olde Faithful and the API.
• The show comments link in lightbox that was visible when comments were off is now…OFF!
• The bug that displayed filenames instead of captions got the cruel death it deserved.
• Custom themes can now enjoy stretchy thumbnail-style goodness.
• Fixed a homepage box placement bug.

Last night we rolled out a partnership with Animoto that we’ve been excited about for years. You’ll find “Create an Animoto Video” in the Owner Only section of the Buy button when you’re logged in. Discover why we love Animoto on our CEO’s blog and on our help page.

Gallery viewing styles

We overhauled another viewing style, incorporating the best of All Thumbs and Traditional and adding magic to make it fill your page with photos. It goes by the name of “Thumbnails” and you’ll see it in the style menu on gallery pages. (You’ll see we kept All Thumbs and Traditional alive, but demoted them to the list in your Gallery Settings page.)

All viewing styles in the style menu now launch our Lightbox for single image viewing, and we tucked in some additional features: Owner Save for when you’re logged in, Save Photo for your visitors if you haven’t disabled original viewing, and Show Details. Click Show Details to get a neat side-by-side with the image on one side and any comments, camera info, and keywords on the other side.

Homepage boxes

All account levels now sport three new homepage boxes. It’s easy to drop a beautiful slideshow onto your page, pick a video or your favorite image to greet visitors, or display your most-recently uploaded photos. Our help page has a quick course on how to customize your homepage.

Big change for Pros

SmugMug is ready to move towards direct deposit for U.S. photographers. To that end, we’ve put the required W9 tax form online for you to fill out as well as information about which bank account we should put your money in when we make the change.

Even if you’ve previously filled out a paper W9 form for our accounting department, you’ll need to fill out the new online form prior to December 15th of this year so we’ll be able to continue paying your profit when we make the change in 2010.

All the details are on our help page.

NiceName Photo URLs

Direct links for photos that look like this will still work just fine:
http://smugmug.com/photos/imageID_imageKey-Size.jpg

But now in the Get a Link feature, you’ll see that we serve up direct links that contain the photo’s filename as well as the NiceName for the category, subcategory, and gallery that photo lives in. Reason? Descriptive words directly associated with your photo = more relevant search engine results.
As always, SmugMug makes it easy to stay out of search engines if you’d prefer.

Fixes

• Our Get a Link feature from the Share button will now properly update the embed code when the preview image is changed.
• Our Search Engine Optimization help page was overhauled by our in-house expert and has sage advice for those seeking love from Google.
• We fixed the “share photos” link in the single image view (found in older viewing styles)
• Files in your SmugVault that have a space in the filename can now be downloaded without a hitch.
• If you login while browsing a gallery, we’ll direct you right to the photo you were viewing.

This release touched almost every feature and page and we’re still standing by to monitor the changes closely, because simulating the live site with its millions of varied users on test servers is a very big challenge.

It’s not a flashy release, in fact if we did our job perfectly, nothing will appear differently to our customers. But we’re very excited about it because it lays the foundation for bigger things to come.

Find a problem? Want to discuss this release? Head to Digital Grin.

For Pros who use our proof-delay feature, there’s now a real-time countdown to lab submission on the page. You can now adjust cropping for large orders much more quickly because the crop page allows paging to the next image after saving a crop.

All SmugMuggers can crop photos and thumbnails from the gallery more quickly as well. Simply adjust a crop, save it, and arrow forward or backward to the next photo you’d like to crop without leaving the tool.

The Get a Link page found in the Share menu is now much more useful for heavy posters. You can page through photos right there on the page, quickly gathering links for a forum or blog post. We’ve also added a Feed Wizard so you can create a specific feed to fit your need.

The comments page accessible from the Stats tab in your Control Panel is now prettier and more useful, allowing you to page through recent and pending comments.

We’ve created a new Quickstart video that narrates some of the great, core features we offer to new subscribers.

Fixes in this release:

• For Video: Mac users can now pause and unpause videos without causing trouble in the playback. We also fixed a bug where some videos were not being pulled properly from custom domains.
• For Slideshow: Fixed captions in small slideshows, improved slideshow randomness, cleaned up portrait image requests for full screen slideshows on large monitors, fixed an issue with irregular NiceName characters in Safari, added option to customize default speed for embedded slideshows.
• For our Be Social page: Fixed escape issue with quotation marks, fixed up lingering Facebook permission problems and custom domain snags with Twitter and Facebook, and added the ability to flip through images.
• Fixed an annoying loop with trying to login from the page where you requested a new password.
• Fixed a bug where deleting a category or subcategory would sometimes create an orphaned subcategory or gallery.
• Fixed a custom domain issue with Internet Explorer 8, so you should be able to stay logged in without having to jump out to nickname.smugmug.com.

Behold the power of a NiceName:

Old URL:

http://cmac.smugmug.com/gallery/8611000_VW7PY

New URL:
http://cmac.smugmug.com/Family/June-2009

NiceNames can skyrocket your findability (SEO)

Choose your NiceNames well, and your galleries will have much more relevance in searches.

Old URL:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/3571799_T29nu

New URL:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/Landscapes/Glacier-National-Park/3571799_T29nu

How it Works

Every gallery, category, and subcategory on SmugMug now has a NiceName (NN). We pick them for you, based on your gallery titles or category/subcategory names, but you can tweak them. With the exception of galleries set to hide owner, every gallery URL now looks like this:

http://example.com/CategoryNN/SubcategoryNN/GalleryNN/albumID_Key

No worries, the old URLs you’ve given out over the years will continue to work.

NiceName notes:

• A subcategory NiceName will only be in the URL if your gallery is actually in a subcategory
• If Hide Owner is set to “yes”, we’ll default to the soulless SmugMug URL you’re used to:
  http://smugmug.com/gallery/albumID_Key
• If the gallery is Unlisted, it requires the albumID_Key to be included in the URL. That prevents someone from “guessing” the URL and finding an Unlisted gallery.
• A NiceName must be unique within the subcategory or category it lives in, be a max of 30 characters and contain alphanumeric characters and dashes. No spaces, though most foreign language characters are ok.
• You can tweak gallery NiceNames in your customize gallery settings. Category and subcategory NiceNames can be tweaked via the Control Panel > Customize tab > Categories/Subcategories pages.
• An added bonus: category names are now less restrictive in terms of characters they can contain, because the Category NiceName (and not the category name itself) is shown in the URL. You can now have categories called “Jenny’s Favorites” or “Bridal Portraits” without worrying about ugly spaces in the URL or having to leave out the apostrophe.

Critical NiceName gotcha

The albumID_Key part of the URL is optional for public galleries, but we show it by default because without it, the URL is not a true permanent link. If you were to tweak a NiceName, or move the gallery to a different category or subcategory, the original URL will no longer find the gallery unless you included the galleryID_Key as part of it.

Example: If you give your fans this URL to find your pictures:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/landscapes/glacier-national-park

.. and you later change the category NiceName to “stunning-landscapes”, the above link will not work. However, if you give your friends this link:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/landscapes/glacier-national-park/3571799_T29nu

… you can reorganize your site all you’d like and the link will still take them to your gallery because they have the link with the albumId_Key in it.

More NiceName info is on our help pages. And, we added a page on helping search engines find your site. (Keep in mind, if you do NOT want search engines to find your photos, it’s as simple as toggling SmugIslands to “No”.)

More in this release

Our SmugMug User Group meetings have been well-attended (thanks for your enthusiasm!) and we’ve added a calendar to our SMUGs pages so you can easily find speakers and dates and times for upcoming meetings.

We also have a new contest for Landscapes lovers, sponsored by the Ansel Adams Gallery. Enter your best images.

Finally, no release is complete without a few updates and fixes:

• Backprinting now includes the filename of the source image by default. Pros with custom backprinting won’t see any change.
• Your Control Panel comments pages are now paginated and the numbers should properly increment.
• Fixed a bug where the slideshow viewing style hid the fullscreen slideshow button if printing was disabled in the gallery settings.
• Fixed a bug with both the fullscreen slideshow and gallery slideshow that was causing it to hang.
• Updated our video player so when it’s embedded it’s no longer darkened before playing. Now you can see the video preview image more clearly on the page.
• Updated the video player in the gallery to show the share link at the end only if you have easy sharing enabled. If you want to hide that link in an embedded video, you can modify the url to add ’se=0′.
• Fixed the error that was being thrown occasionally about return type in our slideshow and video player.
• Improved the way our favorite in-browser uploader handles filenames with spaces in them.

• Several of our uploader pages got a scrubbing and choosing an uploader is now easier.
• We have a new help page listing our official supported browsers, to help troubleshoot problems for you and your visitors.
• Our Simple uploader is now more patient and doesn’t quit on files that take a longer time to transfer.
• Slideshow captions no longer overlap the showcased image. Instead, they are shown below the photo and they now are HTML-compatible.
• The journal viewing style now stretches properly for everyone, including users who have only CSS advanced site-wide customizations.
• Journal style should also properly display the thumbnail for processing files and correctly show photo and gallery comments.
• Journal and slideshow viewing styles now display a better-fitting size for portrait-oriented images in the gallery.
• The style button went missing in popular, keyword, and date pages in some cases, but we brought it back.
• SmugMug’s embeddable badges should now display properly for IE6 and IE7 viewers.
• Fixed a short-term bug where ICC profiles were not properly uploaded with photos and remaining through image processing tools (rotation, cropping, etc.)
• Fixed a bug where the “Buy many photos” option wouldn’t work if there was only one photo in the gallery.
• Fixed bug in the shopping cart involving the “Use billing info on record” checkbox. If you check it and then change your credit card number or expiration date in the cart, we’ll now use the new information.

Old Journal die hards, never fear. You can still keep your galleries in that format by selecting it in your Customize Gallery settings. Similarly, if you loved Filmstrip and Critique, you’ll also see those there. These three styles will stick around as long as we can keep them, but they will no longer be updated or chooseable by your viewers.

Of course, we also have some fixes and improvements in the mix:

• The Easy Customizer now has an options for adjusting a background image to your site. You’ll notice the code generated by this tool will also be a bit easier to read.
• For those of you who have used our new Share features, we now have official help pages to answer any lingering questions: Be Social, Social Bookmarking, and Show Off.
• Our new Simple Uploader has been further improved with a few tweaks, including the ability to accept files with non-alphanumeric names and an error message if you didn’t properly install it in your browser.
• Our card creator no longer objects when you’re working from a site with a custom domain.

If you have the “Easy Sharing” option enabled in your gallery settings, you’ll see the following new options in your Share menu when you’re logged in:

1. Social Bookmarking – quickly share galleries with lots of popular networks such as Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon.
2. Be Social – share your photos with friends on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, and Tumblr.
3. Show Off (for logged-in gallery owner only) – create a custom flash slideshow or animated image badge. Get the code with a single click and flaunt it on your blog, forum, or website.

We’re proud to announce a new, faster uploader that replaces the old Simple uploader. We built this one in-house and it offers better real-time reporting of errors in addition to more robust error retrying and duplicate handling (see the drop-down menu at the bottom). When loading it for the first time, be sure to click “Trust” when the prompt from Sun Java comes up!

We welcomed a new (and incredibly talented) Artist In Residence: B. D. Colen. Photographers with a photojournalistic and documentary flair will want to check out his site and join in the lively discussions and exercises on Digital Grin.

Our first Wiley photo contest was so popular, we’ve added more. Go win some prizes!

Also in this release, we added two more great ClubSmug deals for Smuggers: a discount on stunning flash slideshows with Showit and a free(!) ecopy of the popular book FastTrack Photographer.

More improvements:

• We added an “Unlisted gallery” indication to the breadcrumbs for unlisted galleries when you’re logged in.
• The Customization FAQ is now restored and updated for your customizing pleasure.
• We brushed up and improved the news, referrals, upload log, backprinting, and watermarking pages accessible from the Control Panel.

Bug fixes:

• We fixed the annoying loop started from logging in to your account from the logout page. You should now properly arrive at your homepage.
• Special characters in the Amazon Payments billing/address field no longer cause hiccups for new subscribers.
• New users should now be able to upgrade their accounts on signup when paying via Amazon Payments.
• Assistants now see “Unlisted gallery” indication on homepages and category pages.

Update on stats, for those of you anxiously awaiting: Stats are currently showing up-to-date information. We are still actively working on overhauling this feature and we think you’ll be thrilled when it’s ready. Sorry we don’t have an ETA yet!

SmugMug User Groups (SMUGs) kicked off with a great turnout at SmugMug HQ in April. SmugMug sorcerers were on hand to divulge some of the magic they’re working on and to gather feedback on what our working Pros want to see happen at SmugMug. Lots of passionate photographers showed up to swap tips and ogle the floor-to-ceiling prints we have on the walls of the office.

In this release, we’re announcing nearly a dozen SMUGs in major cities across the US. You can visit the SMUG page for all the details and to sign up for email notifications of new SMUGs as we add ‘em.

Also in this release, we made some good improvements on the Easy Customizer based on your feedback, as follows:

• The parts of advanced customization that directly overlap with the Easy Customizer (Page Title, SmugMug header and footer, and Basic Appearance) are now shown when you use the Easy Customizer, to prevent inadvertent overwriting.
• We added a button to the advanced customization page so you can easily email yourself a copy of your advanced customization code.
• Pros who choose to completely turn of SmugMug’s footer can now optionally add the feeds links back in using the Easy Customizer.
• Pros now have a toggle in their advanced customization page to remove SmugMug’s footer completely. Previously they had to use the Easy Customizer.
• We added a “Help” link to SmugMug’s mini footer. For visitors, it goes straight to our visitor help sections.
• If you’re a Pro and specify a Page Title, we’ll leave out the “- Powered by SmugMug” , so your brand stands alone at the top of the browser.

We also improved the embeddable flash slideshow:

• New configurable settings: autoStart and showSpeed. You can change whether the slideshow starts automatically whether the slow/med/fast controls.
• FIxed it so you can set pageStyle white/black so that the slideshow uses the white OR black SmugMug logo and sets the text to white OR black.
• Fixed a bug where if you set the background color on an embed greater then 1280×720 it wouldn’t honor your color settings.
• Fixed a bug where captions were being truncated in some cases.

We updated the Lensbabies deal in ClubSmug.

More bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug on the pro sales page where clicking through on the image would incorrectly redirect in Internet Explorer.
• Also fixed a bug where the shipping information from an order would be absent in some cases from order emails generated at order time.
• Added shipping method to pro sales information pages so you can see how the order will be shipped to your customer.
• Fixed a bug that caused Internet Explorer to jump to another photo when clicking on Arrange in the tools menu.
• Clarified the wording of pro notification emails for orders that include images purchased from multiple Pros.
• Added shipping for Serbia and Montenegro.
• Fixed the ‘Read more…’ hyperlinks in RSS feeds in Safari to properly point back to the gallery.