Many people who use Page Builder wish to make a photo album. There is no pre-made template that you can use to make a photo album. You will have to make your own!
Making a photo album is not hard but there are several question that must be answered before you start.
To see an example of a photo album page, please Click Here!.
How does Page Builder handle photos?
When you upload a photo to your file manager and then use it on a web page using Page Builder, this is what happens. You put the photo on your page and then "drag" the corner to make the photo fits where you want it. This does not reduce the size of the photo! It is still the same size but the HTML code that Page Builder generates for your page tells a browser to change the display size.
The photo is still the same size, both in width and height, but a browser will only display it in the size that Page Builder tells it to use. Think of it this way, the original photo has a "weight", height, and width. Then height and width are changed but the "weight" is the same. The "weight" is the number of bytes that the photo occupies on your PC and in your file manager.
Are the photos are to large?
Page Builder users generally don't realize how a photos or graphics is handled by Page Builder when they use them on their pages and probably don't realize the actual size, in pixels or bytes.
Pixels refer to the resolution of a monitor. Normal monitors can display many resolutions, e.g. 800X600, 1024X768. A digital camera can take photos with several different pixel resolutions, e.g. 1600X1200.
Bytes refers to the amount of storage space the photo takes up either on your PC, file manager, or in your digital camera. Bytes can be measured in KiloBytes (KB) or Megabytes (MB). A typical web page, just the code to tell a browser what and how to display on the screen, would be about 25,000 bytes, 25KB or .025MB, which is pretty small. A typical photo could be 1,500,000 bytes, 1,500KB or 1.5MB, which is very large.
Why is the size of a photo important? Because GeoCities, and many other hosts on the web, limit the amount of data transfer. Each time someone visits your site and views a page, GeoCities has to download to the visitor's PC, the web page and all graphics, such as photos, to the visitor's PC. So if you page is 25KB and you have one photo on the page which is 1.5MB, then then total data transfer to the visitor's PC will be 1.5000025MB or 1,500,025,000 bytes! GeoCities allows its free member about 4.2 MB data transfer per hour before they will shut down your site for an hour. For more information on data transfer, please see my data transfer help page.
A good byte size for photos on a page is about 25-50,000 bytes (25-50KB).
Do you want to use Thumbnails or re-sized graphics?
Thumbnails are just small copies of the original photo in both height, width, and storage bytes. Thumbnails allow you to put more photos on a page without the excessive data transfer involved if you used the original photos. To read more about thumbnails Click Here! Thumbnails are generally 1/8 the size of the original photo or smaller.
Re-sizing means to take the original photo and reduce the original height, width and storage bytes. As most monitors today use either 800X600 or 1024X768 pixel resolution a good size for a photo on a web page is about 300 pixels wide.
How many photos should be put on a page?
There is no hard and fast answer to this question. It all depends on the size of the photos. Using thumbnails as links to the larger photos you could put 10-20 photos on a page. If you used re-sized graphics, say no more the 300 pixels wide, you could put 6-10 on a page. You have to total up the total storage bytes of the photos on the page and try to have it less than 250,000 Bytes or 250KB. Thumbnail links are an excellent method of putting many photos on a page as they are small and the visitor can view the larger photo without excessive data transfer, i.e. they only view the larger photos that they want to see.