New look (again) - Photo Gallery now part of main site
Posted By Paul on January 17, 2006
As you can see, I’ve been tinkering with the look of this site again, putting a new [tag]WordPress theme[/tag] up. I’m using the vSlider theme. Click the little oval over on the right hand side of the title area and you’ll see why it’s called vSlider. Obviously, I’ve still got to figure out some of the stuff, and see what all it can do, but it seems like a pretty cool theme.
Some of the features include:
- Very complete, with custom templates for archives listing, search results, 404 page, list of used plugins and other handy details.
- Built-in random header image – no plugin required.
- Includes JS code to fix many of the problems related to PNG transparency in IE.
It also has a companion Gallery2 theme that goes with it; which was a major factor in me deciding to use this theme.
I ‘upgraded‘ my Gallery installation to Gallery2 (G2) from the Gallery 1.5 version and was astounded at how completely ugly and useless G2 was ‘out of the box’. From everything I have been able to see and figure out, [tag]G2[/tag] is a terrible application, not even a shadow of what 1.5 was. So far, I absolutely hate it and would recommend that a person use any photo gallery software other than G2.
Anyways, [tag]vSlider[/tag] makes [tag]G2[/tag] usuable to me with the help of the WPG2 plugin, which is a Wordpress Plug-in that embeds [tag]Gallery2[/tag] within [tag]Wordpress[/tag]. Now that’s something I had been looking for, as I really did want to have the our Photo Gallery be part of our main site, with easy navigation back to any page here. With this theme, and the [tag]WPG2 plug-in[/tag], I’m finally able to do that.
It does appear that there are still some bugs to work out, and the URL for the photos is now going to be different, so, if you had specific albums or photos bookmarked, you probably won’t get them. On the plus side, it is easier to search for something specific in the photos now, so hopefully, it won’t be too hard to find what you’re looking for.
As always, let me know if something isn’t working right on your end, and bear with me as I try to figure out everything involved in embedding G2 into this site, and as I figure out all of the new coding for this new theme.
I like the new look much better. Very clean and less distracting. Well done!
I like the vSlider and the cleaner look. Most of everything else you said went way over my head, *grin*.
Don’t be a stranger!