While developing my group website I threw together a photo gallery in a way that would allow me or any other leader in the group to keep updating it easily over time. Assisting with the development of other group sites the code has been polished to suit a variety of needs and has turned itself into a proper system.
Any Scout Group using the Group website offer gets immediate access and automatic updates in future. These pages are designed for assisting in the webmaster of one of those sites adding the gallery to their site.
Create a web page for your site, using whatever template and display that you want. Leaving a square area in the design for the gallery content to be displayed.
Into that square area insert the following HTML Code: <iframe id="gallery" src="/cgi-bin/gallery/index.php" ></iframe>
This HTML tag can be modified to different sizes and colors by following the instructions in the FAQ Question 1 and changing the iframe#gallery entry in the .css file.
For those trying to use Proper Strict HTML, the IFRAME can be replaced with an OBJECT tag. No other changes need to be made. However be aware that a bug in Internet Explorer makes it always display an outline and scroll bars for OBJECT.
In your website folder you will need to create a folder called 'gallery' (with lower case!). This is where the images are eventually going to go and all custom changes you make to the gallery display go.
In this gallery folder you need to create two levels of organising folders. I use these to split activity galleries by Section and Year, then each activity has a set of photos.
Point the First: Case Matters. Upper and lower case letters will appear in the web gallery Exactly the same as you create the folder names.
Point the Second: spaces and special characters (" & etc.) should not be used. Spaces can be represented by the _ character where needed. Others should be replaced with a-z or 0-9 text. The use of these may cause thumbnails not to appear and some galleries to to display at all.
Point the Third: All lists of folders are sorted alphanumerically as ASCII ( 0..9 then _ then a..z then A..Z ).
- First two characters of the folder name are not displayed. They should be a digit followed by an underscore or two digits. (WHY? The web gallery sorts remember. If you want your group sections to appear in a specific order, you use the first two characters to sort properly).
- The word 'Gallery' will be added to the web display after the name of this folder. So use a name that makes proper English please. Although it is your website to do with as you please.
- Cannot have photos directly inside it.
- Planned as exactly that, A YEAR grouping. The full name is used for the web display. Alphanumeric sorting.
- Cannot have photos directly inside it.
- Can be used for other things than Year, but keep in mind the alphanumeric sorting.
- This is the deepest level of folder (whew! :-)
- Contains all the images for a specific gallery.
- Sub-folders are not displayed.
- Naming rules for the images are the same for folders.
- Filename of images are not directly seen by the public, so case is less important
- More than just JPG and GIF images can be displayed, see the FAQ for details.
Your directory structure should look something similar to this:
/gallery/ /gallery/1_Keas/ /gallery/1_Keas/2006/ /gallery/1_Keas/2006/Kea_Day/ /gallery/2-Cubs/ /gallery/2_Cubs/2006/ /gallery/2_Cubs/2006/Cub_Day/ /gallery/2_Cubs/2006/Scubs_Camp/
When these folders and the gallery page are on the website. Use your browser to open the gallery page.
You should be able to see and browse the gallery exactly like any of the other groups using this system (i.e. Hillcrest or St Peters).