Category Archives: NextGen Gallery

A New Kind of Home Portfolio Page

After writing the post “You Don’t Need a Home Page Per Sa”, which basically says that with WordPress, you can set any page to be the landing page of your site; I have been wondering why we need a specific page called HOME or WELCOME at all.

By the way, more often than not, there isn’t any text on the “home” page, just an image (BIG Mistake). So why not send site visitors straight to the goods? It’s why they came to your site in the first place; to see your work.

In this tutorial we’re going to do something completely different; we’re going to create a new kind of ”home” Portfolio page and set it as our landing page. This technique has been implemented at Jan Boydol Photography. Go there to see it in action (opens in a new window).

We are going to use the Media Library to upload and insert our images.

We are bypassing the use of NextGen’s album in for this new home page for two reasons…1. I want more control over the size of the image. NextGen’s album thumbnail size is set in the plugin’s files which makes it difficult to change for the average user. And even if you could make it larger it would be distorted and you will need to go through the process of creating new thumbnails for all your galleries.

2. I want more control over the entire page’s formatting. Using the extended version of NextGen’s album will provide text if you enter it into the gallery’s description but it shows the galleries stacked vertically. I want mine left aligned horizontally.

The goal here is to show a larger image to represent the gallery with text under the image, not to the side. Hence providing left aligned images with text underneath.

STEP 1 - Check your media settings under Settings > Media

WordPress will create three sizes of images when you upload them. The default sizes are shown in the image below. Choosing Medium size will insert an image of the max height of 300 pixels while maintaining the aspect ratio and shows the entire image. Since showing the entire image is what I want to achieve, I’ll use the medium size image.

If you’re happy with the media sizes there’s nothing you need to do here. However should you change the sizes it is important to note that this will only size images to the new size on future uploads. Any images currently in your Media Library will remain as they are.

STEP 2 – Open your existing portfolio page in the editor.

If you don’t have one, create one by going to Pages > Add New. If your existing portfolio page is named “Gallery” or “Galleries” change it so that people aren’t confusing it with your list of galleries that represents your work. Portfolio, Artwork or Images are good page names.

STEP 3 – Insert one image to represent the work within each of your NextGen Galleries.

Upload your images on the page using the “Add Media” button. These images will now be stored in the Media Library, not NextGen gallery. There’s a tutorial on how to Upload a single image at the school.

Add Media Button is just above the editor in WordPress

To keep all your images left aligned with text below is to use the image caption. Not using the image caption feature and inserting text below the image in the editor, will result in alignment challenges that can be over come by using a horizontal rule but it is not ideal and your images may end up stacking vertically.

Image dialogue box – note the yellow highlighted areas, make sure to fill these in.

Once you insert the image you can open it again for further editing by clicking on the landscape icon when clicking your mouse on the image.

Apply the following attributes to your image…

Select the radio button to Left align the image
Here’s an opportunity to add a search engine friendly title and alternative text if you haven’t already done so.
Fill in the caption with a short sentence and series / image gallery name. As seen on the example above I placed a hyperlink on the word “Heels”. This link is optional if you’re uncomfortable using HTML.
Add the Link URL to the image gallery page. The easiest way to find the URL is to go to your live site and navigate to that page, then copy the URL from the browser address bar and paste it into the line as shown. By adding the Link URL the image will be clickable.

Save your page and preview. Make any required changes. On my site I decided after inserting all my images at 300 pixels high that they were a bit to big for my liking. To change the image size all I did was open the image again in the page editor and reduced the size by percentage. By reducing them all by the same percentage I maintain a consistent height.

Here’s another site that we just finished that uses the new kind of “home” portfolio page idea, but just on the portfolio page. Jan wanted a home page with her most popular image.

When you click through to any one of Jan’s portfolios you will be greeted with sub-portfolios set up the same way.

STEP 4 – Set your new home portfolio page as the landing page of your site.

Easy – go to Settings > Reading and select it from the drop down menu and save. If you want more precise instructions there’s a tutorial on that.

I like my new Home / Portfolio page. What do you think? Questions and comments are welcome.

Artist Website Portfolio Page

The images that are presented on any artist website portfolio page have to be organized, curated and re-sized for the web. The most over looked item that also belongs on every artist website portfolio page is descriptive TEXT. Tell us in words what we are looking at.

Most artists have more than one group of images to include on their portfolio page. With a WordPress site and the Nextgen Gallery plugin you can organize your work into separate galleries and create an album that acts as a container for your galleries.

When you include text with these images, you are not only informing people, you’re influencing them to click through to see the entire body of work. You can easily add this text in NextGen Gallery or directly on the portfolio page.

The NextGen Album

There are two types of albums; the extended version that shows a feature thumbnail and a gallery description. The other is the compact version that only shows the thumb.

Your main portfolio page could have an album that contains your all your galleries. If you use the extended version you can write a gallery description that will show next to the thumb. This text is inserted inside the gallery. If you use the compact version that displays only the featured thumbnail, then you need to add some text to the page instead.

The Extended Version

Extended version of NextGen Gallery Album

Here, as an example, is Christine Eckerfield’s site using the extended version of the album.

The description is added inside the gallery not on the actual portfolio page. This text is a short artist statement about this body of work and tells people what to expect if they click through. It’s your job to get them to click through.

The Compact Version

Compact version of NextGen Gallery Album

Here is an example of the compact version.

Rather than use the extended version of the album which stacks the galleries vertically, Liz Sullivan uses the compact album.

The compact album shows only a row of horizontal thumbs and title, without the descriptive text, so Liz wrote about each series of work in paragraphs below. This text, written directly on the page, adds context and frames your work with meaning.

Including text is extremely important! It helps site visitors understand your work and approach to your work. Often it affects their decision on whether or not the click through and look at the full body of work.

The Galleries

Once a visitor clicks through to view a full body of work they typically see multiple rows of thumbnails that enlarge to full size image. It is important to curate your work and place your strongest work first, starting in the top left corner (that’s the typical starting point for most people).

Remember the descriptive text that I talked about above; include it on the gallery page as well. You may have a longer artist statement about each of your series. In this case you can select or craft one or two sentences to use on the portfolio page with the album and then use the full statement on the gallery image page.

If you craft one or two sentences you can also use it as a meta description for search engines.

Whether you use an artist website portfolio page with an album with all your galleries OR individual gallery pages without an album, it is imperative that you include descriptive text with images. It is our job as artists to inform and educate people about our work, using words.

A picture may be worth a 1000 words but words are worth 1000′s of understandings.

Why Add Image Meta Data

A new client said “The re-sizing is working, I am not sure about why I am doing the meta data template.”

There’s no denying that re-sizing, re-naming, optimizing and filling in the file info, also know as metadata, is a time consuming process.

Why Add Image Meta Data? It is worth the time; this is why…

1. Images of your artwork will travel, either by email for submissions or uploaded to your website. Any file info that you provide goes with the image, in other words, it’s embedded. This includes copyright notices, keywords and the works description (name, size, medium).

File Info task pane in Photoshop

2. Visitors to your website may pin your images to Pinterest. When pinning an image with file info, that info is automatically extracted and fills in the caption. You do not have to rely on people to do the right thing and give credit or take the time to look for it.

3. Now here’s the best thing about filling in metadata templates for your images. You only have to do it once! AND when you upload them to NextGen Gallery the Alt title, image description and keyword fields are filled in automatically. Copy or move images between galleries; the file info goes with it.

Fields are auto filled in NextGen Gallery

A little work will go along way to brand and protect your images.

Any questions on why add image meta data? What has your experience been like when adding the meta data file into in Photoshop?

Watermark to Protect Artist Images

Alyson Stanfield of ArtbizBlog.com wrote a recent article on Pinterest, which covers the crux of the debate over this relatively new image-sharing site. So, while we’re debating “to pin or not to pin,” let’s remember that there are other tools that can capture your images and strip out your name, your copyright . . . the works!

Did I just scare you? Good, let me explain…

Artists can protect their images online and provide a trail back to their site by using a watermark on their images. Please read the rest of my guest post at artbizblog.com

See all that Alyson at ArtbizCoach.com has to offer artists

If you are an Artbiz client the Watermarking tutorial is free to use. Just contact me for the registration details at the WordPress for Artists School and have at it.

Even if you are not an Artbiz client you can still register or access the Watermark Images in NextGen Gallery – Tutorial at the Studio Store

Resizing Images

Resizing Images article has been updated with new information

The first thing you have to do in preparation to add content to your site is to optimize your images. Optimizing is a term used to indicate a change to a photo or a graphic, to reduce it in both visual size and file size, for use in other programs. For use in an Artbiz website I ask clients to resize to no larger than 800px in any one direction and no larger than 50 to 100 kbs.

Photoshop or Photoshop Elements

Choose “File” > “Save for Web & Devices” (Photoshop)
Choose “File”>”Save for Web” (Photoshop Elements)
Use the Save For Web dialog box to preview the effects of different optimization options on a photo you want to share on the web. The process is simple: Open a photo in the Editor and choose File > Save For Web. Then choose a format from the file format menu (GIF, JPEG, PNG-8, or PNG-24) and set options as desired. (The file format menu is directly the Preset menu.) This saves a copy of your file, without overwriting the image.

More information and visual aids

Resize your images online

This is an online tool provided by shrink pictures

Browse your computer and select your image/photo to resize
Select the new size for your picture –choose a custom size and enter 800 (it will keep the aspect ratio)
Optionally, add an effect to your image
Select output image/picture quality Lower quality means a smaller file- select “Better”
Click “Resize” and wait for the processed images to be displayed, depending on the file size it may take a few minutes.

Once complete you will be prompted to download the file. I recommend that you do a “save as” and rename the file with a name that is more relevant that the name provided by the online tool and put it into a folder called website.

There is also a video tutorial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbR5DVZBkPw&feature=player_embedded

NextGen Image Browser

Next Generation Gallery also comes with the “NextGen Image Browser”. Just enter the following short code [ imagebrowser id=1 ] There aren’t any options for the image browser just insert the code.

The line of code that I am showing here has a space inside at the beginning and end of the brackets, if you want to copy and paste this code make sure you remove those spaces. The number is indicative of the gallery ID number. Every NextGen Gallery has its own unique number; you can find it next to the gallery name under the Manage Gallery tab.

The image will automatically insert to fit the width of your content. If you have access to the plugin’s css file – nggallery.css – you can change the width under this selector:
.ngg-imagebrowser img

Tip: copy the nggallery css file to your theme folder and make customizations there, then it will not be overwritten when the plugin is updated. The plugin will look in your theme folder first for this file and implement.