Photo Gallery Pages Options

[narnold1989]

A friend and I are starting our own little mini-business for freelance designing of t-shirts, handlettering, branding, etc. Website design is going to be part of it, and creating our own website from scratch is like our first big project. We've both done some in school but haven't touched it a lot since graduating a couple years ago and are trying to brush up on everything.

Long story short, we have a page on our site called Works, which houses 5 categories: Web Design, Merchandising, Handlettering, Branding, and my friend's college thesis project. I want each of those 5 to be its own photo gallery on the Works page when you click on a category, and then I want each category to have separate works to click into which opens a photo gallery I have set up already.

Basically, Works Page -> 5 Category Pages -> Projects to click into which opens the photo gallery.

What is the best/cleanest way to program this? As of now I have each category set up as its own html page, and then each project also set up as its own page, but is there a cleaner way to transition between pages so that it doesn't look like you are leaving and re-loading the main Works page each time you pick a different category/project? I've got all the basics down but am unsure of how to basically put these pages within pages within pages without it looking like they are on different pages, if that makes any sense. I'm not the best at describing things technically haha. If there's a way to nest all of these on ONE page for clean transitions between everything, awesome. I just don't know how to do it.

So yeah, any and all help is much appreciated!

Thanks in advance,

Nick

[narnold1989]

Also, I realize it would help to actually see what it is I'm talking about. I'm currently at work but when I get home I can attach screen shots of what I have so far.

[pandy]

Well, there are ways to hide most of the page and make the part you want visible. With that many galleries that would be one heavy page.

IMO there is no better way than doing it as you do it now, functionality-wise. You get light pages, people can bookmark the page they want or link directly to it. That's harder with the one page setup. I wouldn't do it, but that's me. If you want a contiguous look, just use the same menus, headers and so on every page.

[Frederiek]

Well, how about this Codrops article: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2015/05/06/pho...ebsite-concept/

I'm sure you should be able to find other convenient samples at codrops too.

[Christian J]

is there a cleaner way to transition between pages so that it doesn't look like you are leaving and re-loading the main Works page each time you pick a different category/project?

Depends on what you mean with clean. You can load everything on the same page with javascript for a clean look, but the code will be more complex and bug-prone, and also more bloated if you use an existing javascript library.

Doing it the way pandy suggests should result in very fast-loading pages, perhaps much faster than loading all the javascript libraries for a single all-in-one page. Visitors may not even notice the page changes, except in the browser's address field.

[pandy]

Well, how about this Codrops article: http://tympanus.net/codrops/2015/05/06/pho...ebsite-concept/

I'm sure you should be able to find other convenient samples at codrops too.

That page reminded me of another thing. The browsers back button mostly doesn't work, or doesn't wok as expected, with this kind of pages which is annoying. To this day I still try to use it with Google's image seach after having clicked an image and end up somewhere I did not want to go - back on the main search page, the web search. Why I end up there and not on the image search page (where I don't want to go either) I do not understand. I just want to go back to the image overview page and I can never learn that the back button doesn't work for this anymore with Google images.

The demo is elegant, but I had to spend time to figure out how to work it. Don't make me think...

[Frederiek]

Whenever I search for something, be it on Google directly or on Google images, I always use a new tab for whatever I think suits my search. Then, I can easily go back to the overview page, leaving potential interesting pages open if I want.

Sure, that can make a lot of open tabs, as I often click through, but they can easily be closed with a shortcut, leaving just one page open.

[pandy]

I don't use tabs at all. If it isn't something I don't want to save for later I don't open new windows. My point is that I shouldn't need to spend time and effort to find out and then remember what I can and cannot do for each site I visit. I should be able to use my browser as I please and as I'm used to. That's the quickest and most comfortable.

But that's my opinion. As sites work nowadays I obviously belong to a minority.