My Photography site powered by SmugMug

After 2 weeks of trial and a bunch of research, I decided to go with SmugMug for hosting my photos. It has the most attractive interface among all the photo hosting sites I've tried out (that includes Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, etc.). It's clean, beautiful, and professional. Besides the interface, I was also attracted by the unlimited storage, site/gallery customizations, image protection, and presentation styles/themes. It's also completely ad and spam free! They have a lot of other great features as well (backups, videos, custom watermarks, etc.) so it's best to refer to their pages for the complete overview:

• Learn more from the SmugMug official site
• SmugMug full feature list and account types
• SmugMug help/FAQ

I chose to go with SmugMug instead of Flickr mainly because of SmugMug's image protection and privacy controls. Although the Flickr community is a lot more active than SmugMug's, I prefer keeping my photos safe with SmugMug's size restriction and right-click protection. I also wanted to have the ability to customize my site (a feature that Flickr lacks). However, I will probably make use of the free Flickr basic account to upload low resolution version of my photos and point them to SmugMug to gain some audience.

If you're trying to find an online home for your photos, I strongly recommend you to give SmugMug a try:

• SmugMug 14-day trial - it's credit card free.
• Enter this referral/coupon code to save USD$5 on your purchase: AuHp5xHk2dHX6
• They're currently giving out free SmugMug camera straps for SmugMug members, too!

Third-party tools that I use to interact with SmugMug:

• Jeffrey's "Export to SmugMug" Lightroom Plugin - export and upload to SmugMug directly from Lightroom
• Facebook App: Simple Mug - automatically pulls your SmugMug updates to your Facebook feeds (you can also choose to show private SmugMug galleries to your Facebook friends, but that requires the gallery to be external link enabled and password free)

Reviews on SmugMug:

• Moving to SmugMug from Flickr by Gary Arndt
• Pictures worth more than a thousand words on upgraded photo sites by Jefferson Graham
• Professional Photography Web Hosting by Ronald Martinsen
• SmugMug Reviews on Amazon

So where is my SmugMug site?

• Vivien Siu Photography - http://viviensiu.smugmug.com/

Feel free to leave comments, photoranks (hover over a photo to give thumbs up/down), etc. You don't need a SmugMug account to leave comments/photoranks :)