Gallery How-To

Welcome to the New CoPA Photo Galleries!

New Members (and exisiting Members who did not have images in their old galleries) - please email me when you are ready to upload images and I will set up an empty album and help you get started. Email Betsy

Here are some important things to remember before you edit your personal gallery:

Each Member has one "Album" in the CoPA Members' Galleries.

At this time, please limit your images to a total of 20. As we add members this is especially important. This 20 photo limit will enable the images to load faster.

Images must be jpegs, that is the only format that will work properly with this gallery program. Gifs will not display properly.

Do not upload images larger than 500 pixels, longest dimension (height or width). You can add smaller images which will display at the size uploaded and will not be up-sized as this causes image degradation. Images larger than 500 pixels will be down-sized by the gallery program to 500 pixels. Resizing images before uploading will save server space.

There are several options in the menus that you should not fiddle too much with (stay out of the album and theme tab, please). But, if you do something that causes your gallery to suddenly go "wacky" (can't think of a better term), that's ok. Just email me (Betsy) and I will help.

Do not change your Album Title. Last Name, First Name is needed in order to properly sort albums by member name. This will make it easier for other members to find your gallery.

Although you will find an option to Add Albums to your gallery, please do not add any additional albums at this time.

Do not change anything in the Edit Permissions area.

If after manuevering your way around your album you think of a tip that will help other members, please email it to me and it will be added to this how-to page.

Now is a good time to take a look at your gallery images to see if they need updating or if there are some newer ones you would like to upload to replace older ones. If you only have a few images in your gallery, consider adding up to 20 images total.

And, as always...

If you need help, Email Betsy

Suggestion: Print out this page as a reference before making changes to your gallery.

Getting Started...

You need a password to login to edit your gallery, but not to view galleries.

Details on passwords and usernames can be found in the Member Directory Section of the site (this section is available to CoPA members only and if you've forgotten the password to get into this section, Email Betsy).

If you ever forget your gallery password, there is a built-in forgotten password function that will email your password to you. For that reason, it is important that your email address is up to date. The email addresses that were on your old galleries are the ones that were transferred to the new ones.

Login at the bottom of any of Gallery page. When you do, you will be immediately taken to your gallery. Look for the small blue Edit link at the bottom to begin. When you choose any image and click on it, another Edit link will appear below the image.

Images can be rearranged in your gallery if you'd like them to appear in a particular order. Just hit the link "Rearrange Items" or "Reorder Items" to move your photos around.

You can name your images with whatever title you choose but shorter titles display better. You can add image info in the Description field of each photo to elaborate.

You can choose which image you want to represent your album on the main Gallery page. Go to your album, choose the thumbnail you like, hit Edit Photo and under the Options menu on the left choose Make Highlight. Don't forget to hit Make Highlight again on the next page.

Your email address will not be public unless you personally choose to list it in the Description section of your Album. This is the area where you enter your bio or artist statement. You can also list your personal websites here. You can make them hot links by using the url formating button above the description field.

Don't forget to logout. In the area where you login and logout you will also see a link labeled Your Account where you can check to see if your email address is listed correctly. This is also where you can change your password if you'd like.

There is a <<Jump To>> drop-down menu at the bottom of each Gallery and Album page. Use it to navigate to a specific album quickly. You can Search for a name or image title using the Search box.

A viewing tip: Hovering your mouse over the top left and right areas of any image in any gallery will enable next and previous navigation. This is faster and more technologically efficient than the "slideshow" effect found in many galleries.