What is the Difference between a Gallery and a Portfolio?

amys_wavesandwonders

Hi, I'm new, still in my trial, but plan to subscribe to the "Portfolio" tier in the next day or so. I'm building my site now.
I'm mainly a landscape/seascape/ nature photographer and my intention for my site to not only showcase my work but to sell prints as well. I plan to have categories by genre and by location.
I also plan to have a section offering portraits and commercial work which I do on occasion.
So my question is, what is the difference between a gallery and a portfolio page? I'm kinda thinking that a smart gallery for my landscape section and a portfolio for my portraiture and commercial. Am I heading in the right direction thinking that?

denisegoldberg

Portfolio is one of the account levels.

A gallery contains photos.
Folders contain folders and galleries.

You can create custom pages.

If you look at my site (linked in my signature below):

• "kaleidoscope" and "about" are pages.
• This is a folder that contains galleris, https://www.denisegoldberg.com/Fragments
• This is a gallery, https://www.denisegoldberg.com/Fragments/Walks-eastern-MA-2020/

Does that help at all?

Denise

amys_wavesandwonders

Yes, I knew the "portfolio" was the name of an account level.
I think what confused me was seeing some sites sometimes call a gallery or page a "portfolio". I thought there was a difference, but from what I'm understanding now is that it is basically the same thing. Thank you for your answer, it really helped. :-)

> @denisegoldberg said:
> Portfolio is one of the account levels.
>
> A gallery contains photos.
> Folders contain folders and galleries.
>
> You can create custom pages.
>
> If you look at my site (linked in my signature below):
>
> * "kaleidoscope" and "about" are pages.
> * This is a folder that contains galleris, https://www.denisegoldberg.com/Fragments
> * This is a gallery, https://www.denisegoldberg.com/Fragments/Walks-eastern-MA-2020/
>
> Does that help at all?
>
> Denise

Jtring

What some folks do is organize their site so the galleries live inside a folder called "Portfolio" rather than connect directly to the home page. That's probably what you have been seeing. There may, of course be intermediate folders under the Portfolio folder too. And some folks use words other than "Portfolio". On my site, I call it "Photo Library".

Why do it that way? It lets the display of the Portfolio folder act as a table of contents or introduction for the pictures and thus frees up the home page for whatever sort of site-level introduction/entry point you want. My home page, for instance, just has a splash image, actually a rotation of several, plus a menu bar when a brief introductory blurb. From that menu bar you can go to the whole Photo Library, or to a short list of Featured Galleries, or to a slideshow of some of images I think are best, or to a few other places. The Browse page can act as a grand table of contents too, but it may capture too much. It shows everything at the top level. If you have an About page or some other special pages like the ones I mentioned above, they will show up there. That may be distracting when the site visitor is trying to focus on the pictures ... or when you are trying to focus the site visitor on the pictures. The Browse page also has the limitation of not showing up in the breadcrumb sequence. That can make getting back to the "table of contents" -- the Browse page -- require some extra thought, especially for a user who has gotten familiar with navigating via breadcrumbs.

Allen

The Browse page cam be modified anyway you want. I changed mine to show only public links within my site. All my major categories/folders.
Browse is also in my nav bar at the top so easiely accessed.

AceCo55

On a photographer's website a portfolio MAY refer to a concise collection of photos created to show people their best work.
Like a painter putting together a collection of their best work to show the world what their style is and how good they are.