HELP

General
Slideshow Controls
GPS Search - Global Positioning System
Slideshow Administration
View/Edit Panel Control
User Information
Picture Set Information
Picture Set Pages
Upload Pictures
Organize Pictures
User Administration

Answers

General
From the Home page, use the dropdown selector to select your parties name or type it in the text box and press "GO".

If it isn't on the list, it is protected. You must type it in the text box and press "GO"

The pictures are organized by:
   Main page, your parties Name.
   Picture Sets, complete groups of pictures, events, vacations, etc.
   Picture Pages, each set of pictures can have several pages of pictures.

Once you have selected your parties name, you will go to their "Main" page.

Select the set of pictures that you want to view. You can begin viewing either a slideshow or a page of pictures. The Admin button allows you to administer the page if you have the password.

Pictures - You can view pictures on a page by clicking the Pictures button. The button will say Slideshow if you are on the pictures page.

Selector - You can select any of the pages in the set by using the drop down selector.

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Slideshow Controls

Total - is the total number of pictures in the slideshow.

Running - is a button. You can click it to run or stop the slideshow.

Speed - is how fast the slideshow runs in seconds. Change the speed to suit yourself. If your internet connection is slow, change the speed so the images are completely loaded or use the Next Button.

Current - is the current picture that is being displayed.

Next - Click it to stop the slideshow and manually advance to the next slide.

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GPS Search - Global Positioning System
Where in the world were these pictures taken? Are there any more from near there?
Click the GPS Search button.
Enter the Latitude and Longitude in the input fields. We use the plus and minus degrees with decimal. Eg. Latitude 33.8504, Longitude -117.8973.
If you want to search in the USA, select the State and the city or zip code. The Latitude and Longitude will be filled in for you.

Select how many miles around the point you want to search. Click Search.
A Drop Down Selector will be displayed with all the Picture Sets that are within the search area. Select the one you want to view.

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Slideshow Administration (Admin)
This is where you enter your user information and setup your pictures. This page is protected by both your user name and password. If you are not signed in you will be directed to the login page where you must enter your user name and password to administer your pictures.

Watch the Information area to the right of the panel name. The information will be green if the operation was OK. It will be red if the operation had an error. If you are having problems the help icon will take you to the help for that panel.

There is very little information required to make a slideshow. Required fields have a light pink background.

Fields that are Read Only have a light blue background. They are used to display information.

Please remember to Update any information if you change it.

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View/Edit Panel Control

At the top of the Administration page is a set of checkboxes, shown above. They control what is shown on the page. Each checkbox controls a section of the page. When a checkbox is checked that section is displayed.

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User Information
We will use this information to contact you. We will never intentionally give this information to a third party. We will only use this information to contact you regarding your membership. Your email address will also be used to send you your password if you forget it.

Name - This is the name that is used in the home page drop-down selector and textbox. This is the Name that you give to people. It must be a unique name in our database. If the User Information fails to update this is probably the reason.

Protected Checkbox - If you only want people you know to look at your pictures check this box. On the home page your name will not be included in the drop-down list. For people to view your pictures they must type in your Name in the text box. Only give your Name to people you want to view your pictures.

Template - The template that you select controls the text style and image header that is at the top of your Main page.

Custom Header Checkbox - If you have a custom header image that we have made for you, check this box and it will be displayed instead of the header image for the template.

Greeting - Enter the greeting that you want displayed when guests view your Main page.

Update User - After you have changed the information in the User Information form you must click Update User to save the information.

Additional Information - The information below the thin line with a blue background cannot be changed.

Password - You can change your password. It must be between 6 and 12 characters long. The Verify text box must be the same as the New text box. Click Change Password to change it. Don't use special characters. Remember it.

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Picture Set Information
You must have at least one set of pictures. You can use the default values and only fill in the Set Name.

Select Set - Select the set of pictures you want to work with.

Order - This is the order that the sets will be displayed in the drop-down list on the Users Main page.

Add Set - Click this button to add a set of pictures to your picture gallery. Remember you must have at least one set of pictures. Don't add more sets than you have pictures for.

Set Name - Enter the name of the set of pictures. This is what people will select. Keep it short and sweet.

Template - The template that you select controls the text style and image header that is at the top of your Set page.

Custom Header Checkbox - If you have a custom header image that we have made for you, check this box and it will be displayed instead of the header image for the template. You must email the image to us if you make your own.

Image Sizes - Pictures that you take with your digital camera are to big to be displayed on a web page. They are resized when they are uploaded. There are two picture sizes, Large and Small. The large pictures are used for slideshows and when a thumbnail is clicked on a picture page. The small size is used for the thumbnails on the picture page.

The Height and Width settings are maximum constraints. Your images will be resized if they are larger than the Height and Width settings. If you set the Width to greater than 800 or the Height to greater than 700 they will be clipped in the slideshow. You can view them on the Pictures page without clipping. If your images are smaller than the constraints, they will not be resized.

The default sizes work well. If your guests have slow internet connections you may want to decrease the Height and Width of the large images. Once images have been uploaded they can not be resized.

GPS - Where in the world did you take these pictures? The Global Positioning System can answer that question with two numbers, the Latitude and Longitude. We use the plus and minus degrees with decimal. Eg.
Latitude 33.8504,
Longitude -117.8973.
This will put you in the USA, Anaheim, California (near home). The "Multimap" button opens Multimap.com. You can find where you took the pictures. Then simply cut and paste the numbers. Make sure you don't get the "(" in the number. Make sure you get the "-" minus sign if it is there.

If you took the pictures in the USA, select the State and the City or zip code. The Latitude and Longitude will be filled in for you.

Update Set - If you change any of the information for the set of pictures, you must update it.

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Picture Pages
Every Set of pictures must have at least one Page to put them on. You must have at least two pictures on each page.

Select Page - Select the page of pictures you want to work with.

Order - This is the order that the pages will be displayed in the drop-down list on the Sliodeshow or Pictures page.

Add Page - Click this button to add a page of pictures to the selected set. Remember you must have at least one Page of pictures for every Set. Don't add more Pages than you have pictures for.

Page Name - Enter the name of the Page of pictures. This is what people will select. Keep it short and sweet.

Song - Each of your pages can have a different song. The songs are in Midi format so they have fairly small file size.

Update Set - If you change any of the information for the Page, you must update it.

Make Slideshow - This button makes the slideshow for the page. After you add pictures to your page you must make the slideshow for the page.

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Uploading Pictures
Before you upload your pictures you may want to orient them correctly and decrease their file size by resizing them and saving them in a compressed format. If you don't have an image editing program we suggest Image Forge. Their basic program is free and it's very simple and easy to use.

Image Forge Instructions:
1. To start with I would make a new folder for the images. That way you can keep the originals.

2. Open a file - Pretty straightforward. You can open all of them by clicking the first one in the tree, hold the shift key down and click the last one to highlight them. Then click OK

3. If you need to rotate the image, at the top there is a rotate button. You should perform any other process on the picture at this point before resizing them.

4. Use the menu at the top Picture > Resize
Resize it to a reasonable size. You are just resizing it to make it smaller for uploading.
Make it 640 wide or 640 tall depending on the orientation of the picture (landscape or portrait)
This wedding slides default for resizing. You can make them as large as 800 wide and 700 tall.

5. Use the menu File > Save As
On the very bottom of the Save As menu check all 3 checkboxes.

6. There is a tab strip at the bottom for the different file formats. (BMP, PCX, JPG ...)
JPG should be selected.

7. Quality 40-50. Smoothness 0 unless you want to smooth the image.

8. Save it to the new folder you made to store the upload pictures in. Delete the folder once you are finished uploading.

It sounds like a long process but it's really very fast.

Your pictures are uploaded to a Set and Page. Select the Set and Page before uploading pictures. If you upload a picture with the same file name to the same set it will be overwritten.

Browse - This button lets you select the picture on your computer to upload. Click the Browse button, go to the folder that has your pictures and click the picture.

Picture Caption - Type in a short description of the picture.

Upload Picture - Click this button to upload the picture.

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Organize Pictures
Once you have uploaded your pictures to a page you can organize them. It may be helpful to use the View/Edit checkboxes to hide some of the panels. You can see more of the pictures without scrolling.

Selecting A Picture - You can select a picture by clicking it in the pictures below the line.

Next- This button displays the next picture.

Update Picture - This button updates the changes you have made. It doesn't update the page move. There is a separate button for that.

Order - You can change the picture order. Notice that the order starts at 2. Pictures order changes move pictures below an existing order. Starting at 2 allows you to change a picture to the first one.

Re-Order - This button re-order the pictures.

Make Slideshow - This button makes the slideshow for the page. After you upload pictures to your page you must make the slideshow for the page.

Picture Caption - If you want to change the caption for the picture you can change it.

Move To Page - Select the page that you want to move the picture to and click the Move button.

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User Administration
If you are the administrator of several wedding slideshows these controls are available.

You can select and basically become one of your users by selecting them from the drop-down list. You can populate the list using the End Date, of the user. Exceeding the End Date does not delete the users slideshows, this must be done manually.

If the End Date is exceeded the slideshows will not be viewable. You can type in an End Date <, check the Criteria Date End, click Fill Users and only the users whose end date is less than the date will be populated in the drop-down list. You can also sort the list by checking Sort Date End.

By selecting a user you basically become that user. You can edit all of their information including their read only information End Date and Space Allocated.

Admin Space Used shows how much space you have used for all of your users.
Admin Space Allocated shows how much space you have been allocated for all of your users. To add a user you must have at least one megabyte of space left. You can change the Space Allocated field in the User Information panel for more space.

Add 6 Months - Adds six months to the users end date.
Update RO User - Updates the users read-only information in the User Panel
Add User - Adds a new user.
Email User - Emails the current user.
Delete User - Deletes the current user can their entire photo album.

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