Benefit for having Folders vs. Galleries?

mylifeinfocus

Currently on my site (www.alicethompsonphotography.com), I have my galleries inside folders, which is how the New SM did it when I migrated from Legacy. I'm wondering if there's a benefit to having galleries inside folders vs. just having the separate galleries on their own?

For example, if a visitor is looking for my horse photos, I'm a little annoyed that they would have to know that gallery is inside the "Animals" folder and would have to click that folder, which opens and shows two galleries: KY Horse Farms and Animals. Then they can click on KY Horse Farms. It seems like it's unnecessary clicking. I'd prefer a visitor to just see all the Galleries at once (instead of the extra click). I created a separate root-level Gallery called "Night" to experiment with. (You can see it at the bottom of my Browse page) Does that method seem more user-friendly?

Is there a drawback to having Galleries not in Folders? I can easily move the photos from the folders into Galleries at the root level, I'd just like to know if I'll screw up something if I do that?

Thanks in advance!

Alice

jwashburn

mylifeinfocus wrote: »

Currently on my site (www.alicethompsonphotography.com), I have my galleries inside folders, which is how the New SM did it when I migrated from Legacy. I'm wondering if there's a benefit to having galleries inside folders vs. just having the separate galleries on their own?

For example, if a visitor is looking for my horse photos, I'm a little annoyed that they would have to know that gallery is inside the "Animals" folder and would have to click that folder, which opens and shows two galleries: KY Horse Farms and Animals. Then they can click on KY Horse Farms. It seems like it's unnecessary clicking. I'd prefer a visitor to just see all the Galleries at once (instead of the extra click). I created a separate root-level Gallery called "Night" to experiment with. (You can see it at the bottom of my Browse page) Does that method seem more user-friendly?

Is there a drawback to having Galleries not in Folders? I can easily move the photos from the folders into Galleries at the root level, I'd just like to know if I'll screw up something if I do that?

Thanks in advance!

Alice

You are not going to get a straight forward answer on this. Everyone is going to have an opinion. If you have a handful of galleries then put them all on the home page. If you are a high school sports shooter, shooting multiple sports you may end up with hundreds of galleries in a year. There is no way to display them well on the home page.

My 2 cents is if you only have a single gallery or 2 galleries of a category (Flowers, birds, etc)then dont put it in a folder. If you have multiple galleries of a category then put them in some folders or sub folders. Just try to avoid making folder levels too deep.

mylifeinfocus

Thanks Joey. That's kinda what I was thinking too (that it's a matter of preference). I have 11 galleries total and try to keep the Gallery names specific enough to include a few related topics if needed ("Animals" gallery includes photos of animals, pets, insects, birds, horses, etc.). The Client folder I'll keep (which is private and password-protected anyway).

I guess it's just a matter of whether or not I want the visitor to click once to enter a Gallery ("Night" as a standalone Gallery) or a couple times ("Landscapes" and "Sky" galleries inside the "Nature" folder). Hmmm.... decisions, decisions.

Thanks for your help!

mylifeinfocus

Is there a way to put the galleries in a specific order? I see how to sort Folders manually, but don't see that option for Galleries (in the Organize area). Am I missing something?

leftquark

mylifeinfocus wrote: »

Is there a way to put the galleries in a specific order? I see how to sort Folders manually, but don't see that option for Galleries (in the Organize area). Am I missing something?

Same way ... in the right hand side of the organizer is a pull-down menu. Set it to "Sort Manually" and then drag the galleries to the desired locations.

ChancyRat

mylifeinfocus wrote: »

Thanks Joey. That's kinda what I was thinking too (that it's a matter of preference). I have 11 galleries total and try to keep the Gallery names specific enough to include a few related topics if needed ("Animals" gallery includes photos of animals, pets, insects, birds, horses, etc.). The Client folder I'll keep (which is private and password-protected anyway).

I guess it's just a matter of whether or not I want the visitor to click once to enter a Gallery ("Night" as a standalone Gallery) or a couple times ("Landscapes" and "Sky" galleries inside the "Nature" folder). Hmmm.... decisions, decisions.

Thanks for your help!

Just to make life a little interesting, you *could* leave the galleries in their respective folders (for organizational purposes), but then on your home page, set up individual gallery blocks, or individual photo blocks, or individual HTML blocks [all would be one block per gallery], where the setting is "click to go there". You can assign titles to (I think) all types. That would remove the clicking-through-layers problem.