I would like to create a more complex/varied pattern for the thumbnail image display in my custom theme. Instead of every thumbnail looking exactly the same in the standard grid layout I would like to do something like this photographer/web designer did:
http://www.widerange.org/gallery.php?gallery=LargeFormat (http://www.widerange.org/gallery.php?gallery=LargeFormat)
This is a php template based layout. If you examine the layout you will see a pattern emerge based around *two* thumbnail sizes. This pattern consists of tables with varied rows, number of columns and sizes which repeats itself every ~15 images. The three primary challenges in doing this are:
1. Using two thumbnail sizes.
2. Creating a more complex table based pattern (vs. standard grid layout) which repeats itself every ~15 images.
3. Use this within the Coppermine framework/paradigm for laying out and displaying thumbnails.
As far as the first challenge, I could create the larger thumbnails myself if need be and place them in a different directory/sub directory.
And for the second challenge, I have already examined the discovered the more complex table based pattern used.
The third one is the larger challenge for me after examining CPG's current thumbnail template and function structure - The template_thumbnail_view is very simple. It is just a template for a single cell in a table containing 1 thumbnail which will then repeat n times.
My question is would it be possible in CPG to create a custom thumbnail template made up of *more* than one image like the one shown above and use that layout instead? I think this would involve some database lookups which I am OK with. I am just not sure how to lay things out within CPG.
Thanks for any tips you can provide,
Derek
Not sure about doing this directly within Coppermine for each album but if you want to make a splash page for your gallery take a look at cpmFetch (http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?board=87.0). You could create the splash page and maybe even have it generate a random image layout.
Thanks Gizmo,
I will take a look at cpmFetch to see if it can handle a varied cell pattern for layouts.
I had a feeling this kind of layout of may go beyond standard CPG functionality. I thought this may require a custom php page of some sort with a little looser structure.
- Derek