I think you will enjoy using the new image gallery. First of all, you all have space to upload pictures to the server--plenty of space. You do not have to resize your pictures unless you want to, trust us. I'm not going to tell you how much space we've given each of you, but if you've uploaded any pictures and looked carefully at the message on the screen after the upload was complete, you'll know how much space you have. It's a lot. But if you are having trouble getting started with the gallery in general, this tutorial should help. First, look for the "Gallery" link in the "Main Menu" block on the left. Once you click on that, you will see the top level of the gallery. Right now we have three different galleries--the Member gallery, the competition gallery, and the events gallery. The competition gallery will be used for a possible upcoming online-only photo competition (let us know if you are interested!). The events gallery will be a "public" gallery where members will be able to upload images from any VBPC events. But for now, let's concentrate on the member gallery.
When you click on that gallery, you will see the many member galleries that we have. Note that there are more than one page of member galleries, so your gallery may be on one of the later pages.
Bottom page navigation
I'll show you a shortcut to find your member gallery quicker in just a minute. If you haven't uploaded any pictures to your gallery yet, your gallery will look something like this, with the "no thumbnail" link.
You can click on the "no thumbnail" link and you will indeed be looking at a big, empty gallery. In which case you can click on the "Edit" link at the bottom of the page, or you can click on that drop down selection box below the "no thumbnail" link and choose "Edit Album". Please don't choose "Delete Album". That one really will delete your album. Please don't edit the permissions or move your album either. You may however choose to reorder the items in your album.
Whether you clicked on the "Edit" link from within your gallery, or clicked on the "Edit Album" selection from the drop-down box, you will be presented with a screen where you can change a lot of things about your album. For the most part, you won't need to changeany of them, but you may want to upload a custom thumbnail. This thumbnail is the "icon" that is displayed with your username along with all of the other member albums. You don't have to upload a custom icon though. If you don't, the album will default to using the first image you upload. And you can change it at any time. Now, back to uploading images.
Look at the Options menu on the left side. If you choose the "Add Items" menu, you will be presented with a screen for which you can browse to and upload images to your gallery. It's really that simple.
Some of the other things you can do are create sub-albums (like sub-folders on your hard drive), edit the captions on your images quickly and easily.
Oh, and that shortcut to getting to your album quickly? After you click on the Gallery link in the Main Menu block, if you look in the upper right corner of the screen you will see a link to "Your Album".
That will take you into your album. If you want to add some items to your album, just click on the edit link at the bottom.
That's it. I can't wait to see your pictures!