Automatically update new photos on a webpage.

[Chelsea7]

Hello everyone,

I have a question about loading photos on a website. What's happening is that my department tasked me to develop a website for our customers. My manager wants to be able to simply upload photos to the Current Events page, where she will be able to upload them in a 'Image' directory or a special created directory for the pics only. Once they are uploaded they appear as a slide show on this webpage without having me do any additional coding. This page can be updated at any time and she wants to be able to upload, delete the files at anytime. She has access to do this through the webhost of course. So basically if a new file is dropped into this folder, it automatically is included in the slide show with the others.

Any assistance would be apreciated.
Chelsea

 

[trollacious]

My manager wants to be able to simply upload photos to the Current Events page, where she will be able to upload them in a 'Image' directory or a special created directory for the pics only.

That statement doesn't make any sense. Files of any kind are uploaded to a folder/directory.

Or does she want you to design the slideshow for the Current Events page that will automatically read the names of the photos in the folder and display them on the page? If so, that would entail using server side scripting (PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, etc., depending on what your web host has available for your hosting package). That's not a simple task, not something you're likely able to do if you don't have experience with that kind of thing.

As well, if you want captions for the photos, you'll have to do something to update those when new photos are added and/or old ones removed.

Lee

 

[spamjim]

This is easy in most 'content management systems'. Drupal.org is one example. If you have not started site development yet, now is the best time to choose a CMS.

 

[darryncooke]

To add to what spamjim is saying, is that it is easy because it runs off a database...

We had a php script that did what you wanted, but it worked by the photo name as to how they were ordered (alphabetically). Either way this is no SIMPLE task. Unfortunately most people see something online and figure HEY THAT MUST BE EASY TO DO. If I only thought that way about everything then my transmission rebuild would be done for $50. I mean hey its been done before so how hard can it be.

If you tell your manager they are a dunce then you are not a team player and you get in trouble. The best thing you can do is get his/her expectations in writing and then you respond with the options. 1 option could be that you can do it but you think it will take 4 weeks. Another option could be that you can outsource it and it will take 1 week and cost X amount. If your manager asks something unreasonable ask them HOW you should go about doing this as it would appear they know more than you. If they pick one of the options you present then move forward that way.

To many people want websites like amazon developed for a couple hundred. Why? Stupidity? Most likely.

Darryn Cooke

http://www.darryncooke.com

| The New Orange County Graphic designer and Marketing and Advertising Consultant

http://www.bloobie.com

| Marketing and Advertising blog

 

[BigRed1212]

You may not need to roll your own. Take a look at the basic embedded Flickr slideshow.

If your Boss already uses Flickr then you are halfway home.

http://flickrslidr.com/

 

[Foamcow]

Whilst I would probably do something with a CMS/Database you could achieve this quite simply with a bit of server side scripting to grab the files from the directory.

Combine that with some Javascript (or even a Flash element) and you can make a good looking slideshow.

What server side languages do you have available. Getting a list of files in a directory using PHP (for example) is pretty simple.

Use your server side scripting again to put the images on the page (using CSS to hide them).

Then perhaps look at the jQuery Cycle Plug in (

http://malsup.com/jquery/cycle/)

to do the actual slideshow bit.

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