Jalbum is a free gallery software that creates personalized web albums of your digital pictures.
Download
How to Use
Tutorials
Use with Front Page
Further Help
Download
Go to the Jalbum website and click on the Download link to sign up.
Note: Make sure you use lowercase letters in your sign up username (No CAPITAL letters) as this causes problems with Jalbum functionality.
Choose a signup name that makes the best sense and looks good.Your albums will then be at a website with the name http://signupname.jalbum.net which you can pass onto anyone you wish to see your albums.
JAlbum creates a photo gallery of your pictures for either:
- the Jalbum website (see steps 1 -13 below)
- your own website (see steps 1 - 11 below and then copy or FTP the files to your web site)
Now download and install Jalbum.
How to Use Jalbum Software
- Open the Jalbum software on your computer
- Drag photos or a folder to the Jalbum project page or click the Add photos button to navigate to your folders and photos on your computer.
- A New Album Project Dialogue box is opened. Your album name is automatically assumed from the name of the parent folder. Change it if you want, and type a description. The description will be a subheading on your album thumbnail page.
- You will notice a More link in the New Album dialogue box. Here you can change the location of the completed album. I suggest you leave the default settings. Your completed album will appear here as an html website on your computer (Useful if you want to burn a CD of your album or want to copy your album to a website of your own).
- Click OK.
- Note that thumbnail pictures of your project now appear in the main window of Jalbum with the name of your project in the top left window.
- Under the Appearance section on the left, select a Skin and a corresponding skin Style for your album. As you hover your mouse over the skins and associated styles you should see a sample preview of what your album might look like. Each skin and corresponding style give you different features to implement in your album, so it would be advisable to play around and create a few sample albums and preview them before publishing them to the Jalbum website. Then select the Skin and Style that suits your needs best. Once you are more familiar with Jalbum I suggest you look at more skins with the Get more skins link. Advanced computer users can even make their own skins or modify an existing one to suit their needs.
- If not already selected - click on the More link to display the Settings button.
- Click Settings to view the Album Settings dialogue.
- You will normally get a dialogue with headings: General, Pages, Images, Advanced, and SkinName (The specific settings related to the Skin chosen). All these settings control the layout, size, quality, colours, fonts embedded links and display of your completed album pages. Generally you can leave these at their default settings. Look at the Skin specific settings (the last one) where you can usually put the most important attributes into your album. Some skins list features such as Filters which allow you to add a watermark to your pictures. Also lookout for the Selling Photos feature, Guestbook, Inserting Headers and Footers and Custom Links. Many of these are useful if you want more information about you or your business on the album pages. Remember that some features have to be enabled by clicking a drop down list and changing the word omit to something else. When you are done click OK.
- Click Make Jalbum. Click Preview if you are not too familiar with your expected results, so you can make changes accordingly, before you publish your album.
At this stage your album is now already saved to your computer. If you did not change the settings in step 4 above, then your album will be saved in My Documents\My Albums\AlbumName\album\ (Windows XP). All the folders and files listed here contains your new album. To view this album double click the index.html file (opens in your web browser).
If you are going to add photos to this album at a later stage make sure you save the Jalbum Project so that you can open it at a later stage and drop some more photos into the project page. You will then need to Repeat Step 11 to recreate your album to include the new photos you have just added.
To create a CD or DVD or to publish to your own website - copy ALL these files and folders.
If you do NOT intend to use the Jalbum website then skip the follwing steps 12 and 13.
Help with Jalbum and Microsoft FrontPage.
- The Publish button on the bottom left will publish your finished album to a folder of the same name on the Jalbum web site (http://yoursignupname.jalbum.net/albumname/).
- To Manage or Delete your published albums, click Tools (on the Menu Bar), Publish/Manage..., Select your account, check that your login information is correct and then click Connect. Now you are able to Rename, Delete, Synchronise and Password protect your published albums. Select an album and click any of the manage icons above to do so. The Address shown at the bottom of the dialogue box is the link to your album, which you can email to others to view your album.
While logged into Jalbum on the web you can manage Widgets. Use Widgets to enhance your page further, for example to add a counter. (Displays number of visitors to your album).
Useful Jalbum Tutorials on YouTube
Download and Install Jalbum
Make a Jalbum
Publish a JAlbum
Password Protect a Jalbum
Microsoft Front Page
Perform steps 1 - 11 above in the section How to Use Jalbum Software, then continue with the following:
- Open Microsoft FrontPage and log into your website within FrontPage
- Create a folder for your new album
- Right click on the root folder item in the left hand side folder and file navigation pane of FrontPage. (This will usually be the topmost item with a name like http://websitename.com).
- Select New Folder
- Name the folder a relevant name for the album, keeping it simple and in lowercase. If you are going to create albums regularly it may be a good idea to simply name the folder by date in this way - 20090727 - i..e. for an album of pictures taken on 27 July 2009.
- Using Windows Explorer browse to the folder location explained in step 11 above. You will see a file called index.html and some other files, including folders called thumbs, slides, and res. Select ALL the items, drag and drop them onto the new folder you created in FrontPage in the step above. (FrontPage will upload them all to your website accordingly).
- Now you need to create a link to your album from one of your website pages in FrontPage.
- Go to your chosen page in FrontPage and click in the location of that page where you wish users of your website to see the link. Now type a word or short phrase. (If you are regularly uploading albums like this then put the most recent one at the top and think of a way of naming them so that when there are many in the list it will be easy for your users to find the album they are looking for.
- Select all the text or phrase you just typed and right click on it, and select Hyperlink or select the Hyperlink icon on the toolbar.
- in the link box type just the name of the folder you are linking to (as long as this folder is in the same directory as the web page you are using). You could also use the browse feature in FrontPage to browse to the folder. Here you should make sure that the link is not pointing to a folder on your computer but simply a relative link to the folder on the internet - e.g. " 20090727/ " (without the quotes). The link will automatically open the index.html file from the album.
- Click the Save icon.
Now use your browser and navigate to your website page where you created the link and test it.
Further Help
Do you need further Help ?
Martin's HelpDesk can provide specialist support for your photo album/ gallery requirements.
We can also make a skin and style to match your company website look and feel so your albums do not look out of place when uploaded to the internet.
Please view our sample galleries.
Click HERE to request further help (normal rates of charge apply).
