Optimum size for galleries?

Idiosyncratic Ernest

I'm brand new here, with an incipient SmugMug site. (I've joined but am only now beginning to figure out how to populate, launch, and [subject for another post, perhaps] customize the site. So don't go there yet; it ain't happening.)

With that introduction and an apology (because my question is likely to have been asked & answered here previously) I'm looking for advice on how to divide my pictures into galleries.

I have a couple of content categories, each of which will initially have between 100 and 150 images. My inclination is to divide them up into galleries of 16, since that's the number of thumbnails SmugMug seems to display, and I'd rather you didn't have to go from page to page to view a group.

But that's a lot of 16-item galleries. The other extreme is two large galleries containing everything. Also unwieldy.

Have others wrestled with this matter of how many pictures make for an inviting, viewable gallery? Fewer galleries containing more photos -- or compact galleries but lots more of them?

Thanks for feedback from those who've been doing this for a while.

Ernie

denisegoldberg

Idiosyncratic Ernest wrote:

I have a couple of content categories, each of which will initially have between 100 and 150 images. My inclination is to divide them up into galleries of 16, since that's the number of thumbnails SmugMug seems to display, and I'd rather you didn't have to go from page to page to view a group.

But that's a lot of 16-item galleries. The other extreme is two large galleries containing everything. Also unwieldy.

In my opinion 100 to 150 images is not too many for a gallery.

Yes, your viewers will need to go through multiple pages to see all of the photos.

But if you use your proposal of breaking the photos into galleries of 16 photos then you are forcing your viewers to go through multiple galleries.

Multiple pages in one gallery gives the viewer the option of going to the next page or jumping to a page of their choice. Separating the photos into multiple galleries forces your user to go to a different gallery - which to my mind is not a very user-friendly option.

I do agree that you shouldn't put everything in a single gallery though. What I have done is create groupings of galleries. For example, I took a trip to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland back in Auguest. Too many photos for a single gallery, so I split the photos into galleries by location. Here is a link to my "To Newfoundland!" galleries, just for an example - http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Focus/Travel/To-Newfoundland-August-2009/9456780_KV56k.

You need to decide what works for you. You may find that you will take different approaches in different sections of your site.

--- Denise

jfriend

My personal opinion is that you should try to understand what you audience wants to view. The best organization will put the images that a given viewer wants to view in a single gallery because it's way easier to go from page to page in a gallery than it is from gallery to gallery. Of course, you don't want to create such a large gallery that a given viewer who is trying to find a small set of images has to look for a needle in a haystack either.

Here's an example from my sports photos. I have 1400 photos from the fall soccer season of a team I've been following. I have the following choices for displaying them:

1. Put them all in one gallery for the season
2. Put them in a gallery for each game (there were ten games so that would be 140 images per gallery)
3. Put them in a gallery for each player (there are 19 players so that's about 80 photos per gallery)

The main viewer of these galleries are the parents and players. I decided that they mostly want to look at photos of a given player (their own kid or their friends). Putting them all in one gallery would be a nice chronology of the season all in one place, but people would have to pour through 1400 photos to find the ones they wanted. That's not a good idea.

Putting them in a gallery for each game would narrow things down a bit, but still doesn't really help them find the images they want. They'd still have to look through all the games to find all the images of their kids.

So, I selected the last option - putting them in a gallery for each player. That way, they can go right to the set of images they want. At this point, it really isn't a burden to have multiple pages of images because it's very easy to browse through the different pages on Smugmug and simply click on the thumbnails that look interesting. FYI, I also selected a bunch of "highlights" images (the five best images of each player) and posted those in a "Highlights" gallery because I reasoned that people also might want to see some of the best images of the other players.

Idiosyncratic Ernest

My thanks Denise and John, for leading me away from the direction in which I was headed -- and for the chance to have a look at your very fine work.

I'll get the hang of this SmugMug thing, although I expect that I'll continue for a little while to feel like the stranger at the party.

Ernie

klopus

denisegoldberg wrote:

Too many photos for a single gallery, so I split the photos into galleries by location. Here is a link to my "To Newfoundland!" galleries, just for an example - http://www.denisegoldberg.com/Focus/Travel/To-Newfoundland-August-2009/9456780_KV56k.

Denise, how did you do this? My understanding is that as opposed to Zenfolio and PBase (where I'm coming from) SM doesn't allow yet to have nested galleries or gallery collections. But your example shows at least a collection of galleries, approach I use extensively on my PBase site and would like to replicate with SM. Obviously I'm misssing something, but what?

denisegoldberg

klopus wrote:

Denise, how did you do this? My understanding is that ...SM doesn't allow yet to have nested galleries or gallery collections. But your example shows at least a collection of galleries, approach I use extensively on my PBase site and would like to replicate with SM. Obviously I'm misssing something, but what?

You have 3 levels here, categories, subcategories, and galleries.

If you're looking at the To Newfoundland! set of galleries that I referenced above:
> Category: Travel
>>> Subcategory: To Newfoundland! August 2009
>>>>> Gallery: A few favorites
>>>>> Gallery: A swath of Newfoundland
>>>>> Gallery: Pockets of Nova Scotia
>>>>> Gallery: Of ships and shipyards
>>>>> Gallery: Flutter by

Depending on your subject matter, you many be happier creating your own categories instead of using the standard smugmug categories. For the most part I have created my own categories. And as needed I have added subcategories to those categories.

Because of the current 3-level limit, you many need to be creative at the category level.

--- Denise