SmugMug users photograph everything: be it weddings, cats, races, mountains, architecture, or cat races, there’s room for you on SmugMug. And we’ve got great features built in to every account type to help take what you’re shooting to the next level. Here are a few recommendations for SmugMug features that can boost your site, depending on what you love to shoot.

Event and sports shooters.

If your adrenaline gets going when the competition does, you probably have a number of galleries with exciting photos. Stay in the game by staying organized and ensuring every subject in every photo can be found.

• Keywords.
  Keywording is just as important as the photos themselves. You want to keyword your images not only with the event name, but also with location, date, and player name if it applies. Don’t forget to add a search box or display a keyword cloud so clients can find their photos easily.

• Sitewide organization.
  Organization with SmugMug’s seven layers of folders and galleries is invaluable when it comes to busy event seasons, so structure your site clearly and easily: simple enough for you, your assistants, and your clients to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Client-seeking pros.

If you’re putting your business online, there’s a few things we recommend to help impress your client base. Whether your profession is photography, graphic design, architecture, or something else—SmugMug’s great for businesses of all types.

• Best-of galleries.
  Your site should show off what you do. Whether it’s pictures, video, or text, your clients want to get a taste of what you do and what makes you unique. Create a gallery or page that visually delivers your elevator pitch, then upload your best content, or collect and curate it from around your site. Then highlight this gallery in your navigation bar so it's easy for clients to find.

• Contact form.
  We still see websites that make it difficult (or impossible) to contact the site owner. If you want people to hire you, make sure your contact information is clearly visible on your homepage. SmugMug gives you a safe, ready-to-use contact form you can add to your site menu.

World travelers.

It may be tough to keep track of which time zone you’re in, but you can always remember where you took those photos with a few SmugMug features.

• Maps and pins.
  If you shoot with your phone, or if you have geotagging enabled on your camera, your photos keep their location data when uploading to SmugMug. You can also manually add locations. If you want to share where that secret beach is with your visitors, use our built-in map content block.

• Text content blocks.
  A photo may be worth a thousand words, but a few lines about what you did and how you got there adds to the story. Try out title and text content blocks on your homepage and custom pages, and fill in title and caption fields under every photo for some extra SEO.

Family snappers.

Stay closer to home? Photos capture important memories for you and your family, but you don’t want those photos falling into the wrong hands. Your favorite memories should also be easy to find for the feels.

• Privacy settings.
  We recommend logging out of your account to view your SmugMug galleries as a guest. Are the galleries you unlisted hidden? How do passworded galleries appear? We’ve got several privacy options available for you in your account settings and individual folder and gallery settings.

• Folders and galleries.
  SmugMug gives you the ability to nest your folders and galleries up to seven layers deep.. Organize your content so it makes the most sense to you, whether it’s by child, by event, or by year. Or a combination of all the above. Then use your photo library to find specific photos quickly.

The socially savvy.

Social media is great, but you never know how long your content will be relevant online. Build one forever home on SmugMug and use it to share to all your social-media outlets.

• Social designs.
  Put all your cards on the table with our default SmugMug design template, or the Dash design. Both let you set a profile pic, display your name and a cover photo, and list your favorite social-network sites.
  

• Comments.
  This is a simple content block you can drop anywhere on your site to encourage your visitors and friends to engage in discussion. 

• Share galleries.
  Want direct-sharing options instead of additional buttons? Enable social sharing in your gallery settings to share individual photos or entire galleries with a click.

We hope no matter what you shoot or how long you’ve been with SmugMug you’ve discovered something that’ll give your site that extra oomph. What features have you made the most of?