photo album format customizing

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

Hi John,

Have to bother you again. One more thing I would really like to do is use a thumbnail of the images in my blog, since it is rather graphic intensive.

I like the photo album idea, but I would like for it to display with the text, date and title much like a normal blog -> is this possible ?

Thank you very much,

gernot

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

Read the user manual page on Creating an Excerpt. We suggest you create your excerpts manually rather than using the automatically generated excerpts.

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

John,

Thank you very much. This is just what I am looking for. I will implement it as you suggested.

Best,

Gernot

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

John,

There is one more thing that I have to clarify before I go ahead and change all the categories into photo albums.

Is it possible to create a text only post in a photo album ? Sometimes people might have no photo to back up their issues.

Best,

Gernot

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

Is it possible to create a text only post in a photo album?

No, it is not possible. Photo album submissions require a photo. If you don't want to post a photo, then you would create an Article.

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

Hi John,

Bummer, it is sort of a mixed bag I suppose:

Say progress reports, current issues might contain images or might not. I read the other article on thumbnails in normal posts and it just is too clumsy to make a thumbnail of an image manually - I guess I could just link a generic no image available kind of thing gif in this case.

I changed the category display of the photo category to group by day and customized the by-day style, but it still did not change and include the text.

I will keep trying, might be missing something.

Best gernot

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

Say progress reports, current issues might contain images or might not. I read the other article on thumbnails in normal posts and it just is too clumsy to make a thumbnail of an image manually - I guess I could just link a generic no image available kind of thing gif in this case.

I see, I didn't realize this was the problem you were trying to solve... I think you're better off finding another way to solve the thumbnail issue than trying to force the photo album feature into solving this for you. Photo Albums are really much better suited to solving the problem of "How do I easily share large numbers of pictures?" rather than "How do I add images to accompany my post?"

So you're looking for a better solution for creating thumbnails for images which accompany your articles... A few ideas...

The best solution technically (in terms of having control over what your thumbnails look like) is always going to be to create your own thumbnails. There are many utilities you can run on your computer to create thumbnails. Upload the thumbnails along with the full-sized image to your File Manager, and add them to your article with either the Blog This button in the File Manager or the Insert Image icon in the article editor. I'm sure you've seen the Include Images in Your Articles howto which explains these options.
My other suggestion would be to use a blogging client like ecto for Mac (home page, instructions for configuring with BlogHarbor) or Blogjet (home page, instructions for configuring with BlogHarbor) or Zoundry (home page, instructions for configuring with BlogHarbor) for Windows. All of these blogging clients can post to your blog right from your desktop, and as standalone applications can offer some features that we're not able to add into a web-based application like like our control panel; one of those features is automatic thumbnail generation.

Hope this helps. If you want to continue a discussion about ways to create and post thumbnails, please create a new thread.

I changed the category display of the photo category to group by day and customized the by-day style, but it still did not change and include the text. I will keep trying, might be missing something.

It looks like you haven't actually changed the template. Go to your photoalbum-byday template and select everything in the Live Template Content are, then hit your delete key so the space is empty. Then enter the contents of this page. Click on the Update Live Template button. All done.

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

John,

Got confused their in that I used copy predefined style to staging area -> Embarassed

-> thinking it pasts the clipboard -> oh boy.

It works fine now. I will look into the software you suggested.

Thank you very much for your help.

Best,

gernot

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

Hi John,

The problem with the software is that other trusted posters need to install software, which people do not like to do and sometimes are not able to manage.

Is there a way to display the grid view with text, since I typically really do not have much text ? Looks sort of lost in normal blog view. I would try to understand the code and modify it, but it is unfortunately beyond my capabilities right now.

Thank you very much.

Best gernot

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

The problem with the software is that other trusted posters need to install software, which people do not like to do and sometimes are not able to manage.

Blogging clients currently do not function for Trusted Posters or other non-Admin users, so unfortunately it is not an option for them. Embarassed

Is there a way to display the grid view with text, since I typically really do not have much text ?

Not sure I understand what you're asking. Can you clarify?

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

John,

Hmmm, .. I think I might have to go with the generic N/A image if no image is available -> not that bad.

I am just working on the format of the photo album trying, so unsuccessfully to edit the code you gave me:

goal:
have the articletitle and the articleauthor class to the right of the image together with the body text, so the thumbnail basically determines the height of the post:

I homed in on the piece of code below, but could not achive what I would like to do:

gj01 · Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 30

Hi John,

Figured it out myself works just the way I want it to. Thank you very much for your help. Here is the code in case someone has similar needs:

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

Thanks, Gernot!

I made a few slight tweaks to your code and posted it here; if you implement this as your photoalbum-byday template and set the album's Layout type to Group by day, your album might look something like this:

I also updated our original sample code to show the excerpt and a More link if one exists.

Have fun everybody!