So after a few days of trial and error I have been able to create the basics of how I want my GALLERY page to work.
I am using the GRID stack from Foundry Potion Pack Add-ons.
Each square within the grid contains a Foundry Image Stack and an H-6 Header Tag. The Images for each depicted kitchen are linked to a more comprehensive page about each kitchen. The pictures on the comprehensive page also have an identification number as well as some text describing things about the kitchen.
MY QUESTION now has to do with resizing these images. As you can see the sizes for each thumbnail are completely random and entirely dependent on how each image was cropped before it was uploaded to RapidWeaver.
I would like to make the Gallery Grid itself be more rational in appearance.
I supposed I could resize each image prior to uploading to RW but I am curious if there is a way to do this within the Fill mode for each image.
I realize this approach is probably not optimal for SEO but it is perfect for me and my customers to be able to easily locate an image when we are discussing it over the phone. If there is another way to do this more efficiently I would certainly welcome it. My only requirement is that each kitchen have a readily visible identification tag that does not require hovering over the image to see the text.
Put another way, would something like this be a cost-effective to hire a developer to create exactly this stack for me? I have had a lot of custom plugins written for me over the years for my CAD programs and found them to be well worth the expense. Does RealMac or Rapidweaver have such a place where we could request work like this to be done?
Create a unique thumbnail for each image to the same size and place these in the grid. This is the best approach if you only want to use the stacks you already have.
Add the images to the grid as backgrounds with the size restricted to whatever you require. This will work but it’s a bodge.
Solution 1 offered by UiKitter is very easy to do if you have a batch resizer for photos. I use Retrobatch for this kind of challenge (and others). You may also want to resize the photos that go on the single pages for each type of image so there’s a consistent look to the pages, but that’s up to you. Kitchen 6 is the biggest challenge as it’s vertically oriented.
If you want to test out the resizing option, then private message me and upload the 6 images (probably in one zipped folder). I’ll turn around a resize for small (and large) and you can see how that works. If you end up getting Retrobatch I’ll send over the routine I used for it. Just give me the dimensions you want for small (and perhaps large) sizes.
Phase Two of this new website is to rinse all my images through Lightroom and/or photoshop. Many of them come from my early days as a self-taught photographer so could stand a lot of improvement anyway. Fortunately I was smart enough to capture each and every one of them as a RAW file so have a lot of data to work with.
Since the Gallery page will essentially be a set of thumbnails I can also optimize them to display at that size. In that campaign I will also regulate the dimensions so that I get some consistency in my image stacks.
I will take a close look at posterstack. I am still such a novice at RapidWeaver I don’t have enough wisdom to properly evaluate so will probably take a while simply comprehend what PosterStack can do for me.
