What is the easiest way to put a photo gallery into an existing website?

Report · Sep 25, 2011

I am ready to give up. This really can't be this difficult.

Either that or I am the dumbest person in the world. Up until now, I didn't know that I was.

I just want something easy.

I am designing a website using Dreamweaver Cs5.5. I am on a PC with Windows Vista Operating System.

I have an existing website www.metzartonline.com.

On the Gallery page, I want to include a simple photo gallery where I can showcase paintings. I would like a simple (theres that word again) grid that shows the photos as thumbnails. When you click on the thumbnail, it shows the image in a larger size with a small caption.

I've tried using Bridge which was very easy to set up but I'm at a loss on how to integrate that into the webpage. After lots of research, I've come to the conclusion that integrating that into an existing website just insn't that easy to do.

I purchased the Classic Photo Gallery from Flash Development 24 because it was described as "easy to use."

It is not easy to use.

The steb by step guide for one, isn't even written in proper English. I've tried to work with it an I've emailed support several times.

I'm ready to give that up.

I just want to make a simple gallery that I can integrate into an existing website.

Can anyone suggest the easiest program to use?

Please?

Report · Jan 12, 2012

You can use Adobe Bridge (it is built into Dreamweaver) and Adobe Fireworks. Once you have Dreamweaver open, go to File and you will see "Browse in Bridge". Adobe Fireworks is a separate program and must be installed to make this work. The instructions below are step by step and I was able to follow them even though I am not overly experienced in Dreamweaver. I created these with Dreamweaver CS4 but the instructions below should work for CS5 as well.

The first address here is to create a photo gallery with the Adobe Output Module which you open in Bridge.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Bridge/3.0/WSCF044571-2772-4d28-9EBD-2C9F46AF008A.html

The second address explains how to incorporate the gallery into a Dreamweaver page.

http://foundationphp.com/tutorials/gallery/embed1.php

Here is my wife's website for her art: www.tanglewoodbrushstrokes.com

You may want to look at the galleries there first to see if they are what you are looking for.

There are two disadvantages to these galleries. One is that to add or subract images requires creating a new gallery. The good side is that this can be done fairly quickly once you become accustomed to how they are created. I can do a new one now in a half hour or less. To make it easier, you can go to split screen once you have the new gallery made and substitute the html for the new gallery in place of the old one without recreating your page parameters for the gallery.

Secondly, the galleries created in Fireworks use flash technology so they will not work on Iphones or Ipads. To correct this on my wife's website, I upgraded to CS5.5 in order to use HTML5. I am going through the tutorials for creating HTML5 web pages now. Once I have completed them, I will be re-doing my wife's site. I haven't yet figured out how I will create and install the galleries yet. I have posed a question about albums for HTML5 on this forum. Using HTML5 appears to be more complex than what I have experienced in the past, but we will see.

Hope this helps. Don't get too frustrated when you go through the tutorials above. Take your time and you will be able to figure it out. If I could do it, so can you. I am a 65 year old retiree who only began working with Dreamweaver about three years ago. My work experience was not in the computer field although we bought our first computer, an Apple IIE, in 1980.

Report · Dec 02, 2012

Jerhofer

Thanks for your reply. This is what I was looking for at the time.. I ended up using a ready made gallery, but I will try this when I have the time. The other suggestions by Gramps were good but I had not intended on spending $95 to accomplish this at all. Your suggestion is what I was looking for ultimately...