Lateral thinking needed. Please

[Retrograde]

I honestly need help, my hair needs it more.

Im slightly apprehensive to post here again, I had a shitty experience last time, which was completely unhelpful and just reconfirmed to me why I dont enjoy forums. But whatever, maybe I'll get hold of somebody who's helpful this time.
(if I may, please read through entirely)

my site : www.retrograde.smugmug.com (http://dgrin.com/www.retrograde.smugmug.com)

If you go to galleries, you'll notice mine are set up in a typical fashion, as best as I can describe.
Landscapes, Skyscapes, Flora (that's plants) and Fauna (the animals) and also one for People and one for Street photography.

Unfortunately, I have a problem.
I recently moved to America, and I now want a category specifically for America, where I can put my "sub-galleries" (ie: Roadtrip to Wisconsin,etc).
This doesnt seem possible, as you'll see when you look at my portfolio, which is organised by galleries, and not catagories.

If i organise by catagories, I get slightly different labels, but if I organise by galleries, my "america" category disappeared.

Also, if in category mode, each category only has a single gallery inside it, because Smug demands i craete a category for each gallery.

Please, I need some lateral out of the box thinking...

[jfriend]

On your current galleries page, Smugmug can display by gallery or by category. They do not offer anything on that page that is in between (some galleries and some categories).

What you could do is the following:

Put all the galleries you want at the top level in a top level category (call it "MyGalleries").
Then, create a sub-category for "America" and put the various America galleries in that sub-category.
At this point, the MyGalleries category page will be showing you some galleries thumbs and the sub-category thumbs for your America sub-category.
Then, instead of linking to your current galleries page in your navbar (which can only display galleries or categories, but not a mixture of both), you link directly to the MyGalleries category (which can display both galleries and sub-categories ).The one disadvantage of this approach is that you give up a level of hierarchy because you used the top level of categories instead of your current galleries page. But, if you don't need to go deeper, it could work fine.

[Retrograde]

My God, thank you.
that really does sound like it should work amazingly! I look forward to implementing it later this evening, thank you! :D

[Retrograde]

Ok Jfriend, I went with your suggestion, and I'm super happy with what I have now, which is saying something because I haven't know what I've wanted for a long time.

Anyway, would it be rude to ask a few more questions in this thread, rather than making a specific thread for them?

well, here they are, either way. :)

1.
At some point (im not sure when) i messed some code up, and now the titles above my galleries/catagories etc are back. How do i make them go away?

2.
also, slightly related, is that most, if not all the links on my pages are now green as well, when before they were a golden colour (which i see on some pages, but i dont know if my viewers do)

3...
If that wasn't enough, I'm having a hard time arranging my catagories and galleries.
If there's or thread I missed on here, I'm sorry, it seems like there would be more about this, but i havent found anything clear..
My catagories are left justified, I would like to change this to :

a more square containing box

centered catagories, spaced moderately apart. (can I make bigger thumbnails at all?)

galleries aligned in the center

(you'll notice in my Americana (http://retrograde.smugmug.com/Americana) gallery, all the thumbnails are bigger, and aligned hard-left, is this possibly because I've set all galleries in that catagory to display original thumbs?)

and finally, can I move the text above the thumbnail? would it be possible to make only visible on a mouseover of the thumbnail?

I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to come at you with so many questions, but if you can help me with any of them I'd be super happy.

Thanks/matt

[jfriend]

Ok Jfriend, I went with your suggestion, and I'm super happy with what I have now, which is saying something because I haven't know what I've wanted for a long time.

Anyway, would it be rude to ask a few more questions in this thread, rather than making a specific thread for them?

well, here they are, either way. :)

1.
At some point (im not sure when) i messed some code up, and now the titles above my galleries/catagories etc are back. How do i make them go away?

2.
also, slightly related, is that most, if not all the links on my pages are now green as well, when before they were a golden colour (which i see on some pages, but i dont know if my viewers do)

3...
If that wasn't enough, I'm having a hard time arranging my catagories and galleries.
If there's or thread I missed on here, I'm sorry, it seems like there would be more about this, but i havent found anything clear..
My catagories are left justified, I would like to change this to :

a more square containing box

centered catagories, spaced moderately apart. (can I make bigger thumbnails at all?)

galleries aligned in the center

(you'll notice in my Americana (http://retrograde.smugmug.com/Americana) gallery, all the thumbnails are bigger, and aligned hard-left, is this possibly because I've set all galleries in that catagory to display original thumbs?)

and finally, can I move the text above the thumbnail? would it be possible to make only visible on a mouseover of the thumbnail?

I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to come at you with so many questions, but if you can help me with any of them I'd be super happy.

Thanks/matt
Start by removing these lines in red from your CSS which are invalid and causing errors:

/***********/END ANDYDEMO COPYPASTE\***********/

and

/* No big thumbs on big res */
SM.SmugMug.config.autoThumbSize = false;



The first one is a mal-formed comment. You could change it to:

/*********** END ANDYDEMO COPYPASTE ***********/

The second one is javascript and belongs in one of your javascript sections, not a CSS section.

Then, remove this line in red which is invalid CSS:

#my_banner {
width: 600px;
height: 80px;
margin: 10px;
margin-top: 12px;
align-left;
background: url(http://retrograde.smugmug.com/photos/606009187_jp7ME-O.png) no-repeat;
}