Using the Gallery

This page describes how members can add and maintain pictures in the website Gallery.

Introduction

The Gallery actually consists of multiple Galleries, each of which is a collection of pictures and thus a Gallery collects together pictures on a related subject. For example, a Gallery could be created to hold all pictures from a particular sailing event. The Galleries are contained in Albums and Albums can contain other Albums as well as Galleries, thus a hierarchy of Albums can be created. Pictures and Galleries can be added and maintained using the options on the “Gallery” menu. Note that these options are only available when a user is logged on to the website.

Uploading Pictures

When pictures are uploaded to a Gallery, they will be automatically resized to make them smaller and thus faster to download and view. Copies of the originals are also kept so these can still be viewed in addition to the smaller versions. Therefore, there is no need to resize images before they are uploaded to the Gallery.

To upload pictures to an existing Gallery, choose “Add pictures” from the Gallery menu. Click the “Select Files” button and choose the picture file(s) to be uploaded. Now choose a Gallery in to which the pictures will be uploaded. Finally click the “Upload images” button and your pictures will be uploaded. This may take some time, depending on the speed of your Internet connection, so be patient!

Creating a Gallery

To upload your pictures to a new Gallery that Gallery must first be created. Choose “Add pictures” from the Gallery menu and then click the “Add new gallery” link. Enter the Gallery name and click the “Add gallery” button. The Gallery will be created and can be used immediately. Having created the Gallery it must be added to an album, for example the top-level “SwallowBoats Association” Album. Do this as follows:

  1. Select “Manage album” from the Gallery menu.
  2. Select the name of the Album from the “Select album” drop list, e.g. “1 – Swallow Boats Association”, in to which the Gallery should be added.
  3. The left side of the lower screen area will show the Galleries already assigned to the Album and in the middle the Galleries available to add to it. This will include the Gallery you just created.
  4. Click on your Gallery, keep the left mouse button depressed and drag the Gallery to the Album area. “Drop” it by releasing the mouse button.
  5. Finally, click the Update button to save your changes.

Adding Captions to Pictures

Captions can be added to pictures. To do this, select “Manage galleries” from the Gallery menu. Scroll down and find the picture(s) to which you want to add captions. In the “Alt & Title Text / Description” column enter the caption (“description”) in the lower of the two fields alongside each picture. When you are finished adding captions click one of the “Save Changes” buttons, which can be found immediately above and below the list of pictures.

Changing Picture Order in Galleries

The order in which pictures are displayed in Galleries can be changed as follows:

  1. Select “Manage galleries” from the “Gallery” menu.
  2. Click on the name of the gallery where the pictures are to be re-ordered.
  3. Click the “Sort gallery” button.
  4. Re-arrange the pictures by dragging and dropping each picture to its new location. To drag & drop, click and hold down the left mouse button on a picture, move your mouse to “drag” the picture to its new location and then release the mouse button to “drop” the picture.
  5. Click the “Update Sort Order” button to save your changes.
  6. Click the “Back to gallery” button to return to the Gallery listing.

Maintaining IMAGES’ thumbnails

Whenever an image is uploaded to a Gallery a small “thumbnail” of that image is created. The thumbnails are displayed when a Gallery is viewed and clicking on a thumbnail opens a larger view of the image to be opened. The standard thumbnails are normally acceptable but if the image’s subject is not in the centre of the picture then it may be missing from the thumbnail. Thumbnails can be manually recreated if you want to correct this and that is done as follows:

  1. Select “Manage galleries” from the “Gallery” menu.
  2. Click on the name of the Gallery that contains the picture(s) for which the thumbnail(s) are to be recreated.
  3. Place the mouse pointer over the picture whose thumbnail is to be recreated and a menu will appear to the right of the picture. Click on “Edit thumb”.
  4. A small new window will open. In the left side of that window will be the full image and on the right will be the thumbnail. Click in the image and draw a rectangle to form the new thumbnail. The thumbnail picture on the right will change according to what is select on the left side. The rectangle can be moved and resized as required until you are happy with the new thumbnail.
  5. Click the “Update” button when the thumbnail is finished and “Thumbnail updated” will appear to the right of the button when the change is saved.
  6. Click the ‘X’ at the top right of the window to close the thumbnail editing window.