It was time for a makeover of my SmugMug galleries. I wanted to simplify it and update the look. The homepage incorporates SmugMug’s built-in slideshow feature.

My recent SmugMug customization for Michael McGinnis Photography includes a slideshow on the homepage which uses SlideshowPro for Flash to automatically pull images from one of Mike’s galleries, using the gallery rss feed. This integration between a SmugMug gallery and SlideshowPro was a little easier said than done. Creating the slideshow in Flash is a snap, thanks to SlideshowPro, but when you place the .swf on the customized SmugMug page, issues arise. Most frustratingly, everything seems fine when you preview the slideshow in Flash. The images load and everything looks great. But when you you try to view the same slideshow online, it breaks.

The solution (for me, at least) lies in properly constructing the URL for the media RSS feed. Normal SmugMug gallery feeds look something like this:

http://www.darrenhendricks.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=10046805_nR5QF&format=rss200

As long as you’ve checked the box to allow external links in the SmugMug gallery settings, your images will load when you test the movie in Flash. However, when you try to publish the slideshow and display it on your SmugMug page, you’ll wonder what happened. No images!

Luckily, I found this file in SlidshowPro’s documentation: http://wiki.slideshowpro.net/SSPfl/CP-RSSFeedNotLoading

Security limitations imposed by Flash don’t allow the RSS feed to be displayed. Fortunately, a couple changes to the URL fix the problem. We need to change the URL to the following format:

http://api.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=10046805_nR5QF&format=rss200&Sandboxed=1

Note the change to “api.smugmug.com” and the addition of the “Sandboxed=1″ parameter. You may also want to add a size parameter to the URL: “&size=Original” (or Small, Large, etc).

In your SmugMug Bio, or wherever you choose to display the slideshow, a basic method of embedding the .swf file looks something like this:

<object width=”800″ height=”525″>
<param name=”movie” value=”http://www.dviso.com/slideshow/Slideshow.swf”>
<param name=”quality” value=”high”>
<param name=”wmode” value=”opaque” />
<embed src=”http://www.dviso.com/slideshow/Slideshow.swf” width=”800″ height=”525″ quality=”high” wmode=”opaque”></embed>
</object>

This may not be the only way, or the best way to get SlideshowPro for Flash working with your SmugMug gallery, but it has worked for me. Feel free to share your experiences or methods for integrating SlidshowPro with SmugMug.

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone. Thanks to all my design and photography clients who’ve made this a great year. I’m looking forward to continuing to work together in 2010.

As time permits, I’ve been working on a new coat of paint for my site. Hopefully the new design will make a few things a little easier to find, and I can feature some recent work a little more prominently. My site is a custom theme I’ve created for WordPress, a popular blog system that works well for many applications. Please excuse any broken links or missing images you run across. Let me know how you like the site.