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05-01-2009, 06:49 AM   #1
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My new gallery site- built in modX

Hey all-

I just finished a portfolio site for my photography that I built in 6 hours from design layout to live site! modX CMS is an amazing, simple to use CMS that has so much power it's frightening- because it does what YOU want it to do, not forcing you into some bizarre way of templating and document management.

Design in Photoshop. CSS driven. Built-in photogallery system in modX: I used the built-in smoothgallery javascript based gallery display system that is part of modX.

Please have a look and give me your comments/feedback.

link (it's also in my sig now):

Virgil Rockford Photography gallery

05-01-2009, 10:13 AM   #2
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Updated links

Just wanted to say- I updated the links to use flash-style color changes that are completely javascript: no flash!
05-01-2009, 02:43 PM   #3
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Looks really nice and elegant. I have to give it a try.
05-01-2009, 03:07 PM   #4
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That is just too cool!

I have been putting off building a nice presentation site for lack of time and an aversion to Flash. Now it appears I have no excuse!

Steve

05-01-2009, 07:19 PM   #5
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Thanks, guys-

There is absolutely no flash here, all effects, including the gallery itself are javascript.

Basically, the gallery is driven by a javascript gallery called smoothgallery. The cms I use, modX, has this as part of it's installation, all part of a "snippet" as it's called in modX terms called maxigallery. You can also use lightbox and slimbox javascript gallery systems- slimbox is the most efficient in terms of code overhead to load.

The menu animations are done using jquery with a plugin called color that allows jquery to animate colors.
05-01-2009, 07:33 PM   #6
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Very nice! Really elegant and clean. Flash sucks, but CSS and judicial use of javascript doesn't suck!

I'd like to banish Flash from the face of WWW, but it's sadly going in the opposite direction.

Good for you!

Regards,
Mike
05-01-2009, 07:52 PM   #7
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Oh man - I clicked the link with great trepidation, dreading to see the lateset flash heavy wudersite, but Wham! - instant load and a nice clean interface... Nice!

My one request and I have no idea if it's implementable with this setup would be to have keyboard navigation of the galleries (left and right arrows for paging the photos). Also I might have a shorter delay on the informative popup at the bottom of the frame - right as I'm getting into the photo, the motion down there really distracts me.

05-01-2009, 08:37 PM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by heliphoto Quote
Oh man - I clicked the link with great trepidation, dreading to see the lateset flash heavy wudersite, but Wham! - instant load and a nice clean interface... Nice!...
Yes! Quick load! And no wonder...the total size for the home page is only 175K with most of that being graphics and some 60K for scripts. Since the scripts and graphics are cached, the total burden is quite reasonable compared to a similar flash page.

Good work!

Steve

(Used to do Web dev full time...kind of miss it...)
05-01-2009, 08:49 PM   #9
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Nice. I'll have to give modX a better look over the weekend. I've been using Gallery2 for my purely personal stuff and it's just sooo damn heavy.
05-02-2009, 06:58 PM   #10
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Wow, thanks everybody!
I do love the fact that the page loads are snappy, too- one of the reasons why I like using pure html/js/css. And, the power of javascript at this point really allows one to give those little "touches" to a site to make it a bit more elegant.

Venturi- do give modx a look. It may seem confusing at first, but once you see that it is more of a content management framework than a content management system, then it's power becomes more obvious. Great thing is, you can integrate the way you like to build a site, from javascript AJAX stuff to how you design and use css, not being forced into doing things the way the CMS wants you to.

I have added page centering (horizontal AND vertical) for users with monitors with higher resolutions. However, my hosting has gone down and there is nobody there for technical support on weekends after 5:00 pm EST.

It sucks, because last year I renewed for 4 years at a great rate, and then the company got bought out by another company that has TERRIBLE support, and my site goes down a couple times a month- as well as my email, of course. I have no way out now- and I'm not going to pay for hosting w/ another provider, since I won't get this money back.

Anyways, thanks all for your input.

Heliphoto- I did find a way to shorten the delay of the information box that slides up on the bottom. I'm looking into key events, but the script is rather complex and not something I built personally. Good idea, though!
05-02-2009, 08:04 PM   #11
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QuoteOriginally posted by virgilr Quote
However, my hosting has gone down and there is nobody there for technical support on weekends after 5:00 pm EST.

It sucks, because last year I renewed for 4 years at a great rate, and then the company got bought out by another company that has TERRIBLE support, and my site goes down a couple times a month- as well as my email, of course. I have no way out now- and I'm not going to pay for hosting w/ another provider, since I won't get this money back.
Wow, that blows!

Shoot me a PM if you end up shopping for a new host. I don't do hosting myself but I can refer you to a company I do trust implicitly.
05-03-2009, 02:29 PM   #12
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Ah, well- hosting is back up: seems that from 5 pm Saturday until noon Sunday nobody is there to handle tech support issues. Still going to look into changing hosting IF I can get them to refund the balance of 3 more years of hosting!

So now, using the amazing jquery library, I'm able to horizontally/vertically center the content of the page on monitors with larger than 768 pixel height. Only problem was keeping Internet explorer from flickering the content when moving, but found a solution.
05-04-2009, 09:18 AM   #13
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Very nice, much faster than the Flash galleries I've looked at...

The only oddity I see on my computer is that the left and right arrows only show about half of each button, the outer edges of each fades away off the edge of the frame.

So how did you construct the site and link the bits together? Got a link to a starting point, by chance? I'm no guru web coder, when I do a page for work I just use basic html and haven't even really ventured into CSS. All of my coding has been Fortran database applications - rather different design and code philosophies from web work



Jim (Firefox 3.0.10)
05-04-2009, 11:16 AM   #14
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Jim-

Thanks for the review..

Basically, the arrows are transparent png files that intentionally fade to the outer edges. You should see them become more opaque when you hover over them- however, this breaks in IE7, as it doesn't handle the javascript that performs this fade in/fade out. Should work fine in FF, IE8, Opera and Safari- it's also broken in Google Chrome, because it doesn't display transparent png files as background images properly.

This gallery is built using modX CMF: link is modxcms.com
The CMS has this gallery built into it- well, not integrated into it's core functionality, but as an "add-on" that is called a snippet in modX speak. So I didn't code "from the ground up" this gallery, but did use some other javascript libraries to do some effects: the color fade in/fade out on the links, and centering the document based on the browser window size.

Basically, poke around on the modX site. If you've never done any web dev before, you've got a bit of a learning curve ahead of you.. But at least modX is one of the simplest content management system/frameworks you can use that will just do what you want it to do based on sound htm/css/php/javascript.

Last edited by virgilr; 05-04-2009 at 06:29 PM.
05-04-2009, 11:39 AM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by virgilr Quote
Jim-

Thanks for the review..

Basically, the arrows are transparent png files that intentionally fade to the outer edges. You should see them become more opaque when you hover over them- however, this breaks in IE7, as it doesn't handle the javascript that performs this fade in/fade out. Should work fine in FF, IE8, Opera and Safari- it's also broken in Google Chrome, because it doesn't display transparent png files as background images properly.

This gallery is built using modX CMF: link is modxcms.com
The CMS has this gallery built into it- well, not integrated into it's core functionality, but as an "add-on" that is called a snippet in modX speak. So I didn't code "from the ground up" this gallery, but did use some other javascript libraries to do some effects: the color fade in/fade out on the links, and centering the document based on the browser window size.

Basically, poke around on the modX site. If you've never done any web dev before, you've got a bit of a learning curve ahead of you.. But at least modX is one of the simplest content management system/frameworks you can use that will just do what you want it to do based on sound htm/css/php/javascript.
Bookmarked, thanks! Your link had a minor typo, tho ('dms' vs 'cms'), should be Content Management System, PHP Application Framework, Web Application Framework & More - MODx I'll take a closer look at it when I have some time and can drag my son into the picture - he's a lot better at web coding than I am... Right now I have a moderate number of pictures posted on DeviantArt (link in sig), and a few here, but it would be nice to have my own. Just as a hobby and share-with-friends/family thing, not as a business.

Jim
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