Wild Rockies Race Team Photo Galleries
The purposes of the WR Photo Galleries are to provide the general public access to reduced resolution versions of the photo galleries (e.g., typically 1/4 resolution) and to enable WR team members to securely share full resolution original photos and images without compromising image quality. Of course, this security depends on each team mate not giving away another team mate’s full resolution original photographs.
A prime example of giving away another team mate’s photo IP is team mate “F” uploads full resolution original photos to Media Library, and creates Photo Gallery that includes photo of team mate “W”, then team mate “W” downloads the full resolution original photo of him from team mate “F’s” Photo Gallery and posts it on facebook. Even though the version of the photo that is viewable / downloadable on facebook has been resolution downscaled, cropped to square and compressed to hell, facebook still has the original and certain IP rights, and responsibilities (e.g., for cases of law enforcement and national security).
At the very least, team mate “W” should have performed 1/2 x 1/2 resolution downscaling on team mate “F’s” full resolution original photo prior to uploading to facebook, and this is very easy single step operation with almost any image processing software.
WordPress has native “bare bones” Gallery functionality that is available for “Authors” to include in Posts. While this has limited features and requires administrator assistance to realize a gallery on a web page, zero image processing is performed, and hence zero image degradation occurs.
Numerous “Photo Gallery” plugins were evaluated against the native WordPress Gallery functionality, and for the most part they are based on the native WordPress Gallery functionality and add additional features, slideshow, filmstrip, light box, water mark, music, thumbnail mosaic, etcetera. However, all these plugins have the fatal drawback that administrator role is required, and in some cases they degraded the resolution of the “full resolution” images available for download.
Hence, the native WordPress Gallery functionality was selected for the WR Race Team Photo Gallery solution.
The first step to creating a photo gallery for inclusion on the WR Race Team Photo Gallery page is to upload the photos and images into the Media Library (e.g., full resolution originals or both full resolution originals and 1/4 resolution versions), and add Captions (e.g., racer name(s), race category, scene depicted). The next step is to write a brief Post with Title “Gallery for some event”, and include any other detail you would like included in the Gallery heading on the Photo Gallery page (i.e., it will be assumed that Post author is also Gallery author).
Then hit enter to place cursor on fresh line in the Post, click on the “Add Media” button, click on the “Create Gallery” menu item on the left, and then click on the Media Library thumbnails to include in the Gallery. Click the “Create a new gallery” button, select Size “Medium”, and then click the “Insert gallery” button. The “Medium” Size selection produces gallery thumbnails with the same aspect ratio as the originals, and a 3 Column Gallery will nicely fill the page. If you desire to protect your full resolution photos / images from being downloaded by the general public, it is necessary to do this twice to create two gallery versions, the full resolution version (that requires log in to view) and the 1/4 resolution version (viewable by the general public).
Galleries containing from one to nine photos / images are ideal. If you have more than nine photos / images, it is strongly recommended to divide the photos / images into categories (e.g., Cat1 Race, Cat2 Race, Cat3 Race), and then create separate galleries for each category.
The final step is to password protect the Post prior to pushing the Publish button. Click the Edit link next to the “Visibility” item in the Publish window. The password options are to either use the secret WR Race Team website password, or select password of your choosing and send it via email to the site administrator.
As soon as I see the Protected Post, I will create a header on the Photo Gallery page with your name, event name and date, and copy and paste the gallery “short code” from your Post underneath. The Post will then be deleted.
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