SkyyKorat

I blew away every gallery and every album.

I recreated a top level album “Nature”. I created a child album “Birds”. I created a gallery “Shore Birds” and put 4 images in it. Ran it. Worked OK. I created a gallery “Raptors” and put 5 images in it. Dragged it to “Birds”. I now have Nature album, and Birds album in that, and a pair of galleries “Shore Birds” and “Raptors” inside Birds. Ran it. Got the same error… I think I’m now stuck.

I’ve made a LITTLE progress. I got the image title to show up on the clicked image in the Fancybox by modifying gallery-caption.php. I’m guessing it won’t survive the next update.

I’m trying to change the font size and other parameters of the title display, and I’ve found jquery.fancybox-1.3.4.css. In there I found

#fancybox-title {
font-family: Helvetica;
font-size: 36px;
z-index: 1102;
}
which I changed from 12px to 36 so I could tell if it worked. Is this change one of those things I should put in the styles customization section? If so, do I need to put it inside something to work?

I’ve read at least a dozen discussions now on album preview images and I STILL can’t figure out how to get the image I want onto the album as a cover image…

I’m completely flummoxed… From Album “A” (top level) I can see the cover images that I put in the new gallery. It’s not attached to the album tree.
BUT, from album “B” (level 2) I CANNOT see the images in the cover gallery that isn’t attached to the album tree.

I’ve tried searching for images, I’ve tried entering images in album “B”. They get ignored. I’ve attached the cover gallery to album “B”. Now I can select an image but the cover gallery displays. And the gallery attached to album “B” can’t be seen by “C” or any of it’s children albums.

I like this gallery, and if 12 MILLIION people are using it there’s GOTTA be a SIMPLE, IDIOT-PROOF way of getting cover images on the albums – but I’m missing it.

Same for titles on the detail images. I’m currently searching, but there’s gotta be a million people that need visible titles, so there’s got to be some simple way to turn them on…

I’m continuing to fiddle, but I’m doing this wrong… I created a gallery and put the images in it I’d like to use as the album covers.

Is the “NextGen Gallery library just the images in the gallery subfolders? That appears to be where the images in all my galleries are.

Unfortunately, I’m not getting how to grab an image from a folder under the gallery folder and put it in the preview image of albums in my hierarchy.

For example, I have album “A” at the top. It contains albums “B” and “C”. Album “C” contains albums “D”, “E” and “F”. Album “B” has galleries “M” and “N”. Album “D” has galleries “P”, “Q” and “R” and album “F” has a couple galleries. I want to put different cover images on every album from “A” through “F”. Where do I attach the gallery of cover images so every album up the tree can see them? And how do I make a gallery “not displayed”?

In the album edit, I can get the line with the magnifier glass, and I can put in a filename, but it ignores it. I’ve copied the filename from the gallery of cover images, I’ve put the full location of the filename from the gallery subfolder, I’ve tried other combinations, but I haven’t gotten the album to use a file…

And how do I get image filenames or image titles to display on the detail images? Hovering on a thumbnail shows a filename, but I have nothing on the large detail images.

Unfortunately, no they don’t reappear. ONE will reappear if you hover over the SPOT where it was, but users don’t KNOW where they were and thus DON’T HOVER OVER WHERE THE EXIT BUTTON WAS. If I KNEW exactly where the arrows were and/or the exit button I wouldn’t have a problem FINDING the arrows or the exit button. As it is, once they’re gone I can move the mouse all over the image and NOTHING reappears unless I accidentally stumble onto the spot where it was. And even then, only the arrow or button I stumble on reappears…

If they’re supposed to all reappear when I hover anywhere in the image, they aren’t working on the URL I sent you.

As for “Clicing left or right from the image also navigates to previous or next image, pressing the esc key exits… How difficult can it be???”, it can apparently be pretty darn difficult for people that don’t KNOW the ESC key exits. There are a LOT of people out there that don’t KNOW clicking OUTSIDE the image will navigate, don’t KNOW the keyboard arrows navigate, and for SURE don’t know they have to hit ESC to get out when they’re stuck. So far, of the first three people that have tried my site, only ONE hit ESC in desperation to get out.

So, if the arrows and exit should all reappear when I hover ANYWHERE in the image, can you tell me what I need to set to turn them on ’cause they AREN’T doing that. And if not, then YES it would be a big help to have an option to have the ugly navigation arrows and exit buttons stay on all the time.

Thanks Jacob,

I changed the three urls… I was in the right place, and even looked at the .png files, but NEVER NOTICED they were set to “localhost”…

In any case, my detail images still behave the same way. First image opens with arrows and an exit box, then they fade. Navigating to another image doesn’t re-display the arrows and exit box. They never reappear as near as I can tell.

Is there some setting I’ve missed or set wrong that tells the Lightbox to re-display the arrows and exit box whenever I go to a new image? Or to re-display when I hover over the Lightbox?

Same as the other question. Too long to get a useful answer. Foo Gallery has been deleted.

It’s taken too long to get any useful response in here. I’ve deleted Foo Gallery.

Hi Jacob,

Once again I may be doing this wrong. I don’t have an arrow in the middle of the lightbox. And when I hover the mouse, my arrows and exit box don’t re-appear. Maybe I just need to turn on whatever it is that’ll make things reappear when I hover – that would likely resolve the problem of having the users get confused by not seeing the arrows or exit… I’ll go rummage through the settings, but can you tell me which one(s) I should set to make things reappear when hovering on the lightbox?

Since I’ve got a bit of content on the website now, is there a way for me to send you a link so you can see what I’m seeing?

I’ve got a bit of content on the actual web page at this point, so I’ve now had two people try it. First was my wife, who couldn’t get out of the detail images. And didn’t remember where the exit button was even after I pointed it out.

The second was a friend who’s pretty computer literate. Just got her email evaluation: “I went to the candids and clicked on a thumbnail, which enlarged the image. From that point, I could only go forwards or backwards one image at a time. I may have missed something, but I couldn’t figure out how to exit from the enlargements.”

It may not be a problem for other users, but I have the feeling having the arrows and “exit from the detail images” button disappear will be a source of ongoing angst for visitors… Is there a way for me to go into the php or css and make a change to keep at least the exit button on so you don’t have to change the plugin?

Well, looks like another one’s gonna sit like effluvium in a punchbowl. Never mind.

OK, after trying at LEAST 40 galleries, all of which had varying degrees of things that were unattractive, I finally decided to suck it up and spend the time to wade through wp Photo Album Plus. Again.

It has a hierarchy, so I don’t need a million pages. It imports images into it’s own location so I don’t have a gigantic media library. It doesn’t butcher my thumbnails, trying to make them square.

Unfortunately, it took a HUGE amount of time to get it to the point where it’s pretty good. I don’t know how many settings there are, but it’s in the hundreds. Fortunately, the plugin developer was quick to respond to questions and get me to the point where I’m fairly well configured.

I’ve learned the hard way since starting to mess with WordPress that if you ask a question and it sits two days, you’re probably NOT going to get an answer. Which is a huge change from the other tools I use (primarily Adobe for image manipulation) where answers often come in from knowledgeable people within minutes.

While testing plugins, I’d install, activate and try them ’til I hit the roadblock. Ask questions in the support forum and see if I got a worthwhile response. If not, the plugin got dumped.

Anyhow, it looks like at the moment I’ve got a working slideshow and a working gallery. Now if I could get the arrows and exit button in the Lightbox to stay visible so I don’t get emails complaining that visitors can’t figure out how to get back to their albums…

Hi Jacob,

Although it’s taken me some time to gain much skill with your gallery (mostly due to my own inexperience), I’m finding it really powerful and configurable. I’ve spent a number of hours changing one or two settings than looking to see how that affects my display. Very nice gallery and I congratulate you on your work!

I agree with you about the buttons on the detail image, but I’m not building this for me. I always use my wife, who is an older typical user, to test my user interfaces. She, and I suspect more than a few of the older people who are hopefully going to be using the site, aren’t necessarily as computer-savvy as others. She has already gotten “stuck” in the detail views because once the buttons disappear she has trouble finding them to turn them back on (difficult to find the spot), and she can’t remember the round thing with the square in it that gets her OUT of the details back to the thumbnails. Thus, although I’d prefer not to have a visible “exit” button, it would be nice to make it as easy as possible for visitors to navigate through large images, and exit with minimal confusion. If there is no way to have at least the exit remain visible all the time I’ll survive – it’s purely a convenience to some of the future site users.

As for the page title – ignore that one. I was trying to figure out how to navigate BACK from details, to thumbnails, to album cover page, to parent page. I realized last night that I hadn’t CONNECTED the pages, so there WAS no navigating back. Once I got that corrected, I now have back links in the line above the thumbnails, so it works really nicely.

OK, things look MUCH better after another evening of playing with settings…. I found fonts, settings, and sizes. Unfortunately, there’s no link since I’m doing the development on a local PC.

On the Lightbox, how do I keep the left and right arrows, and the square with the circle around it (exit from lightbox?) from fading out? I’d like them to stay visible.

And on the thumbnails, the line above says “Various albums”. Is there a way to have this contain the page title instead of having the title display above this?

Thanks for the reply. Much quicker than I’ve found in most other plugins!

I’ve been fiddling! I spent last evening trying changing one setting at a time so I could see how it affected things. I THINK I’ve mostly got the galleries looking reasonably good. And I accidentally got into the Lightbox I think, ’cause I have larger images…

My only really big hangup at this point (I think) is the album layout. I think that vertical stack of galleries is really going to be difficult for my users to handle. But, I’ll try playing a while longer to see if I can bring my questions down to a reasonable level.