Complete newbie, but desperate, plea for help!

Twags

Hello everyone! I'm new to these forums.
There is SO MUCH to read! Oh my!
Long story short - I need some help.
My husband was just laid off of his job of 16 years.
I need to kick my photography up a notch to handle my medical bills (I'm disabled).
So my site needs a re-design.
www.tcwphotography.com
What I'd like: kind of blog style, galleries still accessible through a menu, but since I shoot alot of old cemeteries I'd like to be able to write about each one as I load those shots, so you see a "what's new" kind of home page with menus with thumbnails to point towards the galleries. A slideshow would be nice, but geez, that sounds so complicated! There doesn't seem to be any of the page formats that even begin to look like that - so how do I do this? Am I making sense?
Sorry if I'm not, very very stressed right now! :huh
Thanks for any help!
Twags

leftquark

Hi Twags,
Very good question! One of our amazing Support Heroes would love to help you with this (support@smugmug.com). They respond in under an hour and, since there's a number of them, they may be able to respond faster than I can but let me take a stab.

Creating slideshows is very easy. If all the photos are already in 1 gallery you can use a "Slideshow" content block to put a slideshow on any page. If the images are in a number of galleries you can "Collect" them into a "Slideshow" gallery. To do this, create a new gallery called 'Slideshow' (or whatever you want to name it). Next, go into the Organizer and begin dragging images into this new gallery. You will be presented with 2 options: "Move" or "Collect". Select "Collect". This will create a copy of the image in the "Slideshow" gallery. Now you can use this gallery to display the slideshow on your page.

Have you explored our "Journal" gallery style? It will display text below the images and then the next image beneath that. To set a gallery to display in Journal style just go to the gallery, click "Customize", then click "Gallery Style" and choose Journal.

Has this helped at all?

Allen

leftquark wrote: »

..
Have you explored our "Journal" gallery style? It will display text below the images and then the next image beneath that. To set a gallery to display in Journal style just go to the gallery, click "Customize", then click "Gallery Style" and choose Journal.
...

NewSmug "Journal" gallery style is completely useless for any "story telling" like the OP needs. The
legacy "old journal" is what is needed. Reason is, when the text is read the photo needs to be seen.
Visitors would have the scroll up and down many times to relate the two.

We need a TRUE "story telling" type gallery style in NewSmug. Not one that just shows a large, full
screen, photo. Smug's journal style is just a single photo style having nothing to do with "journal".

leftquark

Allen wrote: »

NewSmug "Journal" gallery style is completely useless for any "story telling" like the OP needs. The legacy "old journal" is what is needed. Reason is, when the text is read the photo needs to be seen. Visitors would have the scroll up and down many times to relate the two.

I'm having a hard time understanding what the problem with the current Journal style is? It displays the text under the photo. On my screen the photo and the caption fit without having to scroll, and often I can see multiple images and their captions under them without having to scroll up and down. Additionally, you have the option of limiting the size of the displayed photo to help with this.

Perhaps you'd be able to show me some examples of what you'd like in a story-telling style gallery?

Allen

I just switched a couple of my galleries to the new journal and only about two lines of caption show
below each photo. In a true story telling style there would probably be a lot more lines of text.

I would personally like to see the text next to the photo and if long wrap under the photo.

denisegoldberg

leftquark wrote: »

I...you have the option of limiting the size of the displayed photo to help with this.

There is a setting for the aspect ratio but I don't see a way to limit the size.

There are instances where I would like have the full text (title and caption) show without scrolling. There are others where showing a couple of lines as a trigger to the eye that scrolling might be needed is fine. It would be ideal to have a gallery setting to allow me to specify which behavior the gallery should display.

--- Denise

leftquark

denisegoldberg wrote: »

There is a setting for the aspect ratio but I don't see a way to limit the size.

Just like you would change the maximum display size in a SM Gallery, in your "Gallery Settings" set the maximum display size to something like Medium or Large and the images shrink to fit the maximum size you've selected. Images and text should be visible.

I keep getting the feeling that I'm not comprehending something here Am I close?

denisegoldberg

leftquark wrote: »

Just like you would change the maximum display size in a SM Gallery, in your "Gallery Settings" set the maximum display size to something like Medium or Large and the images shrink to fit the maximum size you've selected. Images and text should be visible.

I keep getting the feeling that I'm not comprehending something here Am I close?

Ah, good point. But I don't want to limit the maximum display size. That doesn't play well on large monitors and I want my photos to be sized to enjoy.

There are many situations (probably most in my case) where showing just 2 lines of the caption is fine. But there are others where I would like all of the text to show with the photo. It seems like a gallery-level setting that allows the owner to specify that either the default 2 lines of caption should be shown with the photo or alternatively that all of the text should be shown with the photo resized to fit both the photo and the caption in the visible portion of the browser window. This would not work as a setting for all journal-style galleries - it would need to be at the gallery level.

I may very well be the only person who thinks this would be useful.

I do think that Allen is right though - the old journal style gallery with text next to photo provided a story-telling type of gallery. That doesn't exist in new smugmug today. And yes, I know, some people are building pages for this type of functionality. In my opinion this is too many hoops to jump through for something that was simple in journal-old galleries. Then again, if I want to tell a story I write in my blog and include photos from my smug site...

--- Denise

leftquark

denisegoldberg wrote: »

Ah, good point. But I don't want to limit the maximum display size. That doesn't play well on large monitors and I want my photos to be sized to enjoy.

It's a difficult balance: to display photos as large as possible while also giving room for the caption to display. With screen sizes and window sizes so different and always changing it can be a headache for trying to figure out how a gallery should be displayed. If you want text to be visible then the image size has to shrink. But I guess that gets to your next point ...

denisegoldberg wrote: »

There are many situations (probably most in my case) where showing just 2 lines of the caption is fine. But there are others where I would like all of the text to show with the photo. It seems like a gallery-level setting that allows the owner to specify that either the default 2 lines of caption should be shown with the photo or alternatively that all of the text should be shown with the photo resized to fit both the photo and the caption in the visible portion of the browser window. This would not work as a setting for all journal-style galleries - it would need to be at the gallery level.

I may very well be the only person who thinks this would be useful.

I agree that it would need to be a setting at the gallery level. All user interfaces struggle with the problem of adding too many options. It's very easy to say "give me a toggle switch" so that a few advanced users can do something. Every now and then it must be reviewed to make sure that the options haven't become overwhelming, unnecessary, or out-dated. Ideally a better solution should be determined that doesn't require the need for an option switch. In this case, you may be one of a few customers who would love this feature. I'll keep it in the back of my mind though.

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I do think that Allen is right though - the old journal style gallery with text next to photo provided a story-telling type of gallery. That doesn't exist in new smugmug today.

...

Then again, if I want to tell a story I write in my blog and include photos from my smug site...

Perhaps a story-type gallery style could be implemented in the future if we ever add new gallery styles. I agree a blog-like style could be one way to do this. We'd have to come up with something that continues to make your photos look their best while also giving you the ability to tell that story. For me, the story behind my photos is one of the things I love to feature so it hits home for me. Thanks for clarifying to my slow brain

Allen

Setting any size to max for gallery display would really destroy the full screen lightbox view.

leftquark

Allen wrote: »

Setting any size to max for gallery display would really destroy the full screen lightbox view.

Very good point

Twags

Thank you - I'll try these out in the morning and see if that does what I'm looking for. Really appreciate the help! I'll post how it goes.

leftquark wrote: »

Hi Twags,
Very good question! One of our amazing Support Heroes would love to help you with this (support@smugmug.com). They respond in under an hour and, since there's a number of them, they may be able to respond faster than I can but let me take a stab.

Creating slideshows is very easy. If all the photos are already in 1 gallery you can use a "Slideshow" content block to put a slideshow on any page. If the images are in a number of galleries you can "Collect" them into a "Slideshow" gallery. To do this, create a new gallery called 'Slideshow' (or whatever you want to name it). Next, go into the Organizer and begin dragging images into this new gallery. You will be presented with 2 options: "Move" or "Collect". Select "Collect". This will create a copy of the image in the "Slideshow" gallery. Now you can use this gallery to display the slideshow on your page.

Have you explored our "Journal" gallery style? It will display text below the images and then the next image beneath that. To set a gallery to display in Journal style just go to the gallery, click "Customize", then click "Gallery Style" and choose Journal.

Has this helped at all?