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How To Create An Online Family Photo Album
by David Berky
How To Create An Online Family Photo Album
By David Berky
One of the best things about the Internet is the ability to share information. Although there are many Internet photo album services (search for "online photo album"), creating your own online family photo album can be a simple and satisfying project.
First you have to determine where your web pages will be located. You may want to use one of the many free hosting services. Often your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will give you space on their computer to host your web pages.
Or you can register your own family domain name. One of the nice things about having a family domain name is that you can give out email addresses to all your family members.
You can be you@surname.com. Your surname will most likely be taken so you will need to choose a different name like georgejetsonfamily.com or george-jetson-family.com. Or try the .net or .org extensions.
If you use your email address a lot, you may want a shorter name like gjetson.com or gjetson-fam.com. The possibilities are limitless.
A domain can be registered for only $9/year (as of this writing) at http://www.godaddy.com.
If you register a domain name you will also need a hosting service. For simple hosting with limited email you can find companies that only charge $4-10 per month. For extensive email accounts, you may have to pay up to $20 per month.
Some hosting companies help you by registering your name as part of their service. It is convenient but it may cost you more for the registration than if you do it yourself. But if you are not too familiar with all this Internet stuff it may be the easiest.
The web is largely made up of HTML files. HTML files are simply files of regular typewriter (remember those?) text, the same characters that are on your computer keyboard.
There are many fancy HTML text editors like Microsoft FrontPage and others, but you really only need a simple text editor such as the NotePad program that comes with every version of Windows. Similar text editors can be found for all types of computers.
You can use your text editor to create HTML files. Save all your HTML files and image/picture files in the same folder so they can be easily found. The common extension (characters after the dot "." in the file name) are .HTML and .HTM.
Be sure to save your files with one of these extensions, ex: "myfile.htm". Don't use spaces in the file name and try to only use lower case letters. Dashes (-) and underscore (_) characters are good to use to separate words in the file name, ex: my-file.htm or my_file.html.
A simple online picture album can consist of two types of HTML pages. The first page is an "index" page that has links to each of your album pages.
For the HTML code shown below you need to type the angle brackets (< and >). The text or tag names within the brackets can be upper or lower case. The basic format for the "index.htm" page is:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Online Family Photo Album</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<TABLE width="700px" cellpadding="10px" align="center">
<TR><TD>
<FONT face="Arial" size="2">
<CENTER>
<H1>My Online Family Photo Album</H1>
<A href="album-page2.htm">July 2002 - Some Event</A>
<A href="album-page1.htm">June 2002 - Some Other Event</A>
<BR><BR>
</CENTER>
</FONT>
</TD></TR></TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>
I won't try to explain all the workings of the HTML code and tags in this article. There are only a few things you need to change to create your own pages.
The words in between the angled brackets are called "tags". Most tags have a beginning tag, like <TITLE> and an ending tag, like </TITLE>. The ending tag is the same word with a slash "/" in front.
The tags identify what the text between them is (<TITLE> text shows in your browser window's title bar) or how the text should be displayed (<B> makes the text bold until the bold end tag, </B> is encountered).
You can change the text between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> and <H1> and </H1> tags to whatever you want. The main changes you will want are to add additional pages using the <A href> and </A> tags.
Give each album page a different name (you may want to include the date or the event so they are easy to remember, e.g., 2003-july-family-picnic.htm). The name of the HTML file goes in quotes after the "href=" text inside the first <A> tag.
The text in between the <A href> and </A> tags is what will show up as the underlined link text.
The basic format for each album page (like "album-page1.htm" or "2003-july-family-picnic.htm") is:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Online Family Photo Album</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<TABLE width="700px" cellpadding="10px" align="center">
<TR><TD>
<FONT face="Arial" size="2">
<CENTER>
<H1>July 2002 - Some Event</H1>
<IMG src="picture1.jpg"><BR><BR>
A description or caption for this picture.<BR><BR><BR>
<IMG src="picture2.jpg"><BR><BR>
A description or caption for this picture.<BR><BR><BR>
<BR><BR>
<A HREF="index.htm">Back to the Index Page</A>
<BR><BR>
</CENTER>
</FONT>
</TD></TR></TABLE>
</BODY>
</HTML>
On this page you will want to customize the <H1> heading tag to say what the pictures are about.
For each picture you will have an <IMG> tag. The "src=" value will be the name of the picture file (usually ending in JPG if it was a digital photo). Below the <IMG> tag and the line break tags (<BR>) you can put a description or caption for the picture.
Creating the pages is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Or just create and save a template file. Then edit your template file and use the "Save As" option to save the template file as your new HTML page.
One of the hardest parts (or just learning/figuring it out) is editing your digital photos so they are not huge files (both in display size and file size). Most free image editing software, such as Microsoft Image Composer, will do all the editing you will need.
You should shrink your pictures so they are no more than 400 pixels wide (or tall). Then we save them as a JPG file using about 20% compression.
This will give you pictures that display well on the web site and don't take forever to download. The file sizes end up being about 15k - 25k. And try to keep the pages limited to 4 - 8 pictures. Any more and it takes forever to download (especially over a dial-up connection).
The other hard part is learning how to upload your pictures to your web site. You can use a program like CuteFTP (http://www.cuteftp.com) to upload the pictures and HTML files. It is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it.
And probably anyone you know who has created a web site or web page probably could help you with these tasks.
Building your online photo album will help you become familiar with the skills and techniques needed to publish on the web. Who knows, this may be the start of a new career or maybe just a good way to get more mileage out of your digital pictures.
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© Simple Joe, Inc.
David Berky is president of Simple Joe, Inc. a marketing company that sells simple software under the brand name of Simple Joe. One of Simple Joe's best selling products is Simple Joe's Money Tools - a collection of 14 personal finance and investment calculators.
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