WebSpawner.com Blog

In today’s post we cover the use of Image Gallery Groups. Image Gallery Groups are used to group together multiple Image Gallery pages. With Gallery Groups, you can set up each webpage in your website to display different Image Galleries than the other pages in your website, so that only those Image Galleries relevant to each webpage are available.

The instructions provided in this post will be more relevant if you have already created several Image Gallery pages and have already added additional webpages to your website account. With an Enhanced WebSpawner website account, you can create as many Image Gallery pages as you like and can also add as many webpages to your website as you like, all at no additional cost (click either of the two links to see previous Blog posts providing instructions).

To illustrate the use of Gallery Groups, we will use an example website containing reviews of automobiles. The website has several webpages, each focusing on a different car manufacturer. Several Image Gallery pages have been created, each containing pictures of cars produced by different auto companies. The goal in using Gallery Groups with our example website is to have only the Ford car image galleries display when the Gallery button on the Ford webpage is clicked, and only the Dodge car image galleries display from the Dodge webpage, and so on. The Member Menu of our example website account is shown below.

To begin creating Image Gallery Groups, click the Image Gallery tool (under the orange Add-Ons tab in the Member Menu) as shown above.

The Image Gallery tool window displays with a few buttons and a pull-down menu of all existing Gallery pages as shown below.

Click the Manage Gallery Groups button.

The Gallery Groups window appears with a list of existing Gallery Groups (our example account has no groups created yet) and some buttons… click the New button.

Give your Gallery Group a name which will help you remember which webpage it should go with.. we’ll start with a Group for our Jeep Galleries and name it “Jeep gallery group” and then click the Continue button as shown below.

The Gallery Groups window reappears. Next, we select the new Gallery Group by name from the pull-down list and click the Edit button as shown below.

A list of all existing Image Gallery pages appears. Click to put a checkmark in the box next to each Gallery page to be included in this Gallery Group and click Update when done, as shown in the example below.

Now the Gallery Groups window appears again, this time showing our new Jeep Gallery Group in the pull-down list. We can now click the New button and repeat the steps above to create more Gallery Groups as desired for the Ford, Dodge, Pontiac, Honda, and Toyota Galleries.

When you have finished creating your Gallery Groups and editing each one to assign the Image Gallery Pages to the proper Groups, close the Image Gallery tool window.

The next step is to Modify each webpage and indicate which Gallery Group should appear when the Gallery button on that webpage is clicked by a website viewer.
Click to select one of your webpages under Step 1 in the Member Menu and click the Modify button under Step 2, as shown below.

Scroll down in the Modification form to the Image Gallery step, and select the desired Gallery Group from the pull-down menu, shown below.

Be sure to complete the Modification process by clicking Continue at the bottom of the form and then click the “I Like It” button at the test page preview to save and publish your changes. Repeat these steps to assign your other Gallery Groups to the other webpages in your account.

Gallery Groups have many different uses depending upon the purpose of your website. For example, in a family website, you can create a different Gallery Group for each family member, or for each birthday, holiday, or event.

A few parting notes:

• You can assign an Image Gallery Page to more than one Gallery Group.
• You can assign a Gallery Group to as many different webpages as you like.
• Each webpage can display either ‘All Image Galleries’ or just one selected Gallery Group.
• By using descriptive names for the Image Gallery Pages you create as well as for the Gallery Groups you add, you can make it much easier to keep track of things and have the desired pictures display from each webpage in your account.

Today’s post is a follow-up of sorts to a previous entry titled Adding an Image Gallery to your website. While that article has proven helpful for many first-time users of WebSpawner’s Image Gallery tool, the need for a little additional instruction has become apparent through a recurring question received by Customer Service:

How do I replace an existing picture in my Image Gallery with a new one?

Replacing an existing image with a new image is quite easy and in today’s post we’ll show you how.

From the Member Menu, click the Image Gallery tool, which you can find under the orange Add-Ons tab as shown below:

The Image Gallery tool will open in a new browser window (titled “Image Gallery”). Select the Gallery Page which you would like to make changes to from the drop-down menu of existing Gallery Pages, and then click the Edit button.

In the Edit screen, the Gallery Title and Description will be displayed along with 12 image location boxes which will have any images you have previously placed there, like the example below. Click in the box for the image that you would like to replace.

The current image will be displayed in a larger size, along with the Caption and Description (which can be edited by changing the text within the boxes and clicking the Update button if you wish to keep the same image). Also shown are three options for removing the image, as shown below.

The three options for replacing the image are as follows:

• To simply remove the existing image and no longer display any image in that location, click the Remove Image button under Option 3 (no further steps are required for this option).
• To replace the image with another previously-uploaded image, choose the image under the drop-down menu under Option 1 and click the Done button (no further steps are needed for this option).
• To replace the current image by uploading a new image from your computer, click the Transfer New Image button under Option 2 and then proceed as outlined below. A window like the following one will appear.

Under Step 1 click the Browse button, navigate to the location of the new image file on your computer’s hard drive and click to select the image, then click the Open button. The path to the image will then appear in the box under Step 1 as shown in the sample above.

Under Step 2 enter the text for a Caption to appear with the image, if desired (this is optional).

Under Step 3 enter the Description text to be displayed with the image (also optional).

Finally, click the Add Image to Gallery button, which will start the image upload process.

After a few seconds when the upload has completed, the screen will refresh, displaying the Edit screen with the 12 image location boxes and your newly-uploaded image in its chosen location. You can click another image box to make changes to its image, or click the Done button as shown below when you are finished.

Next, close the Image Gallery window as your changes have been saved and your Image Gallery updated with your new image(s).

A few other things worth mentioning regarding the Image Gallery:

• Image files should be in .gif, .jpg, or .png file formats in order to be compatible with the Image Gallery tool. If your images are in another file format, re-save them first before trying to upload them.
• Each image file should have a unique file name. If you upload a new image having the same file name as a previously-uploaded one, the old image will be replaced in the Gallery wherever it appears with the new image of the same name… so rename your files before uploading if needed.

So you’ve finished your shopping, wrapped the gifts, baked some Christmas cookies and hung your stockings by the chimney with care. Your house is decorated and lit from rooftop to foundation. So what else is there to do on Christmas Eve? Why, grab some eggnog and gather the family around the warm glow of your computer screen to track Santa’s travels online, of course!

For more than 50 years, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command), a bi-national military organization ever on the watch for man-made threats in the skies over Canada and the United States, has utilized its high-tech equipment each Christmas Eve to track the travels of Santa Claus in his sleigh. Each year NORAD provides updates to radio and television stations on the progress of jolly St. Nick’s travels, and in more recent years has also been providing live tracking information on the internet.

The NORAD TRACKS SANTA 2007 website is online now with fun activities including an interactive North Pole Map with games and more, and on Christmas Eve it will provide up-to-the-minute information on the exact whereabouts of Santa and his sleigh (and the reindeer, too). Visit the website with your kids now as they are sure to find it fun, and don’t forget to bookmark it for Christmas Eve.

For the nice (and naughty) girls and boys in the United Kingdom, the Wroxall-Weather website will also provide live Santa tracking on Christmas Eve starting at 7:00pm local time. As of now, the website has a countdown timer ticking off the seconds until Santa leaves the North Pole to begin his journey.

All of us here at WebSpawner wish you and yours a safe and happy holiday season and a very happy new year!

One of the questions that WebSpawner Customer Service receives occasionally is:

How can I remove an unwanted comment from my Guestbook?

Before we get into specifics of removing a comment, we should first explain exactly what the Guestbook is.

When you Modify web pages within your WebSpawner account, one of the questions asked in the Modification form is “Would you like to make a GUESTBOOK available to users who visit your web page?” followed by “Yes” and “No” options. If you choose the “Yes” option, a Guestbook button appears on your web site similar to the example shown below (the actual appearance is dependent upon the Layout and Color options you select).

When a viewer clicks the Guestbook button, they can read messages left by other viewers, and can leave their own message with a contact email address if desired. In this manner, a Guestbook serves as a way for a web site’s creator to get feedback from viewers and also to open communications by email between the site’s creator and viewers.

Occasionally a viewer may leave a message posted in a Guestbook that is unwanted or offensive (or both). The Guestbook Editor allows you to remove any undesirable posts from the Guestbook.

To access the Guestbook Editor, click the Guestbook icon under the orange Add-Ons tab in the Member Menu, as shown here.

The Guestbook Editor window appears. Each entry posted by viewers will be displayed, along with a Delete button next to each one. Use the scroll bar on the right to move down through the comments to locate the unwanted one.

When the unwanted comment is located, simply click the Delete button next to that comment to remove it from the Guestbook, and then close the Editor window.

Keeping your Guestbook clean of undesirable comments is just that simple.

If you have an Enhanced website account, enable that Guestbook today and start receiving valuable input and feedback from your web site’s viewers. Be sure to check the comments frequently, and should a viewer decide to act immature and post something rude or naughty, you can easily clean it up.