This section contains demonstrations of setting up real photo galleries. The first is a minimilist, quick, and easy example. The second has more HTML enhancement. Both examples use public domain software and “free” hosting services.

JAlbum and Netfirms example

The first step in building any gallery is selecting your images. I picked 14 photographs from a number of different sources, and copied them all to a new “images” folder on my PC. As they were all different sizes (but the same aspect ratio) I decided to resize them manually rather than use the facility in the gallery software.

I used Irfanview, which has a very easy to use edit option for resizing. The photos were output at 500 pixels (along their longest dimension) into a new folder. This folder now contains the input files for the gallery creation software. For gallery creation JAlbum was used.

Basically JAlbum needs a folder containing images, which it processes to produce new images (re-sized if necessary), thumbnails, and basic HTML pages in another folder. JAlbum has a number of options for the appearance of the pages produced, including the use of templates, and comments can be added.

Once JAlbum had done its stuff, I now had a folder containing the files for a basic web site, essentially index.html (the start point for a browser when it first accesses a site) which displays the thumbnails, the images, and the basic HTML pages for each image. The gallery can be tested by pointing a browser at the index.html file in the output directory.

Next stage is to select a web hosting service. In this case I used Netfirms, which offers a free service, but you do have to suffer banner adds at the top of your pages.

Setting up an account with Netfirms involves selecting a name for the site (I went for the free my-selected-name.netfirms.com - In this case http://djwgallery.netfirms.com. Contact details are then requested, and once these are filled in and confirmed, an email is sent with the account, control panel, and FTP details.

An FTP utility is the way that the gallery gets from the hard disk on your PC up to the web hosting service. Some gallery creation packages (such as JAlbum) include an FTP function, however I used a specialised FTP client program, Wise-FTP. Once you have entered the account details the address of the host, and connected, it displays two panes - your PC on the left, and the host on the right. The gallery folder on the PC and the target directory on the host are selected, and a click of the mouse transfers the files. The host’s target directory is determined by the hosting company, in the case of Netfirms the directory is “www”. Once the right files have been transfered to correct location on the web host you are in business.

No alterations were made to pages generated by JAlbum, apart from giving the index page a more descriptive title, and adding a link back to this site.

Check out the finished Gallery at: http://djwgallery.netfirms.com

The object of this gallery exercise was to create a gallery as simply and cheaply as possible. JAlbum makes the whole gallery creation process very easy. It is also free software, as is Irfanview. Wise-FTP only offers a free 30-day trail, however there are many free FTP utilities available, such as AceFTP. No-cost web hosting was also used - the “price” being paid is the presence of the banner ads on each page. A small monthly payment for a basic hosting package could give you an ad-free site.

I’ve recently created another example using the same software and host - Sam’s Hen Night.

Gallery Wizard and RedRival example

This example is intended to represent adding a gallery to an existing website, or creating a new web site where the index page does not display the initial thumbnails. The images were resized by Irfanview, and were obtained from the same folder as the first example.

The software used to create the gallery was Gallery Wizard.

This is another package that is extremely easy to use. The default settings produce a very acceptable effect, but there are a number of options for adjusting the thumbnail effects, images can be re-sized, templates can used to alter the gallery appearance, the image page HTML “template” can be edited, and there is a built in FTP option.

The gallery was generated into a new directory using pretty much the default settings, except that the “Home Link” was set to thumbnail1.htm, rather than index.html. I then created a new index.html (Home Page) from scratch, embedding a call to thumbnail1.htm.

This produces a three-tier structure for the web site - A home page at the top level, a thumbnail page, and undeneath this the image pages.

The files were all created in one folder, ready for uploading to the web site.

The hosting service for this web site was provided by RedRival.com. They offer a free package with 20 MB of web space supported by advertising - in this case pop-under adverts. This package does not support FTP, instead the files are uploaded via a browser interface from the RedRival control panel. Keeping all the files on your PC in one directory makes the upload process somewhat easier.

This gallery can be visited at: http://www.redrival.com/davew/