• Registered: 2016-08-12
  • Posts: 2

Topic: Single Galleries on Multiple Pages

Hello,

I am trying to revamp my old website.  I am not well-versed in HTML, CSS or anything of that nature, but I know how to manipulate and trial-error my way into what I want.

I have tried using Juicebox-Lite.  It works great for single page, but that is not my end goal.  My website showcases my collection of over 1,000 bearded irises.  Essentially, every page showcases a different flower variety, includes historical information about it and has a small gallery (no more than 10 photos) of each one.

All of my photographs (thousands of them) are located in a single folder.  I can find any options to differentiate with gallery is shown on which page.  Every gallery I create makes different folders.  Because I have over 1,000 varieties of iris, do I really need to upload over 1,000 folders to my server?

All I want to do is switch out my old, html written, anchor tag gallery to Juicebox, but this is proving quite difficult.

Carlos

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: Single Galleries on Multiple Pages

Ordinarily, if you want to have 1,000 different galleries on your web site, then you will have 1,000 gallery folders to deal with.

You could have all your images stored in a single folder on your server (as you currently do) but you would need to manually adjust the paths to the images in the gallery configuration files as JuiceboxBuilder would have no knowledge of the fact that you want to store your images in a custom location when you create your galleries.
Even using a global search and replace action in a capable text editor, this would take some time to do for 1,000 galleries.

It would be easier to keep each gallery in its own folder. It helps to keeps things organized on your server and you can just swap out an entire gallery folder if you want to update a gallery in the future.

Perhaps the most efficient way to do what you are looking to achieve would be to use a Flickr account as your source of images and tag your images accordingly.
Each gallery could then be configured to display only certain tagged images (using the flickrUserName and flickrTags options).

You should be able to tag images in bulk on Flickr so it might not take too long to set up.

You can then have all your galleries share a single 'jbcore' folder (rather than having one per gallery) to minimize the upload.
This has the added advantage that when a new version of Juicebox is released, you need to update just a single 'jbcore' folder on your server (rather than 1,000). Please see the Using an External jbcore Folder support section for details.

You can simplify things further by having all your galleries share a single dummy configuration file.
All galleries need to have a 'config.xml' file (even if its content is not used) but you could upload just one for all your galleries to share (all galleries would point towards the same 'config.xml' file via the configUrl option) and you could set all your configuration options in the embedding code (in your HTML pages). Please see the Setting Config Options section.

Now, with your images hosted and tagged on Flickr and with a single 'jbcore' folder and 'config.xml' file on your server, all you would need for each galley is unique embedding code in its HTML page.
For example, the embedding code for one gallery might look something like this:

<!--START JUICEBOX EMBED-->
<script src="path_to_shared_jbcore_folder/jbcore/juicebox.js"></script>
<script>
    new juicebox({
        containerId: "juicebox-container",
        galleryWidth: "100%",
        galleryHeight: "600",
        backgroundColor: "#222222",
        configUrl: "path_to_shared_configuration_file/config.xml",
        useFlickr: "TRUE",
        flickrUserName: "your_flickr_username",
        flickrTags: "iris_number_seven"
    });
</script>
<div id="juicebox-container"></div>
<!--END JUICEBOX EMBED-->

Alternatively, you could maybe have just one gallery and have its content change dynamically.
You could perhaps have a drop-down menu of all your iris varieties. When a user selects one, you could run a JavaScript function to load or reload the gallery with the chosen subject (setting the flickrTags option dynamically).
Take a look at this Lite Flickr demo gallery to see something similar in action. You can view the source of the web page in a browser and copy or modify the code to suit your own needs.
(The demo has a text box to allow any Flickr tags to be entered but, as your scenario has a known collection of tags, you could present the user with a drop-down list of existing tags to choose from.)

If 1,000 items in a drop down list is too many, then you could maybe have a few subheadings and split the idea into a few galleries (each with 100 or so drop-down entries).

When an iris variety is selected, the JavaScript function could do more that just reload a gallery if you wanted it to.
It could change or display other content on the web page. You could maybe have a synopsis of the chosen iris variety below the gallery which could change when the gallery is reloaded. Knowledge of JavaScript would be required but it could prove to be quite a powerful solution.

I hope this gives you some food for thought.

  • Registered: 2016-08-12
  • Posts: 2

Re: Single Galleries on Multiple Pages

Hello Steven,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  I am giving a link to the section of my website that is in question. 

http://www.brightonparkiris.com/myirises.html

Because I am reconstructing my pages, I have left two of the varieties, ALASKA and ANDALUSIAN BLUE up for view so you can see what it is that I'm trying to accomplish.  The "galleries" that there now are basic link tags.

I have tried your suggestion of using Flickr, and while everything seemed to be going smoothly, the only way for my photos to load into the Juicebox program was to set my photos to public.  I DO NOT want anyone else on Flickr to view my photos.  It will defeat the purpose of them visiting my site.  I also have some generous photograph donations that were meant for my website only and I do not want to share these publicly on a public site such as Flickr.

At this point, I'm leaning towards just altering the paths, but if its going to be overly complicated, then I might as well just stick with what I have.  What I enjoyed about Juicebox was the look that it gave to the page as well as the ease of simply dropping the files into the program (without having to worry about duplicate names), having to create thumbnails, and then having to type each individual link.  Is there really no other way?

Carlos

  • Registered: 2012-04-24
  • Posts: 5,924

Re: Single Galleries on Multiple Pages

Thank you for the link to your website.

I see that your website is essentially a single page site (as far as a visitor to your site is concerned).
The browser never leaves the main page and a selected gallery page is loaded into a frame on demand.

If possible, I would recommend embedding a gallery directly into a web page rather than using a frame (or an iframe) as there are certain drawbacks to using frames (such as the inability to expand a gallery to fill the browser window). Please see 2) Using an iframe for details.

I'm not sure that there's going to be a quick and easy way to convert all your current galleries to Juicebox ones.
There are no similarities between the structure of your current galleries and Juicebox galleries and there is no direct migration path.

There is an added complication that your current gallery pages also include information about the selected iris variety so you wouldn't be able to just swap your existing gallery pages for Juicebox ones (unless you intend to incorporate all the text into your Juicebox galleries as image captions).

I'm not quite sure what I would do if I were in your position. Whatever you do, I think you'll probably have a good deal of work ahead.
I might try to incorporate the text accompanying each gallery into the gallery itself as an image caption.
I might then use JavaScript code to load the selected gallery into a container on your main page, replacing the frame.

This brings us to the structure of your galleries and site.
If you are creating all your Galleries with JuiceboxBuilder-Pro, then it would be easier to just leave all the galleries in their folders and upload the all the folders to your web server. There would be no need to change any paths in the 'config.xml' files and editing or updating galleries would be a very easy process.
You could then load the galleries into your main page using the baseUrl switching method. Please see 'Switching between Multiple Galleries using JavaScript' in the Embedding Multiple Galleries support section for details.

If you really want to keep all your images in a single folder, then editing all the 'config.xml' files does not need to be a time consuming task.
With a text editor such as Notepad++, you can edit multiple files at once so you could open all your 'config.xml' files in the editor and a search and replace action could be applied to them all. As all your images (and thumbnails) are all in the same folder, the path to the images (the prefix you would have to add to all your imageURL and thumbUrl entries) would be the same so editing all your files should be quite quick and easy with just a couple of search and replace actions.
However, I'm not sure there would be any advantage to leaving all the images in your 'irises' folder and there would certainly be benefits to using the default gallery structure (no need to edit any files and easy to maintain individual galleries).

If you are looking for an automated solution to creating and listing multiple galleries, then you might be interested in another one of our products - Showkase.

Showkase is a PHP web application which allows you to create a complete portfolio web site (integrating multiple galleries) online.
Showkase has full support for Juicebox-Pro (and SimpleViewer-Pro) galleries and the galleries can be created within the application itself in a web browser interface (or created with JuiceboxBuilder and imported).

You can create Gallery Index pages and have as many galleries listed on each Gallery Index page as you wish.
Each gallery is represented by a thumbnail image with the gallery title displayed below and the gallery is opened when the user clicks on the image.
Demo sites created with Showkase can be found here and a sample Gallery Index page can be found here.

Showkase can also create non-gallery pages (About, Basic and Contact pages) where you can add information about yourself (or any other content you like).
All of this is done automatically within the Showkase interface without the need for any manual coding at all.

Showkase can be purchased as Showkase-Standard (which comes with Juicebox-Lite and SimpleViewer-Standard, the free versions) or Showkase-Pro (which comes with Juicebox-Pro and SimpleViewer-Pro).
The only difference between Showkase-Standard and Showkase-Pro is the bundled viewers.

However, Showkase does not have any built-in ability search functionality (like your current web site has) and you might find that listing a large number of galleries on each gallery index page is not an ideal solution for you.

I'm really just thinking out loud and letting you know of a few alternatives that you might like to consider.