want special home page but WITHOUT slideshow

[William M Porter]

A while back I managed with the help of the experts here and the tutorials to get my home page (http://william-porter.net) customized, with banner, custom buttons and a slideshow.

For a long time I left the slide show alone. Recently I tried to add a single photo to the gallery that the slideshow draws its images from; at the same time I reordered the images in the gallery. The reordering seems to have worked. But the new image doesn't show up. There's just a sort of blank there and a pause, then the next image appears. If you go to the site, you'll see the "hole": it's where the second image ought to appear.

I'd either like to be able to fix that problem, or get rid of the slide show altogether and replace it with a single photo. The basic idea is that I'd like visitors to my site to see something different on a fairly regular basis. If I had just one photo on the home page, I could change it out every couple of days or so. Or if I could figure out how to edit the gallery that the slideshow draws on, I could mess with THOSE photos regularly to give some variety to the home page.

Any pointers (or links) you can offer will be gratefully studied.

Thanks,

Will

[Allen]

A while back I managed with the help of the experts here and the tutorials to get my home page (http://william-porter.net) customized, with banner, custom buttons and a slideshow.

For a long time I left the slide show alone. Recently I tried to add a single photo to the gallery that the slideshow draws its images from; at the same time I reordered the images in the gallery. The reordering seems to have worked. But the new image doesn't show up. There's just a sort of blank there and a pause, then the next image appears. If you go to the site, you'll see the "hole": it's where the second image ought to appear.

I'd either like to be able to fix that problem, or get rid of the slide show altogether and replace it with a single photo. The basic idea is that I'd like visitors to my site to see something different on a fairly regular basis. If I had just one photo on the home page, I could change it out every couple of days or so. Or if I could figure out how to edit the gallery that the slideshow draws on, I could mess with THOSE photos regularly to give some variety to the home page.

Any pointers (or links) you can offer will be gratefully studied.

Thanks,

Will
You are running the old no longer supported slideshow. You need
to switch to the new show, see here (http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/3624147).
New photos with security keys will not run in
the old show.

To remove the old show code see this post (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=777834&postcount=14).

[William M Porter]

You are running the old no longer supported slideshow. You need
to switch to the new show, see here (http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/3624147).
New photos with security keys will not run in
the old show.

To remove the old show code see this post (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=777834&postcount=14).

Excellent Allen - and gosh, that was quick. I'll study both of your links and see what I can do.

Many thanks.

Will

[William M Porter]

I got the old slideshow removed and the new slideshow installed, following your instructions.

There are two problems with the slideshow now, one important, one less so.

The important problem is that the slideshow is not centered. Following up the links were at the end of your tutorial, Allen, I found that I'm not the first person to have this problem - but I tried the small fixes that were suggested and none of them worked, and I don't see any other info about this problem.

The less important problem is that the slideshow is displayed within an obvious frame of some sort. I guess the frame is the edge of the bio box. Is it possible to remove that so that the pictures just appear on the page without being inside a visible box of any kind?

Finally, I'm still not sure that I want to have a slideshow at all. Can I keep (and customize) my separate home page, without having a slideshow?

Thanks,

Will

[denisegoldberg]

...Or if I could figure out how to edit the gallery that the slideshow draws on, I could mess with THOSE photos regularly to give some variety to the home page.
You could either change the photos in the gallery you are using for your slideshow, or you could switch to using a keyword feed instead. If you want to use a keyword to drive the slideshow, you'll need to use the feedURL slideshow parameter instead of the AlbumID parameter.

Feeds available for use are shown at http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Feeds+Examples.

In case you need an example, here's the parameter I use for my slideshow:
feedURL: 'http://api.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg%3FType=userkeyword%2526NickName=denise%252 6Data=deniseHome',
Obviously you would need to change the nickname and keyword to your own. You could then use photos that cross galleries. And to change the photos in the slideshow you would just remove that keyword from some photos and add it to others.

--- Denise

[denisegoldberg]

The important problem is that the slideshow is not centered. The less important problem is that the slideshow is displayed within an obvious frame of some sort.

Finally, I'm still not sure that I want to have a slideshow at all. Can I keep (and customize) my separate home page, without having a slideshow?

Add this to your CSS to center the slideshow and to remove the frame and background on your homepage:

#userBio {
text-align: center;
}
.homepage .boxBottom {
background: none;
border: none !important;
}

I'd also recommend that you change the clickURL parameter in the slideshow code so that it goes somewhere within your site intead of to the (current) smugmug homepage. For example, change it to this:clickUrl: '/galleries',

If you'd prefer to show a single photo, you can use an <img src statement in your bio in place of the current slideshow code. Try the changes above, and if you still want to change to a single photo post a link to the photo here so we can help you to construct the html you need to display it.

--- Denise

[William M Porter]

THANKS, Denise.

I added those snippets of code and everything is now working fine: the slide show is properly center, and the frame or box is now invisible, and when users click the slide show they go to my galleries page (which is fine). I also went back to the links Allen gave me at the start of the thread and got the code to remove the thumbs. Also got the slide show to start on a random photo in the gallery by adding

randomStart: 'true',

before the last line that specifies the crossfade speed. So it's all working pretty well now.

The one thing that still bugs me a wee bit is that, when I come to the page for the first time, I see a SmugMug logo while the slide show loads. This is one of the things I don't like about Flash - and it's one of the reasons I'm still thinking about using a single photo. Can something be done to make the first photo appear more quickly? For example, if there were fewer photos in the gallery that the slide show is based on, would the slide show start faster? Would it help if I resized the pops in that gallery so they're no bigger than necessary?

Thanks,

Will

[denisegoldberg]

The one thing that still bugs me a wee bit is that, when I come to the page for the first time, I see a SmugMug logo while the slide show loads. This is one of the things I don't like about Flash - and it's one of the reasons I'm still thinking about using a single photo.
It's actually not flash that's causing the smugmug logo to display - it's this parameter in your slideshow code:

splash: 'http://www.smugmug.com/img/ria/ShizamSlides/smugmug_black.png',

You can change the splash image to be one of your own photos. If you look at my page, you can see how it looks. Just change the splash parameter to look like this
splash: '/photos/XXXXX_XXXX-L.jpg',
Replace the XXXXX_XXX with the appropriate photo id from the photo you want to use as the splash image, and change the size from -L to whichever size you'd like to use for your splash.

--- Denise

[tonyabolesphotography]

I was trying to test this out, so I set it up with one of my galleries. Right now it only has small web size photos in there. Will I need larger photos to make it centered? Also when I tried to hide this, like I could with the bio, it doesn't work. And the Bio doesn't show up under the homepage. What did I do wrong?

http://www.tonyabolesphotography.smugmug.com/Home

I have it in the center now, how do I put a border around the photos? I found the code but where do I place it in the bio?

[William M Porter]

I have it in the center now, how do I put a border around the photos? I found the code but where do I place it in the bio?

The code is

borderThickness: '20',
borderColor: 'ffffff',

Just stick these two lines (punctuated exactly as above) in the middle of the html code that you get from Allen's instructions (here (http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/3624147)). You could put it, for example, right in front of the crossfade line.

Will

[tonyabolesphotography]

Thanks. One more question, when I use the default Smug Mug color, I have a white line around the bio box. Can I remove this?



The code is

borderThickness: '20',
borderColor: 'ffffff',

Just stick these two lines (punctuated exactly as above) in the middle of the html code that you get from Allen's instructions (here (http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/3624147)). You could put it, for example, right in front of the crossfade line.

Will

[Allen]

Thanks. One more question, when I use the default Smug Mug color, I have a white line around the bio box. Can I remove this?
Add this to your CSS.

#bioBox {border: none;}

[tonyabolesphotography]

Thanks, doesn't seem to work for me though.


Add this to your CSS.

#bioBox {border: none;}

[Allen]

Thanks, doesn't seem to work for me though.
It's not workng because of a CSS error above it. Add the red } to this.

#bioBox .photo {
display: none;
}

[tonyabolesphotography]

Thanks, can you check to see if it is right. I still have part of the line showing.





It's not workng because of a CSS error above it. Add the red } to this.

#bioBox .photo {
display: none;
}

[tonyabolesphotography]

Do you remove the splash: 'http://www.smugmug.com/img/ria/ShizamSlides/smugmug_black.png' and just put this, splash: '/photos/XXXXX_XXXX-L.jpg',



It's actually not flash that's causing the smugmug logo to display - it's this parameter in your slideshow code:

splash: 'http://www.smugmug.com/img/ria/ShizamSlides/smugmug_black.png',
You can change the splash image to be one of your own photos. If you look at my page, you can see how it looks. Just change the splash parameter to look like this
splash: '/photos/XXXXX_XXXX-L.jpg',
Replace the XXXXX_XXX with the appropriate photo id from the photo you want to use as the splash image, and change the size from -L to whichever size you'd like to use for your splash.

--- Denise

[tonyabolesphotography]

Can someone explain this to me?




Do you remove the splash: 'http://www.smugmug.com/img/ria/ShizamSlides/smugmug_black.png' and just put this, splash: '/photos/XXXXX_XXXX-L.jpg',

[denisegoldberg]

Can someone explain this to me?
You need to replace XXXXXX_XXXX with the id of the photo you want to use for your splash image. Instead of pointing to the smugmug image you are currently referencing, you are referencing one of your own photos. The easiest place to pick up the actual value of XXXXXXX_XXXX for the photo of your choice is the share photos page.

--- Denise

[Allen]

Can someone explain this to me?
The XXXXX_XXXX is a photo number and it's key if you want to use one of
your own photos. Otherwise remove the line completely if you don't want any
splash.

splash: '/photos/XXXXX_XXXX-L.jpg',