Is there a limit to the number of photos in a gallery?

Andrew Gould

My title is the full question.

I ask if there's a limit to the number of photos you can have in one gallery because I've recently started a gallery that will act as a photoblog.

Here, I have the photos in chronological order but in reverse, so that the most recent photo is featured.

If there's absolutely no limit at all, I could let these not quite daily photos recede into the background without limit.

If there's a limit, I'll consider archiving each year's photos in a separate gallery. in the future

Any answers on this would be of help.

Thanks,
Andrew.

Sheaf

I don't know what the record is, but I believe we have seen galleries with over 90,000 images.

I really don't recommend that though as it can be very difficult to manage with certain tools.

Andrew Gould

Sheaf wrote:

I don't know what the record is, but I believe we have seen galleries with over 90,000 images.

I really don't recommend that though as it can be very difficult to manage with certain tools.

Thanks for the reply, and sorry about my late response.

I guess I'm OK then in this photoblog gallery where I plan to add a photo only once or twice a week maximum, as it would take some time to even get into the thousands.

After what you've said above, I'd be interested to know if there are any particular tools that won't work in a very large gallery.

In this case, the images are in reverse chronological order, as is usual in a blog. and I won't ever need to reorder or delete, for example.

Any more replies on this would be welcomed.

Thanks.

PBolchover

The "move multiple photos into a new gallery" and "arrange" tools show one thumbnail per image. These will be difficult to use with a huge number of photos in the gallery.

Andrew Gould

PBolchover wrote:

The "move multiple photos into a new gallery" and "arrange" tools show one thumbnail per image. These will be difficult to use with a huge number of photos in the gallery.

Thanks, Paul.

So you mean there would be a problem in locating and selecting the thumbnails because there would be so many of them, I gather.

I would not have to use these ever in my photoblog gallery, so I guess it's not a problem in this case.

If you or anyone else can see me running into real trouble if I actually start to get into the thousands one day, please let me know.

Thanks,
Andrew.

denisegoldberg

Andrew Gould wrote:

I ask if there's a limit to the number of photos you can have in one gallery because I've recently started a gallery that will act as a photoblog.

While there might not be a technical limitation, I believe there is a human one. Do you expect your viewers to wander through your photoblog and potentially return to images/entries they have seen there before? I would argue that it would be kinder to your viewers to use multiple galleries for this purpose. Whether it is a gallery per year, per quarter, per month would be up to you. I just know if someone is given a massive gallery to wander through that the viewer may only look at the first few pages.

--- Denise

Andrew Gould

denisegoldberg wrote:

While there might not be a technical limitation, I believe there is a human one. Do you expect your viewers to wander through your photoblog and potentially return to images/entries they have seen there before? I would argue that it would be kinder to your viewers to use multiple galleries for this purpose. Whether it is a gallery per year, per quarter, per month would be up to you. I just know if someone is given a massive gallery to wander through that the viewer may only look at the first few pages.

--- Denise

I think I'd better ask Smugmug support directly about my original question of whether there's a limit on the number of photos that can be placed in a gallery, as so far, nobody seems to be sure of that. (I'll report back here on that if I can get an answer.)

I am happy to have further input on this in general, though, and with what you've written, Denise, you've made me think further.

As I will only be adding a new photo to this gallery once or twice a week maximum, that will add up to a total of about 50 to 100 photos a year. That would take 10 years then to reach 500 to 1000. A lot then, but for arguments sake, even if I'm able to sustain this for much longer than 10 years, I'm never going to get into the thousands and thousands mentioned in the first reply to my question.

To answer your question, I don't expect viewers to return to old photos way back in the gallery, and I don't think they'll want to particularly. The problem is more as I see it that when the gallery gets quite large, there may be the occasional viewer who would like to search for a certain type of image, and any search using keywords will bring up results in ALL galleries, and not just this one. (My other galleries are display only, and do not have commenting enabled.)

This is the one failing I see in trying to use a gallery style program as a photoblog. It's certainly not SmugMug's fault though. I've chosen to do this after a good deal of experience in the photoblog world, because no blogging program I can find will present my photos so nicely, and I just like the set up as well, having everything fully integrated into my site.

What I need is to have a keyword search that will only include photos in this gallery. This may not be possible at all, but if it is, it seems to be a question ot ask in the customization forum.

There would be a simple solution if SmugMug accepted keywords in phrases, separated with a comma, or even if it accepted a hypen or underscore. Then I could label photos in this gallery like this:

... ,photolog street, OR photoblog_street OR photoblog-street

(I prefer this latter form with the hyphen, and would be quite happy to use it if it were possible.)

Anyone who's tried, though, will see that SmugMug just ignores a hyphen or underscore -- and accents ( such as í ) or special letters (another story, but important for some), making it impossible to write correctly some foreign names, eg, Ñuñoa (a suburb of Santiago, Chile -- and no... for us Spanish speakers, it's NOT the same to write Nunoa, by any means).

To sum up then, I see this search problem as the main issue for me here, and not the potential size of the gallery, itself. This is because any photoblog could have images n the thousands after a few years.

If anyone has a suggestion as to how I could make searching apply specifically to this gallery I would be pleased to hear of it. If it can't be done, I'll have to live with it. (All photos in the photoblog are duplicated in other smaller sized galleries, anyway.)

Thanks.

UPDATE:
I've just thought that if it were possible to have a search box in this gallery that ONLY brought up results from this photoblog, it would be a solution.

It seems more appropriate to ask that in the customization forum, so I'll do that. If I get a reply on this, I'll place a link here.

papajay

Andrew Gould wrote:

What I need is to have a keyword search that will only include photos in this gallery. This may not be possible at all, but if it is, it seems to be a question ot ask in the customization forum.

Thanks.

UPDATE:
I've just thought that if it were possible to have a search box in this gallery that ONLY brought up results from this photoblog, it would be a solution.

It seems more appropriate to ask that in the customization forum, so I'll do that. If I get a reply on this, I'll place a link here.

The capability you are asking for is already standard functionality, I believe. Just try it.

If you enter your keyword search when already at a gallery level, the search will locate only those images within that gallery. If you are at a subcategory level, the search will search across just the galleries in the subcategory rather than your entire site.

Andrew Gould

papajay wrote:

The capability you are asking for is already standard functionality, I believe. Just try it.

If you enter your keyword search when already at a gallery level, the search will locate only those images within that gallery. If you are at a subcategory level, the search will search across just the galleries in the subcategory rather than your entire site.

Thank you for that. Only problem is how do I put a search box in that gallery only? I don't want it anywhere else, you see, due to the particular set up I have on my site.

I have actually just asked that question here, but have no real respnse to it yet:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=145262

(Sorry to all. I did not intend to be asking the same question in two threads at the same time. It's just the way it's worked out.)

ivar

Andrew Gould wrote:

I think I'd better ask Smugmug support directly about my original question of whether there's a limit on the number of photos that can be placed in a gallery, as so far, nobody seems to be sure of that. (I'll report back here on that if I can get an answer.)

Sheaf who replied above is a SmugMugger

Andrew Gould

ivar wrote:

Sheaf who replied above is a SmugMugger

You know, I do appreciate any bits of information that come in replies, but the point is, I still don't have the full answer to these reallly important questions...

Andrew Gould

Andrew Gould wrote:

You know, I do appreciate any bits of information that come in replies, but the point is, I still don't have the full answer to these reallly important questions...

Thanks to everyone who's tried to give some input here.

As there's some doubt about the whole thing, and to keep everything simple, I've decided to move my photoblog over to a dedicated blogging program and link it to my Smugmug site.

Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Uncle Frank

Andrew Gould wrote:

Thanks to everyone who's tried to give some input here.

As there's some doublt about the whole thing, and to keep everything simple, I've decided to move my photoblog over to a dedicated blogging program and link it to my Smugmug site.

That's the solution I came up with, too. Since I use gmail, I got a free account at blogspot.com. I just give it the url of a picture in my smugmug gallery, and it embeds the image in my blog. Check it out.

SamirD

Andrew Gould wrote:

As I will only be adding a new photo to this gallery once or twice a week maximum, that will add up to a total of about 50 to 100 photos a year. That would take 10 years then to reach 500 to 1000.

I have MANY albums with more than 1000 photos in them. No user problems at all. Tools can be a bit quirky because of loading all the thumbnails, but that's it.

Andrew Gould

Uncle Frank wrote:

That's the solution I came up with, too. Since I use gmail, I got a free account at blogspot.com. I just give it the url of a picture in my smugmug gallery, and it embeds the image in my blog. Check it out.

I'm now doing the same with a wordpress.com blog, and am using it the way you describe, above. I have them with links to each other, so it's very convenient to go back and forth between them.

Thanks for you input here.

Andrew Gould

SamirD wrote:

I have MANY albums with more than 1000 photos in them. No user problems at all. Tools can be a bit quirky because of loading all the thumbnails, but that's it.

Thanks for confirming that. It may be useful for others, too.

denisegoldberg

Andrew Gould wrote:

I'm now doing the same with a wordpress.com blog, and am using it the way you describe, above. I have them with links to each other, so it's very convenient to go back and forth between them.

Andrew -
It looks like you just started your blog. I don't know if you're interested in trying blogger instead of wordpress - but if you'd like to match the look of your blog to your smugmug site, see HOW TO match your blog to your smug site (blogger-specific). You can look at my site to see an example (you'll have to scroll down a few posts to see photos... my computer died a couple of weeks ago, and I'm waiting for the replacement to process photos!), and there are links to other blogs that match smug sites in the first post of that thread.

--- Denise

Andrew Gould

denisegoldberg wrote:

Andrew -
It looks like you just started your blog. I don't know if you're interested in trying blogger instead of wordpress - but if you'd like to match the look of your blog to your smugmug site, see HOW TO match your blog to your smug site (blogger-specific). You can look at my site to see an example (you'll have to scroll down a few posts to see photos... my computer died a couple of weeks ago, and I'm waiting for the replacement to process photos!), and there are links to other blogs that match smug sites in the first post of that thread.

--- Denise

Hi Denise.
It certainly is a good effect when the blog matches the site. I've decided, though, to go for a contrasting look between my site and photoblog. Thank you in any case for suggesting this.
All the best,
Andrew.