Q. Who is eligible for a Friends of Walney Photo Gallery Account?
A. The Friends of Walney Photo Gallery accounts are aimed squarely at those who's prime photographic interests lay within the Barrow in Furness area in general and Walney Island in particular. Occasional photographs taken elsewhere are not a problem - but if they make up the majority of what you want to make available please consider taking out a free gallery account elsewhere - the free facilities at photobox.co.uk are particularly good but there are many others from which to choose.
Q. How important is choosing the right Friends of Walney username?
A. Your username will aslo be your gallery name - and you might therefore want to consider registering with a username such as "LifeBoats", rather than "Fred", which would give not the slightest inkling as to what sort of content you might have. Please note that the gallery software does not currently allow for usernames which contain spaces. It might even be in the site's best interests if you considered registering more than one account if you want a handy way of keeping LifeBoat pictures seperate from Gardening pictures (or whatever). There's currently no restriction on how many accounts can be associated with a single e-mail address, and you can use the same password on all of them if you like. One the other hand there is absolutley no compulsion to seperate your images into seperate categories should you prefer to keep them all in a gallery called Fred.
Q. I fancy starting a gallery that duplicates a theme that already exists in one of WalneyIsle.co.uk's own galleries - is that ok?
A. Absolutely. In fact several members already have galleries that duplicate themes found in the mail galleries and they have genrally been very well recieved.
Q. Can I share a gallery with my friend(s)?
A. Only through entrusting them with your password; and that leaves your account wide open to hijacking should you ever fall out. Of course if only one of you actually uploads the images that might not be a problem.
Q. Is uploading the pictures a complicated process?
A. Obviously I think not... in fact the biggest criticism to date has been caused by over-enthusiastic users uploading unnecessarily large images and expecting the site to be able to serve them back at break-neck speed. As a rule of thumb all images should be given a jpg compression factor of 25 and reduced in physical size to 1024 x 768 pixels.
Q. Is uploading the files a slow process then?
A. On a relatively modest broadband connection (512k down - 128k up) a single 80k image takes between 6 and 8 seconds to upload - while with the new multi-file upload method 10 large images of approx 400k each are uploading in around six minutes. If you are still on a 56k modem you can probably expect to multiply those times by a factor of 10.
Q. There's a big different between 80k image and 400k - what image size do you recommend?
A. I'd recommend that all images be re-sized to 1024 x 768 pixels and saved with a jpeg compression rate in the region of 15 or 25. This typically produces images between 50-200k (the exact file size can vary greatly depending on the content of the image) and that compression rate usually works pretty well as a trade-off between file size and image quality.
Q. How much image space can I have in my gallery?
A. There are no hard and fast rules concerning the number of pictures you can upload, or the number of seperate galleries you can have. Should the lack of disk space ever become a problem on a site-wide basis over-enthusiastic users may be requested to to conform to the 1024x768xjpeg25 suggestion - but if their images are well used and widely respected you can rest assured that keeping them as intact as possible would be just as much my priority as it would yours.
Q. How long can I store the images for?
A. How long is a piece of string. WalneyIsle.co.uk is a non-profit hobby site and recieves no financial support whatsoever apart from a meagre income from the google ads and photo-prints which do not even meet the cost of my monthly internet connection. Given that that is the case the entire site's future is insecure to say the least and no guarantee can be given that the site will still exist in years to come. Having said that; I have every intention of not only maintaining the site in it's current state but also of expanding it at every opportunity.
Q. What if I change my mind and decide not to use my Gallery account?
A. Accounts which have already uploaded at least one useable image will remain on the system indefinitely unless complete removal is requested from the e-mail address associated with the account. If, however, an account owner decides (for whatever reason) not to upload any usaable images within 14 days of registration; that account will automatically be downgraded to Basic Membership level in order to free up resources which could be useful to someone else.
Q. Are there any restrictions on file content?
A. Yes. The posting of any material which in the webmasters opinion promotes; religious beliefs, agressive or anti-social behaviour, or any form of sexual persuit or activity, is specifically prohibited and highly likely to result in the account in question being terminated without further notice.
Hints of using Friends of Walney Photo Gallery Accounts:-
After registering an account just follow the instructions in the e-mail you'll be sent regarding how to activate your new account.
When you wish to upload photos - come to the site and click on the [FRIENDS of WALNEY] link in the right-hand-side column and log in to your account.
Once you've logged in... click the "Gallery" link in the login popup and you'll be given an upload page with various links which I'm hoping are fairly self-explanatory.
You will see several files already in your gallery as follows:
folder.gif Is the thumbnail image that folks will click on to access your gallery - delete it and replace it with your own by all means (see About Us > About UsersUploads for alternatives) but DON'T delete it permanently because without a folder.gif file your gallery is totally inaccessible. (HINT: if you WANT to make your gallery temporarily inaccessible at any time, simply save folder.gif to your hard disk, then delete it from your gallery)
metadata.txt You should save this file to your own computer and edit it (with an ASCII text editor, such as Windows Notepad) before deleting the version in your gallery and replacing it with your new version. The metadata.txt file contains keywords and a gallery description which should be changed to reflect the contents of your particular gallery. Be very careful not to destroy the syntax of the meta-statements in the file or it won't work as it should and has the potential to mess up your whole gallery. If you have trouble getting it to work either give me a shout or simply the file from your gallery and do without one. It's an "otional extra" thing which is used to give your gallery pages a bit of a boost in the site search results but your gallery will run quite hapily without it.
copyright.txt You should edit this file too, exactly as you did with the previous one. If you do not wish to share your images under the same terms and conditions as WalneyIsle.co.uk your copyright statement should be changed to reflect this - and also give a point of contact for people who wish to enquire about your copyright conditions in detail. All gallery users are encouraged to register with the WalneyIsle.co.uk forum as it's PM (personal messaging) system is ideally suited for those who do not wish to make their e-mail address public.
slideshow.txt This file allows you to pass customised parameters to your galleries slideshow. The entries in the file have the following meanings: &i=0 < start image number (normally 0) &a=1 < rotate slides (1)=automatic (0)=manual $t=5 < number of seconds delay (when automatic=1)
If any (or even all) of the lines in the file are deleted your slideshow will adopt perfectly sensible default values. If you don't want to offer a slideshow at all simply delete your gallery's slideshow.txt file.
Should you mess any of these files up whilst editing the complete set can be re-installed by clicking the "Re-install" link in the upload manager. If you ever want to do a "Delete All", (to empty your gallery so you can start again from scratch,) the "Re-install" link should also be used immediately afterwards - otherwise your gallery will not be accessible.
You only need to log out after you've done playing with a gallery if (a) you want to change users (i.e. work with a different gallery), or (b), if you're on a shared computer and don't want anyone else to be able to fiddle with your files. One accidental click on the wrong link and every file in your entire gallery would be deleted, so (a) take care who you let play with it, and (b) keep your own backup!
Have a play at your leisure and let me know what you think. You can't do any permanent damage just practicing - or rather if you DO do any damge it'd be my fault, not yours. Anything you're not clear about; either fiddle till you figure it out or drop me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
If you have any problems using your Friends of Walney account please don't hesitate to get in touch.
Colin.
This is the default icon for all Users Uploads directories. Below are a few alternatives. If you would like to use one of these - simply right-click it, save the picture as folder.gif, then upload it to your gallery so that it over-writes the default one.
