Post a Photo Gallery

Posting a photo gallery is a great way to share your club-related photos with other members, your family, and even the world! It is one of the most popular features of our new site.

You may look at this help file and think, "Oh hey! I can't do this!! It's too hard! There are too many steps!"

Not true. If you have ever attached a picture to an e-mail, you can do this.

This help file is written to cover every possible problem you might encounter — which makes it long yet thorough. Read it through to get an overview, take a deep breath, and give it a try. It's very easy to post a gallery. In fact, several of our members have done it without any instruction at all.

Now, back to the help file. To maximize the speed of our site, we have set limits on the photo and file size. To learn more about this, please review the Resize Your Photos help file.

Please note: You must resize your images to less than 1 MB or your upload will fail and your gallery will not post. If your images are smaller than 1 MB but larger than 1200x800 pixels, our image handler will automatically resize your images to the maximum size, but this will make your upload time much longer. Therefore, we recommend you resize your images before uploading a gallery. The Resize Your Photos help file explains how to do this step by step.

To post a gallery:

• Visit www.prairieriders.net and log in with your username and password. You must be logged in to post content such as blogs, comments or photos.
• If you do not have an account, create one. If you do not know how, see "Create a User Account."

Once your log in, the Navigation Box you used to log in will change to show your user menu. It includes links to "My account," "Create content," My Watched Posts," and "Log out." To start posting a Photo Gallery, click on Create content.

The Create content page will load. Choose the second item, Gallery, from the list of type of content shown.

The Create Gallery page will load.  Every time you create a gallery, brief instructions are shown at the top of the page in a yellow box, so if you get confused, you can consult that.

Below the instructions, there are three required fields. You must enter content in each required field in order to post a gallery.

• Gallery Name. Choose anything you would like — the name of the place where the pictures were taken, your name, or perhaps a general name of the event — and type in a name for your gallery. Keep in mind that this will serve as your headline for the gallery in the gallery list, so be descriptive but brief.
• Content Keywords. Type in one or more words or phrases, separated by commas, that describe your gallery. These words are used to group your content with similar content on the site. For example, all galleries tagged 2010 will be shown when someone selects 2010 from the tag cloud at the bottom of the home page.
• At least one content keyword is required. The web site will suggest words that match those you've type in below the content keyword field. You can use existing keywords or select your own.
• We recommend that, at a minimum, you enter the year the photos were taken, such as 2010, and the phrase photo gallery. Enter as many content keywords or phrases, separated by commas, as you like. For instance, you can add your family name as an easy way to find all content about your family on the site.
• Description. You must type in at least 10 words that describe your content. (If you do not enter a description, or if you enter less than 10 words, the gallery will not post.) Please try to answer the 5 W's (who, what, where, when and why) about your gallery. You can write as much as you like, so don't feel limited by the 10 word minimum.
• Alternately, if you have a lot to say, consider whether you'd like to Post a Story and include a link to your photo gallery in the story.

Once you have filled in Gallery Name, Content Keywords and Description, scroll to the bottom of the page and choose Save. If you have filled in all of the required fields, a new page will load with the following features:

• At the top, it will show the name of your gallery, such as Big Bear Lake 2007, along with five tabs ("View," "Manage Images," "Sort Images," "Upload Images," and "Edit"). We'll look at those more closely in a moment.
• Below the tabs, you will see a green box that says Gallery XXX (where XXX is the name of your gallery, such as Big Bear Lake 2007) has been created.

If you see these features, success! You have created a gallery and can begin adding your photos.

If you do not see these features, you will instead be still on the create content page. Edit your entries for Gallery Name, Content Keywords and Description and choose Save again. Once those three fields are completed successfully, you will have a gallery.

You can add your photos immediately or return to your gallery later. However, keep in mind that your gallery is immediately loaded to the site's gallery list, so members will see your empty gallery. Therefore, we recommend you continue on and immediately add at least a few photos. You can always add more photos later.

Below the green box that told your gallery has been created, you will see your byline and the posted date. If you have not added any photos yet, directly below that is the following line:

There are currently no images in this gallery. You may upload image to this gallery.

The second sentence, "You may upload image to this gallery" also is blue and underlined, which indicates it's hyperlinked.

To upload photos, you can click in two places:

• If you have not uploaded any pictures yet, click on the sentence, "You may upload image to this gallery." 
• If you have already uploaded pictures and are coming back to add more, click on the "Upload Images" tab that appears directly below the name of your gallery.
• Both take you to the Upload Images page.

On the Upload Images page, you will see a series of 10 buttons that say: Choose File. You can upload up to 10 images at a time into your gallery.

• Click on the first Choose File button.
• A dialog box will open. Navigate to where you have your properly sized pictures saved on your computer.
• Click on the file name of the image you would like to upload, and then choose "Open" (if you have a Windows computer) or "Choose" (if you have an Apple).
• The name of the file and the file path will now show on the site next to the Choose File button.
• Click on the next Choose File button and repeat the process until you have selected up to 10 photos. You do not have to upload 10 at a time, but we allow up to 10 simultaneous uploads to a gallery.

Helpful hints to keep in mind:

• If you accidentally select the wrong image, you can replace your choice by selecting Choose File again. 
• The uploader will sort the images in the order you upload them, so give some thought to what order you would like to show your images. Fortunately, if you change your mind later, you can use the Manage Images or Sort tabs to change the order in which the images appear.

Once you've selected up to 10 images for upload, click the Submit Images at the bottom of the page.

• Your images will begin to upload!
• BE PATIENT! Depending on your internet connection speed, the number of photos you are uploading, and the size of the files, it can take a few minutes for your images to upload.

Once the site has processed your photo(s), you will see one of two results:

• A table that shows several items, including a thumbnail (small version) of your photo and a Title field. This means your images have uploaded successfully.
• A pink box that tells you your upload has failed. This can be occur if your images are larger than 1 MB or if you have tried to upload a disallowed file type. If you are not sure of the file size and format requirements, see the Resize Your Photos help file.

Presumably, if you have prepped your files as recommended, you will see the table showing your image thumbnails. You're almost there!

The image uploader automatically used your file name (e.g., IMG_2123456.jpg) as the Title of the image. However, this is also what will show as the caption/label in the gallery. So, simply highlight the image file name in the Title field and replace it with your brief caption. It can be just a few words, or you can write your captions so that they tell as story as people view your slideshow.

Finally, click on the Save button. Your gallery has been created and posted!