Movable Type Community Forum > Need a gallery solution

Movable Type Community Forum > Additional Resources > Tips and Tricks

simongordon

Feb 18 2004, 02:35 AM

Hello

I am using MT for the first time for my baseball team's website. I think I might be a little too ambitious but I wanted to take the hassle out of the weekly updating of news etc..

One feature on the site is a photo gallery. This is in a separate section of the site, so I would have thought it would be easy to integrate..!

Essentially, I will have optimised two versions of all my images - full size (about 500px wide) and thumbs - so I won't need the thumbnail feature of MT.

My requirements are:

- Main page to hold upto 9 thumbnails.
- Thumbs link to large pic
- Short title/description under large pics
- Archive of older pics

I would have thought that this would be very simple.. but I am a bit lost right now.

Do I need to create a totally separate blog for this? Also, I don't know what I'm doing with Image::Magik etc..

I know HTML and my webspace is php/mysql enabled, although I do not know anything about these technologies yet...

Any help would be much appreciated - the new season is fast approaching.

Thanks

Simon

TxFx.net

Feb 18 2004, 07:50 AM

If you're not quite ready go get down and dirty with an MT photoblog (it can be a daunting prospect), you might be better off just using Coppermine, a very user friendly photo album based on PHP and MySQL (but not requiring you to really know anything about it).

Coppermine

Another solution would be JAlbum, a Java-based photo album tool... it creates the galleries and thumbs and html/php locally, and you can upload it from there.

JAlbum

LisaJill

Feb 18 2004, 08:10 AM

One tutorial

another tutorial

those should get you started

simongordon

Feb 18 2004, 08:07 PM

Mark & LisaJill

Thanks for your advice. Although in both cases, I'm not sure I need anything that advanced or complicated.

In the case of Coppermine, the system looks great but in order to embed it in my site, I will need to alter the templates.. and it doesn't look straightforward in this case.

As for methods that use ImageMagick.. again, these seem to primarily be concerned with the automatic resizing of images. I like to create my own thumbnails and therefore would not need this functionality at all.

In essence, I need a simple blog-style gallery page with up to 9 thumbs at any one time. Any overspill will be archived in pages 2,3 etc..

I was wondering if it would work if I put the images in the main body of a blog, and put the thumbs in the extended text? Would this work? And how would I go about setting this up?

Any more advice would be great..

Simon

LisaJill

Feb 18 2004, 08:09 PM

my tutorial (the second one) does not utilize imagemagick.. oh it CAN, but *I* don't use it, I make my thumbnails on my own.... =)

simongordon

Feb 18 2004, 08:43 PM

Thanks LisaJill

I will take a close look at it and try it in the morning (it's 4:30am!)...

I'll let you know how I get on..

Simon

strab

Feb 19 2004, 05:42 AM

hi simongordon,

i started my blog no more then a week ago and i had similar problem - i wanted a Simple gallery. i've searched through different blogs and this is what i invented:
my gallery
and
my description

wujimon

Feb 19 2004, 06:57 AM

Hi SG.

why not just create a link from your page to the coppermine gallery? Unless you want a uniform look and feel across all of it.

w.

simongordon

Mar 8 2004, 05:08 AM

Dear all

Thank you for your advice. I looked at all the options suggested but couldn't really see a solution that suited what I need to do.

I think I'm half way to getting what I want but am a little bit stuck...

I have set each entry up so that the large image is in the entry body, with the thumbnail in the extended text (I prefer to generate my own thumbs). The main gallery pages will each have 9 thumbnails, pointing to the individual larger pics. I thought this would be simple.. but no!

I took the advice to use MTGrid to get the correct alignment. I have also tried to use the MTPaginate plugin, so that there are only a maximum of 9 thumbnails (two rows of three) on any given page.

The code I have used is as follows:

CODE

<MTPaginate>
<MTPaginateIfMultiplePages>
<p><MTPaginateNavigator format="Page %d"></p>
</MTPaginateIfMultiplePages>

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5">
<MTPaginateContent max_sections="6">
<MTGrid num_columns="3">
<MTEntries lastn="6" sort_order="descend">
<MTGridCell>
<MTGridIfLeftColumn>
<tr>
</MTGridIfLeftColumn>
<td>
<b><MTEntryTitle></b><br/>
<$MTEntryExcerpt$>
</td>
<MTGridIfRightColumn>
</tr>
<MTPaginateSectionBreak>
</MTGridIfRightColumn>
</MTGridCell>
</MTEntries>
<MTGridTrailingCells>
<td>NO PICTURE</td>
<MTGridIfRightColumn>
</tr>
</MTGridIfRightColumn>
</MTGridTrailingCells>
</MTGrid>
</MTPaginateContent>
</table>
</MTPaginate>

However, this only creates a single page of thumbnails.

Can anyone spot where I've gone wrong..?

Thanks again..

SG

This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.