The Gallery we now have

Iris and I have been discussing the gallery on this site, and it's not everything we had hoped it would be, it's very, very small in the amount of space they offer us. As with any forum hosting site, there's good points and bad points. The good points of this site is that it offers large amounts of space for the actual forums. I don't know if any of you have ever been to Wet Canvas, but in that forum they only post pictures in the actual 'new topics' area and have no gallery. I actually like to see a gallery, so we've been kicking around a few ideas. Martina has been down with a cold, so of course she would have the final say when she's back.

This is the idea that Iris and I had:

We could maybe set up a section labeled Gallery, and if a member wishes to set up a gallery they could start a topic with their name in in.

Example:

Gallery: The heading (the same as, for instance like Martina set up for 'Info Zone'

Gerri: I would add my name to indicate that I have a gallery set up somewhere, and include the link, which anyone can
click on...
https://s946.photobucket.com/albums/ad306/gschlamp/Artwork/
Password: Gerris

Iris: would do the same, and so on.

I've tested setting up a gallery at photobucket, and the free account allows 500mb.

It's not an ideal solution, but the only idea we have so far, we're really open to other ideas, so post them if you have them!

In the meantime, maybe use some caution about uploading to the gallery, and we'll see later what ideas Martina has.


Gerri

I'm now testing a Picasa Gallery.

http://picasaweb.google.com/117515821191114068543/Artwork?authkey=Gv1sRgCLeErrvD18ey7wE#

Picasa can be downloaded for free and you have 1 gb of storage if you sign up for their web album. There's also a box to tick in the settings which say do not allow reuse, as well, you can set the size of your thumbnails. I think I like picasa better than photobucket as there's no sharing button. Also, since many people use Picasa, if you're a member you can still leave comments on member's picture. Another thing that's a plus, if you want people to see your picture in a larger view, you can post them as large as you want(although I'm not sure how many pictures would fit in 1gb) and they can be zoomed in. On the downside of that, you have to scroll to see the whole picture, but I think this might be the better option over photobucket or flickr.

The only difference I see by going this route is that instead of one large gallery, each member will have their own gallery, but we would have to be aware that any changes we make on our gallery voids the link, and then we would have to fix it here.

Another thing you can do is put the link to your 'gallery' under the website area of your profile. This is in the contact section.

These are not bad ideas, but it really doesn't help much if we are doing a "challenge" where everybody's pics should be in one place pertaining to that particular challenge. Or an ATC exchange - where all pics should be grouped together. It would be difficult to jump around to each person's picassa site and figure out who is in the exchange and who isn't.

I don't have a solution however, I thought I might bring this up. I was under the impression that this forum had enough room to place a gallery when it was moved here. Maybe somebody can find a better place? Does "proboards" still exist? I don't know enough about this kind of thing to help much in that department. Sorry.

Hi Joanie,

You can still add pictures in the challenge area, for instance in a reply to Iris' topic. Those discussions are actually almost unlimited in space, it's just the gallery part that's very small. From what I understand we can add as many pictures as we want in our discussions. Pictures can be added to the sections under new paintings, critiques, challenges etc. When you finish your picture for the challenge I think you would just add it there as a reply. And when there's a new challenge, it would be added as a new topic.

Gerri, I like the idea with Picasa very much. I seems to be the most simple solution.

@Joanie:
When we a doing a trade we could open a special thread where only the pics are in, that's what we do in my German forum. At the end of the trade I usually produce a little video with a bit of music, put a link from my homepage into the thread and everybody can see the video as often as he/she likes it. I could do this for here too, if requested. That would be no problem. So there are no distrubing comments, you can lean back and have great home cinema
What do you think about that?

Thanks Gerri and Iris - I guess I didn't understand it. You guys are really on top of things! Good going. I'm sure you will figure out the best solution to the problem of having a gallery.

Well thanks Joanie!!

I actually like my little picasa gallery, and I like that people can actually click on it from anywhere I post on this site. Of course, if members already have a website attached to their profile, I don't think that they can then add a gallery into their profile area. If we decide to do a gallery section, as mentioned above, they can certainly add a link there. I don't believe it will be any harder than adding pictures directly to this site, just different and something people would get used to. Of course some members may decide not to set up a gallery with an outside image hosting site, but that would be their own choice. They would still have the option of adding their pictures into the appropriate places on this site.

Another thought I had, if the current gallery here is a permanent module, maybe we could use it somehow for featured pictures. I'm not too sure if it's always going to be there as I thought I read somewhere that sites had to maybe buy gallery space by the month. Martina would know.

Hi everyone,

I looked at Picassa too, and that looks more like what we want for shwoing our work. Can we use Picassa for the gallery illustrations, and the PPN site for everything else, and provide links to get from one to the other? The new site is more text friendly than image friendly I think. Just a thought for Martina.

John

You're right John, it may be that this forum isn't as 'image friendly' as the previous site, but I think it really does have it's good points, and we just have to work a little harder to get around the gallery issue.

I've been doing some more testing today, and set up a member's gallery. That part of the forum is locked, and it can't be viewed unless you're a member here. If we decide to go this route, I would include the log in information, along with the link, so that every member could add pictures to the same gallery. The only bad point about this is that member's could also delete other member's pictures, edit captions, etc., so I'm not sure how you guys would feel about this. We had a really good group though, and I'm pretty confident that no one would abuse this, but, as with anything, it's a risk. If we resize our pictures to no larger than 200mb, does anyone know how many pictures we could get in 1 gb?

If you're logged in, you could go there now, click on the link, and see what you think. Iris and I tested it this afternoon.

I've also set up an individual members's gallery section, where people can go in, start a new topic, and then put a link to any gallery they've set up on line. In this gallery, only the member who set it up would have access to change anything, but you can't look at all member pictures in the same place. I used a google web album for my own personal gallery as well.

I just want to make clear that all of this is in the testing stages, and Martina has the last word, but maybe you guys should have a look, and give your opinion, we would love to hear what everybody thinks.

Hi Gerri,
Wonderful work you do to start the new gallery
I already have blogspot attached to my profile, and I have to figger out if I can have a second gallery or how to make a new profile.I do know there is a limit at picassa
after 1 gb you have to pay. It is not much, but maybe complicated
Suzanne

Hi Suzanne,
I checked out the blog you have attached to your profile, it's lovely, and very nice artwork! You can still create a gallery on Picasa, or on any other image hosting website, then post the link under 'Individual Member's Galleries', if we decide to go this route. What did you think of having a community gallery on Picasa? I know they only offer 1 gb of space free, but if we all resize our pictures, like we did on the old site (and here I'm not good! We were resizing our pictures to 700 pixels on the longest side, so how many mb is that, and how many pictures could we put in 1 gb????? Anyone....??

Okay, I just had a thought that may scrap this idea of a communal gallery on Picasa. Some people just troll the internet looking for trouble, there's nothing to stop them from joining our community, getting the login information, changing the password and locking us all out.

We could still keep the Individual gallery section though, each member would be the only one to have the login information to their own gallery. If you click on the link to a member's gallery and have a login for Picasa Web Galleries you can put comments on their pictures.

My thinking is a process, and it takes me awhile to think of every angle!!!

Gerri - 1gb is not very much when you are talking about pictures! Yes it's a lot of space but pics take up a lot of space!

Hi Gerri,
Thank you!
A community gallery sounds great! I have asked around about gb and someone told me if you resizing your pictures to 200 kb, you can post 5000 pictures and 200 kb is a good web size!?

Hi Joanie,

On the Picasa website it says that 1gb is enough for 4000 wallpaper sized pictures, so with resizing down that's enough for a lot I think.

Hi Suzanne,
Thanks for asking around, I think you're right, it's a good amount of space for web pictures. I really liked the idea of a community gallery as well, but I can't think of any ideas to make the gallery secure, and still have members be able to upload pictures. We could have some 'not so nice' person join up here, and get the login information, and who knows what they could do.

Suzanne, it doesn't seem as if you can attach two web addresses to your profile, but if you set up a gallery on Picasa, (or any other image hosting site) you can certainly post the link in the 'Individual Member's Galleries'. It's kind of nice that anyone with a picasa account can go and put comments in another person's gallery.