I will soon be purchasing a .Mac subscription mainly to use iWeb & Web Gallery. It seems I have been appointed by the family to design a family web site to post photographic events, past & future. As the family is scattered all over Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK, they like the idea of being able to upload the latest family event pictures instead of sending them to me to add to the site. So I have a few questions regarding iWeb and Web Gallery. Bearing in mind that iWeb will mainly be used as a family blurb facility and Web Gallery for all the pic's.

1. I believe I can place a link/s in iWeb to the pertinent Web Gallery photo event slide show but can I place a return link in Web Gallery to the iWeb site?
2. What is the ideal picture format and size for Web Gallery (pixels or Mb) and for that matter for iWeb as well?
3. Would it be better if I set up a .Mac Group?
4. Can others contribute to the Blog page?
5. Can Windows users contribute to Web Gallery?

Well that's it for now but I am bound to have more questions as this project gets under way.

Using Leopard 10.5.1 and iLife '08.

Cheers.

If your using ilife '08, most of these questions are taken care of by iphoto. I reactivated my account yesterday, and worked out how to post a web gallery in about 5 minutes flat. I was most impressed, iphoto does it all for you,you have the option of allowing others to download pics as well as add them to yor galery,. Deleting the gallery is as simple as deleting it from your side bar in iPhoto.

Have a look... http://gallery.mac.com/silverdreamer#100023

I tried Web Galleries for a while, but they seem to only work really well in Safari. I've had a few family members and friends complain that they're not able to view some of the photo's and that it takes forever for pages to load.

This may not be entirely helpful - but I use iPhoto to export to the web server application "Gallery 2" which is running on my Tiger server.

There is a nice plug in for iPhoto called iPhoto2gallery which takes care of all the hand shaking, directory creation etc.

I use it almost daily to upload family photos to my public web server.

I've found it to be a nice solution, and looking to move my Apple collection from a series of web pages to a series of Albums on Gallery 2.

Regards,

JMD

I've got a site for my family that is all over the place too.

I've got a dedicated domain for it and have it hosted running wordpress. So more of a family blog than just a gallery, there's a few different options for posting photos, plus you can write a bit of a story, etc. Seems to work pretty well.

Great photos mate!!!
Makes me wish I did get down to Narooma this last fortnight with some friends!!!!

Thanks for that Dude, Glad you like them. Check the dates, they are all fairly old shots. Gave up photography when I did my back in. But I recently found a Sony cybershot 7Mpxl digital along the Esplanade, ( Courtesy of some careless Jap tourist I assume, so maybe I will try my hand at a bit of digital stuff.

All very interesting guys but nobody has really answered my questions, yet.

I beg your pardon, but Like I said, iphoto '08 will answer most of those questions for you, have a look.

As for the rest, the Dotmac tutorials are the place to start. all your basic questions will be answered there.

Set up a trial account and play with it, if it doesn't suit your purpose, don't renew, the trial is for 6 months.

1) you can link in your iweb to a gallery but not the other way around
2) iPhoto will handle the photo size and format. if you can put it into iPhoto '08 then you can publish it.
3) Personal preference as to the group side of things
4) Only you can add to the blog page
5) Yes other people can subscribe and be notified if any images change in a particular web gallery and they can download and upload to your galleries IF you let them.

web.mac.com/lurka

you can have a look at how I have set mine up if that helps you out.

I have been a .mac member for just on 3 years and Love it totally and use it daily

cheers

Thanks Luka.

Great little site and it does give me ideas.

1. Pity about the "Return Link" from Web Gallery but in Firefox for Mac it auto opened a new Tab from your iWeb site, so I presume it will do the same in Safari and IE7. I could always do what you have done and link Web Gallery from a separate page in iWeb and place a warning.
2. As far photo size/format goes, after looking at the "Properties Panel" for some of the photos, it looks like we are talking about jpg and KB's as opposed to MB's plus pixel size is less than 500 W & H. NOTE: I had read somewhere that Web Gallery and iWeb used PNG and they were rather big.
3. OK
4. Pity about the Blog contributions-family will just have to send the info for me to enter.
5. That's great that others can upload and download.

Questions for you:

1. I presume that you used a blank iWeb template?
2. I counted 323 photos in Web Gallery and 34 photos in iWeb (not including Thumbs), how much space did your web site and My Gallery take up out of your 10GB allocation?
3. Where did you get the iTunes Scripts/Widgets from? (love them)
4. Do these iTunes Widgets just show your taste in music or can you hear it as well.

OK, that's it. Thanks again and you have a great site.

Cheers

1) yeah I sure did use a standard Blank iWeb template.
2) In total my web site and all my galleries and everything else I have in my iDisk totals 936MB
I would have roughly about 60 MB devoted to other stuff in my iDisk.
3) They are part of iWeb in the widget button, you need to turn them on in your iTunes account for them to work.
4) They only show what you have purchased, which for me is a little misleading as I have purchased music for other people to use for iMovies and stuff.

Glad you liked it.
If you have any other questions please feel free to get in touch.

Thanks Luka you have been a great help, especially concerning the MB usage as I can see I will be having a lot of photos.

From Lurka:......3) They are part of iWeb in the widget button, you need to turn them on in your iTunes account for them to work.

Can you show me where that is please?

You need to log into your iTunes store, select your account settings under Quick Links. Then scroll down to Manage My iTunes. Then just go from there.