photo site problem -- looking for suggestions

snthr · 2010-10-13 23:56:21

i’m making a site for a photographer. his work is project-based. so, he’ll have a set of ten photos under the heading “french countryside, summer 2010”, or fifteen under the heading “london, 2009” — you get the idea.

he also wants to use categories to slice up the content in other ways — “award-winning projects”, “black and white”, “personal favourites”, etc.

normally, the obvious way to present this content would be to have each project as an article in txp, and use a gallery (like, say, smd_slimbox) to present the work.

the problem is that he also wants site users to be able to look at individual photos — to get the full details and a link to buy a copy.

this would seem to imply a structure where i make every photo into an article. i don’t want to do this, if at all possible.

so — any bright ideas about what way to structure the content? any good plugins for this kind of thing?

thanks.

Kjeld · 2010-10-14 00:48:24

I actually did go the every photo is one article way on my latest site. But it is set up like a stock photo site. I don’t know if it helps for inspiration, but have a look: MeijiShowa.com.

snthr · 2010-10-15 16:49:19

ok, i’ve flipped everything around. i now have every photo as an article.

so, assuming i keep with this schema, here’s a related question:

each photo project is now a category. using the txp:category1 tag, i can get a link to each photo project from each photo. the url that it creates is like this:

website.com/category/project-name

is there any way to alter this so that the url is website.com/[something]/project-name? like, for example: website.com/projects/project-name?

would i have to set up the lists of categories as a section, or something like that?

thanks.

masa · 2010-10-15 19:40:36

I would probably tackle this by making the projects into articles – as you planned originally – placing all images in the article image field; you will need a plugin to create the galleries from that. Then use image categories for browsing by category.

snthr · 2010-10-16 12:54:01

masa wrote:

I would probably tackle this by making the projects into articles – as you planned originally – placing all images in the article image field; you will need a plugin to create the galleries from that. Then use image categories for browsing by category.

can’t do that, i’m afraid — then there’s no way to have each photo be an individual page on the site.

i’m stuck going the every-photo-is-an-article route. that’s fine, but i need to sort out categories as a result.

so, the question is: how do i get website.com/category/project-name to display as website.com/project/project-name? or alternatively, is there a better way to present categories of content flowing from the organisational principle of every-photo-is-an-article?

thanks.

Last edited by snthr (2010-10-16 12:59:52)

jakob · 2010-10-29 08:23:27

I’m perhaps a bit late with the reply. You can use the attribute section="projects" to make links to a category view appear beneath the section you want. You end up with a link that looks like: website.com/projects/?c=project-name – not quite as pretty but still fine for SEO.

Certainly organizing each photo as an article gives you the greatest flexibility, particularly with regard to using two sets of categories or tags to slice and filter in multiple ways. Depending on your needs for the individual photo view, you could still take the approach masa mentioned if you use a javascript history plugin that appends each image an URL or set up a url variable that triggers the lightbox (or similar) view of that particular photo. That’s fine for displaying an image plus caption plus purchase link but you’d need to use articles if you want to allow people to be able to comment on a particular image.
Two examples:

My little gallery on my holding page use gallerific and the jquery history plugin which appends #picture-name links so that you can link directly to a particular image: example. In this particular case, I’m using a setup where the image overview and thumbnails appear on the same page, but you get the principle.
On my brother’s photography page made a while back we used an own solution based off thickbox (but any lightbox-type plugin would do that allows to set up your own overlay code): example. It looks like an own page but it is in fact just the javascript overlay, as you see if you close the image or click on the background. If you roll over the space to the right of the caption, you’ll see a permlink-link appear. That particular site is run off photostack.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2010-10-13 23:56:21

photo site problem -- looking for suggestions

#2 2010-10-14 00:48:24

Re: photo site problem -- looking for suggestions

#3 2010-10-15 16:49:19

Re: photo site problem -- looking for suggestions

#4 2010-10-15 19:40:36

Re: photo site problem -- looking for suggestions

#5 2010-10-16 12:54:01

Re: photo site problem -- looking for suggestions

#6 2010-10-29 08:23:27

Re: photo site problem -- looking for suggestions

Board footer