How can I show both folders and galleries on a page?

groundhogexpress

Hi!

On a page, I would like to be able to show about 6 folders and then below that show all of the galleries associated in those 6 folders. I guess I am hoping for two ways to navigate.

Can I get any direction or hints on how to accomplish this?


The folders would allow someone to quickly navigate to say, "RC Air Shows" or "Travel" pictures. (This is easy to do.)

Having all of the galleries listed below (maybe 50, and growing) would allow, say Mom or someone closer to me to see what I've been up lately and/or recall some old memories from a few years ago. I would like this to be something that can be quickly scrolled through. Maybe call this a "gallery stream"? I don't think clicking in and out of folders looking for something new is very nice. Now, this could be very easy to do if I put all galleries in a high level folder. But then that completely negates any sort of organization except maybe by date and prevents the folder option listed above.

The way I see it, either I burry everything into folders, I have one heaping jumble of galleries. Is this right?

I'm not a wedding photographer with 1 specific gallery for a specific client, and I'm not a celebrity photographer with 100 or so feature photos to show off. I just want to be able to conveniently share with friends and family.

My response to a Smugmug Heros help request was simply to come here. I've searched for nearly 2 hours but haven't come up with anything.

thanks,
Greg

denisegoldberg

You can drag two blocks onto your page - one containing the folders you would like to show, and one containing galleries. But - there isn't a choice for a galleries content block that shows all galleries on your site.

Here are a few options:

• If you only have a few folders you want to highlight, drag a galleries block for each folder to be displayed. Set Select from to "Folder", select the specified folder. You will need multiple folder blocks on the page.
• If you have many folders, maybe you could be satisfied with showing the most recent galleries. Drag a galleries block onto the page and set Select from to "Recent galleries".
• I don't know the maximum number of galleries and I do know that it could be painful to select each individually - but you could consider setting Select from to "galleries I choose".

--- Denise

groundhogexpress

Hi Denise,

Thanks for the suggestions! This is all starting to seem too much like work. I've been using Smugmug since 2007 but maybe it is not the right tool for me.



Let me write some additional comments just incase anyone else has some suggestions.

I had started down the path of gallery blocks but gave up as 6 chunks of galleries that lacked new to old continuity didn't excite me. Since this was suggested, I tried it out and it looks fairly decent, but I'm still not excited about the chunks and lack of old to new flow. (Wish there was a way to select multiple folders for posting galleries.)

With "recents" there is no control and it throws in some other locked galleries I have in another section. And "recents" is recent by modification date, no matter how small the modification is. Looks pretty ugly.

"Galleries I choose" would be far too much work to individually select galleries and then do this over each time I add a new gallery. Would like to go from Lightroom to viewing.

Greg

denisegoldberg

groundhogexpress wrote: »

...With "recents" there is no control and it throws in some other locked galleries I have in another section. And "recents" is recent by modification date, no matter how small the modification is. Looks pretty ugly.

"Galleries I choose" would be far too much work to individually select galleries and then do this over each time I add a new gallery. Would like to go from Lightroom to viewing.

Greg -
I understand you want to highlight your new (or changed galleries). Maybe you can use something like I have on my site. I use my Kaleidoscope page to highlight new galleries on my site. Right now it only highlights (and jumps to) two galleries; at other times there may be 4 or 5 shown on that page. I rarely go above that number.

The other thing I do is maintain a gallery that shows one photo per gallery in the order in which they are published. I have sorted the gallery by caption, and I start the caption with a date. This allows me to easily show a photo representing the newest gallery first. I link to this gallery from the galleries by date link in the sidebar of my blog.

Both of these things require me to take an extra step (in addition to loading the galleries) - but they allow me to easily highlight changes on my site.

I also use my blog to point to new galleries. Many of the photos on my blog simply jump to a larger version of the photo on my smug site if they are clicked - but occasionally I want to direct my reader to a full gallery. That's what I did in the recent blog post titled photos! Acadia.

I know this isn't exactly what you asked for but maybe these will spark some ideas that you may find useful.

--- Denise