(Short version) I know very little about setting up web pages but I have managed to create a few with links and everything. However, including a thumbnail gallery in my website is proving daunting. Can anyone recommend a CMS that would do all this work for me. I just need a few pages in my site such as the home page/aboutus/contact us/image gallery (where I have images floated) and thumbnails. (Longer version follows)
Could anyone help me with the following issue. I am setting up a website and have prepared my index/about us/contact us/image gallery pages.
The mark-up is working.
What I want to do is to create another page called thumbnails. This I can do. However, I would like to use a thumbnail generator from photoshop so that when visitors to my page go to the thumbnail section up come my thumbnails. I would like to have this page conform to the style of the others with header/body content etc but it is not essential.
My question is: Can I link my photoshop thumbnails to this page so that when visitors access it, the photoshop display comes up? While I have used basic mark-up to set up the other pages, I would be worried about whether or not I could include all the correct mark-up with attributes in my CSS for this page on in the thumbnail.html docment.
In my image gallery page I have my images placed one under the other with padding and captions. However, I would like something more professional looking so that is why I want a thumbail page.
I would like to get a CMS. Could anyone recommend one?
You can get plugins (effectively a mini image CMS), but do you want your whole site as a CMS, or just a CMS for images? If a whole site CMS, WordPress is worth a look, as there are lots of pre-built themes, and there are lots of image galleries for WordPress.
But that’s a fairly big task. So if you want just a management system for your images, have a look at SlideShowPro. It’s very well liked by a lot of people.
ralph m. Thank you so much for replying to my question. When you say it is a farily big task, does that mean that it would be much easier to get the plug in rather than an entire site builty with CMS. I am really looking for what is the easier option as I am not very well versed in mark-up despite having gone through several self help books. Once agian thank you for taking the time to read my note and to reply. i really appreciate it,
Hmm, it’s hard to say. Probably just installing SlideShowPro would be the simpler option, as it takes a bit of time the learn the ins and outs of WordPress, although it is an amazing tool. I haven’t actually used SlidshowPro, but have heard a lot of good about it.
Personally, if I want a slideshow I use JavaScript, and there are plenty of free scripts out there that are simple to set up, like Slimbox2. The reason I didn’t suggest that, though, is because you described a fairly complex system, and it sounded like SlideshowPro would be a better fit (from what I’ve read and heard about it).
The advantage of using WordPress is that you’d have a more integrated site that you could, in time, do a lot more with, even if not first up. So in a way, it depends on where you want the site to be in a few years. If you just tack bits and pieces onto a static site over time, it might be more of a problem later on if you wanted to integrate everything better. That said, it sounds like the straightest path for you now would to be to use the dedicated slideshow option.