On my new SYS site, I've been building pages (which drop down from the main Menu catgories) with photos grouped according to place or species. Photos are clustered on the page, not formed into a single large grid of images. Here are a couple of "finished" examples:

http://bestnaturestock.com/places/arizona/
http://bestnaturestock.com/plants/cacti/

Exactly how each page looks depends on the size of the monitor being used.

I'm getting this look by manually separating the clusters of photos with lines (either a single line or multiple lines as needed) like this:

<span style="color: #ffffff;">*************************************************</span>

This produces an invisible (because it's white #ffffff on white) divider line that makes the pages look the way I want on "normal-size" computer screens.

However, I'm starting to worry about two things. Phrased as questions, they are:

1. How will pages manually spaced like this look on mobile phones, iPads, etc.? (I don't own either so can't test it.)

2. How will search engines react to pages done like this?


And I'm wondering: Is there some kind of block layout or grid pattern that I could use instead of my clunky manual system? It would have to be able to have empty "blocks" or "spaces" to work for me.

If anybody has thoughts on this or answers to my questions, I'll be grateful for the help.

Thanks in advance!

2. don't worry about SEO

1. yes you can

Symbiostock comes with a preinstalled library, you can use at this time.
There is one CON, Smbiostock uses Bootstrap version 2 - version 3 just came out.
I don't know if Leo will try to change it, it's not necessary at the moment, so you may use the v2 rules.

http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2/scaffolding.html

Happy griding

2. don't worry about SEO

1. yes you can

Symbiostock comes with a preinstalled library, you can use at this time.
There is one CON, Smbiostock uses Bootstrap version 2 - version 3 just came out.
I don't know if Leo will try to change it, it's not necessary at the moment, so you may use the v2 rules.

http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2/scaffolding.html

Happy griding

Just noticed it yesterday. Already loving it. I have some catching up to do.

BTW - don't worry too much about SEO. Basically Symbiostock's a finely tuned truck with some horsepower. It would be wrong if you didn't take it off-roading and get it dirty a bit Hodgepodge your site away and have fun. You'll do fine.

Quote from: plrang on August 01, 2013, 13:41

2. don't worry about SEO

1. yes you can

Symbiostock comes with a preinstalled library, you can use at this time.
There is one CON, Smbiostock uses Bootstrap version 2 - version 3 just came out.
I don't know if Leo will try to change it, it's not necessary at the moment, so you may use the v2 rules.

http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2/scaffolding.html

Happy griding

Just noticed it yesterday. Already loving it. I have some catching up to do.

BTW - don't worry too much about SEO. Basically Symbiostock's a finely tuned truck with some horsepower. It would be wrong if you didn't take it off-roading and get it dirty a bit Hodgepodge your site away and have fun. You'll do fine.

Thanks, Leo. With your blessing, I'll continue to hodgepodge away to my heart's content. But I am interested in Bootstrapping, because it might make for simpler page construction. As is right now, I spend an hour or more per page simply getting the thumbnails all in their proper clusters, lined up without gaps or overlapping ID lines, and more or less arranged to my liking. But... I'm the one choosing to do it this way, so I don't mind.

Is Bootstrap already available somewhere in SYS that I haven't discovered? I've looked at their own page, but it seems rather complicated to this rookie. 'Twould be great if it was already on SYS somewhere, ready to be put to work.

Any chance for pop-up titles on the thumbnails, like we have with the full-size images? That would help because then I actually could dump the images on a page into one grid knowing customers could easily see what the critter is, without having to click through to the image-specific page.

Oops! Sorry for the extra request. You're supposed to be R&Ring these days, aren't you?

A thought - would Plrang's plug in help you ?  Take a look at the bottom of my front (and other) pages to see one example of what can be done

Wow, that's verrrrrrrrrrrry nice! (I believe you're talking about the clusters of gridded images with pop-up enlargements right above the footer on your site.)

YES!!! I do believe that would do the job for me. Looks like it would simplify my life and improve my site all at the same time.

Can you (or Pirang) please tell me how to find that plug in. What's it's "name"?

there's an easier way to get thumbnails of your images, and it includes captions and alt text with the image

I've been calling this method contact sheets --there's a previous thread about it, but basically when you do a search at http://symbiostock-search.com the standard report creates thumbnails which also have the caption as a link 


I search on a topic I need, eg 'nemrut', then I   extract my images from the webpage that results: .  just do a 'view source' of the results page & cut & paste to your new html page

it works best if you're posting these on a site other than your symsite as it then creates backlinks for SEO.  you can place these within your site, though, as you've4 been doing but WP has trouble with tables, so you may need to do some reformatting, but at least you can get your images much more quickly


result: http://cascoly.com/trav/turkey/nemrut-dag.asp

 if there's interest I can make the search specific to a site to make it easier for searches like 'food' where there are many sites

-----------------------------

for those who don't want to do the work themselves, I offer a contact sheet service that also includes hosting on my non-symsite in an appropriate context

http://cascoly-images.com/pix/custom-contact-sheets-for-seo/

Basically Symbiostock's a finely tuned truck with some horsepower. It would be wrong if you didn't take it off-roading and get it dirty a bit

LOL - I love this one! Don't break an axle, though 

Quote from: cascoly on August 01, 2013, 15:41

 if there's interest I can make the search specific to a site to make it easier for searches like 'food' where there are many sites

Interest here, Steve. It would be useful to generate quick link pages, and we have some underemployed domains to park them on, including a wordpress.com blog with good Google-juice.

ok, i'll add that shortly.  meanwhile, the current display mostly keeps images from each site together, so it's relatively easy to delete all the other images when you cut the table from 'view source'

Quote from: cascoly on August 01, 2013, 17:14

Quote from: Travelling-light on August 01, 2013, 17:04

Quote from: cascoly on August 01, 2013, 15:41

 if there's interest I can make the search specific to a site to make it easier for searches like 'food' where there are many sites

Interest here, Steve. It would be useful to generate quick link pages, and we have some underemployed domains to park them on, including a wordpress.com blog with good Google-juice.

ok, i'll add that shortly.  meanwhile, the current display mostly keeps images from each site together, so it's relatively easy to delete all the other images when you cut the table from 'view source'

ok, you can now do a search for a specific site...

Very good! Thanks, Steve. Example just made and posted here: http://picturemojo.wordpress.com/indian-food-images/

By the way, your code isn't closing the tr and td tags; easy to put them in with a search and replace in Dreamweaver, though.

Very good! Thanks, Steve. Example just made and posted here: http://picturemojo.wordpress.com/indian-food-images/

By the way, your code isn't closing the tr and td tags; easy to put them in with a search and replace in Dreamweaver, though.

i was about to ask how you did the table in wp, then realized it may be that wp requires those closing tags!  sure enough, i grabbed a small part of your table & it displayed fine on a new page on my site; but wwhen i take out the closing tags it no longer works.   i hadn't noticed because the pages i post display fine in the browser

I've fixed that & end tags are in place

if you'd like to trade posts, i could place your Indian food images as a linked page from main India page http://cascoly.com/trav/india.asp

Maybe this new feature would be useful for you Martha http://stock.imagerion.com/syxtra/including-thumbnails-in-posts-or-pages/