Photo Utilities User Guide

General Description

The Photo Utilities may be used to maintain photo galleries on your web site. Each picture has an associated data file that contains information about the picture such as a copy right, caption or description.

Definitions:

Copyright

Each picture should have a copyright. If one is not specified when the picture is added, a default copyright will be used.

Title

The 'Title' appears in the window bar.

Heading

The 'Heading' appears right about the picture itself.

Caption

The 'Caption' appears immediately below the picture. These should usually be short.

Text

The 'Text' field is avaialbe for more detailed descriptions of the picture.

Galleries

Depending on how your web site is configured you may have one or more galleries. A gallery is just a logical collection of pictures. An y picture may belong to one or more galleries.

Rebuild Galleries

This allows you to rebuild the links between pictures. Normall when a picture is added, galleries are automatcially rebuilt.

Resize

Digital pictures are taken with a variety of resolutions and stored in a file. Depending on the resolution, a picture could easily be larger than the monitor that a user uses to view the picture. Newer digital cameras use much higher resolutions resulting in much larger files. Resizing of pictures serves two purposes:

• Reduces the size of the picture file, which makes it faster of a user to download and view
• Reduces the size of the picture when it is displayed so that it can be viewed on the screen.

The web site will automatically resize uplaoded pictures to a configured maximum.

BulkLoad

The loading of a large number of files in a two step process.

Setup

There are multiple options to consider when your photo galleries are setup. These options can be changed after implementation but it is easier and cheaper to do it before the first use. The options are:

• Default copyright. Usually set to the current year and organization name.
• Galleries. One must have at least one gallery but can have many more.
• Do you allow user submission? - Pages can be created in public areas that allow users to submit their pictures. Your photo administrator must act on each picture before it is made public.
• Do you want to do bulk loads? - If you do, configuration is required.

Add Picture

The 'Add Picture' page is used to add an individual picture. It allows you to provide infornation about the pciture and to uplaod it in one operation. Note that the picture file (jpg type only) must be less than 2 megabytes to be uploaded. If the file is larger you must either resize it smaller using software on your PC or use the Bulk Load feature.

Delete Picture

Use this page to delete photos from the photo galleries.

Edit Picture

The 'Edit Picture' allows you to change information about the picture and to move it to different galleries.

Bulk Load Utility

The 'Bulk Load Utility' is used as part of a two step process.

1. The first step is to upload one or more picture files into the BulkLoad directory. This upload is accomplished using a protocol called File Transfer Protocol (FTP). The actual upload is performed using software on you PC that talks to the web site via FTP. Free FTP clients are available for download. The best that I am aware of is Filezilla. Download and install the client. Use the client with the userid/password provided to upload the picture files.
2. Use the Bulk Load Utilities to tell the web site to process the pictures. After you execute the page the web site will process the files in the background. It takes approximately a minute per file.

Movies

It is now possible to display movies. A movie is associated with a picture and is viewed by clicking a link on the display picture page. The steps to add a movie to the gallery follow:

1. Upload a picture related to the movie. This is what the user will see on the display picture page. If you are clever with a photo editing tool you could add a small movie symbol to the picture.
2. Upload the movie. This upload must be done using an FTP client as most movies are larger than the 2-meg upload web page limit. You will upload the movie files into the 'Movies' directory. The valid movie types: mpg, mpeg and wma. Be sure to use a file name that you can recognize as you will be selecting the movies based on the name. File names can consist of alphanumeric, mixed case characters plus the '-' and '_' characters. Do not include spaces in the file names. You must also include the extension.
3. Edit the picture and assign it to one or more galleries. At the bottom of the edit page there will be a list of movies. Click the radio button of the desired movie.

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