What are categories for?

[bulldozer]

I still can't figure out what categories are supposed to do. I originally thought that you could put pictures in them, but you have to have an album for that.

I have been using albums to do everything and can't figure out what categories are supposed to do. I add albums to albums which is sort of like a category I think.

Can someone please explain categories to me?

[Casper]

Smaller site may not need categories, but any with a large number of pics, or a range of subjects certainly do.
They make navigating to what you want much easier, especially if you have many albums.

Say your site was an interest in dogs and you had thousands of pics from hundreds of breeds, you would want to categorise them first, into the type of breed, i.e., Terriers, Hounds, Toys, Working, Utility, Gundogs and Pastoral.

Then within each you would have your albums, or even sub-categories, say for Crufts 2003, Crufts 2004 etc.

And you cannot put albums inside other albums.

[bulldozer]

Ok, I kind of see it now. The problem I seem to be having is, if I have category for Dogs, and then German Shepard, I have to create album for German Sheppard.

Then if you look at location it is Home/Dogs/German Shepard/New Album instead of just  Home/Dogs/German Shepard/

I guess I'm just being picky

[Casper]

No, you can just put the German shepherd album in the Dogs Category, if you wanted, so it would be dogs/german shepherd/...jpg., where the album is in the dogs cat.
Or you could go dogs/pastoral/germanshepherd/....jpg, where the album is in the pastoral sub-cat.

In both cases there is only one case of german shepherds.

Just think of it like the window/programs folder.  If each new program just dumped all its files in there, not in directories and sub-directories, it would be unworkable.  Just think of the categories like these directories.

[bulldozer]

Yes, but if I put a album directly into category image link shows up on main page instead of being hidden until you click on text link.

[Joachim Müller]

that's what the option "Show first level album thumbnails in categories" in coppermine config is for - set it to "No" and you should be fine...

GauGau

[bulldozer]

ahh, that should help! thanks

[Casper]

Well why didn't you say you just didn't want the thumb on the front page  :?