•  The How-To
•  Tips for Submitting Slide Shows
•  GraphicConverter

How to Create New Slide Shows

Slide shows are a great way to show off images captured while religion is in action. Therefore, they are a very important part of the Pluralism Project website. For examples of slide shows see the "Images" section of the website.

The How-To:

1. Make sure these are digital images. If not, then they need to be scanned. Please follow the guidelines for naming the images (see "Tips").

2. Size digital images appropriately.
On the site, there are two sizes for images: medium and thumbnail sized. The medium sized ones are a maximum of 420 pixels either length or width-wise, and have "_med.jpg" on the end of the filename. The thumbnails are a maximum of 192 pixels length/width-wise, and have "_tmb.jpg" on the end. (Keep in mind that file names are case sensitive).
For example, if an image is named holi02.JPG, you will need to resize it to both medium and thumbnail sizes (so now there will be three copies of this image in varying sizes). Then, rename the medium sized image to holi02_med.jpg, and the thumbnail sized image to holi02_tmb.jpg.

An easy way to do many images automatically is to use GraphicConverter (go to "GraphicConverter for Slide Shows").

3. Download TEMPLATE_SLIDESHOW.inc and TEMPLATE_SLIDESHOW_INDEX.php from /resources/slideshow.

4. Modify TEMPLATE_SLIDESHOW_INDEX.php
This is the main page for the slide show. Please look at the file and replace text and delete the comment marks as necessary; hopefully the comments should be enough to get you through. (Comment marks look like this: "< !-- text text text -->" without the space between the < and the !).

One thing to note is that a slide show can have multiple parts that are all linked to this main page (see the "Holy Land Experience" under /resources/slideshow/rodriguez for an example). In this case, there are multiple .inc files associated with it (the .inc files contain the image names and captions and ordering of the slides). All of these .inc files have the same name except that there is a number at the end, eg, wagner1.inc for the first part, wagner2.inc for the second part. The shownumber argument in the slideshow link is how we tell the webpage which part we want, eg:
< A HREF=../slideshow.php?show=wagner&shownumber=1&slide=1>"Part 1"< /A>
< A HREF=../slideshow.php?show=NAMEOFSLIDESHOW&shownumber=2&slide=1>"Part 2"< /A>

If you have only one slide show, don't put anything for shownumber, eg: < A HREF=../slideshow.php?show=wagner&shownumber=&slide=1>"Alan's One Part Slide Show"< /A>.

5. Modify TEMPLATE_SLIDESHOW.inc
This is the file that contains information about the slide show itself -- like, the image names, the caption, the title of the slide show. Please look at the file and replace text and delete the comment marks as necessary; hopefully the comments will provide guidance.

An easy way to generate the formatted image description/caption list is to use regular expression search and replace on BBEdit (version 6.5 or higher, I think).

1. Make a list of the image names (without the _med.jpg or _tmb.jpg, etc.)

2. Run Tools > Add/Remove Line Numbers... to number the lines

3. After each image, put an ! and h or v for the orientation

4. Run a BBEdit Grep (regular expression) search/replace on the list.

for example, if the list is like

9 Ramsey01!h
10 Ramsey03!v

search for:

(\d+) (Ramsey\d\d)!([hv])

and replace with:

\r\t\1 => array (\r\t\t"image" => "\2",\r\t\t"orientation" => "\3",\r\t\t"color" => "c",\r\t\t"sidecaption" => "",\r\t\t"undercaption" => "",\r\t\t"photographer" => "The Pluralism Project",\r\t\t"year" => "2002"\r\t\t),\r

For more information on regular expressions, see A Tao of Regular Expressions.

6. Pick a URL.
Usually, it will contain the photographer's last name. For example, the slide show would go in this folder: http://www.pluralism.org/resources/slideshow/lastname

Note: This will require creating a new folder called "lastname" on the server. To do this you can create a new folder on the computer, open Fetch to the place you want to put the folder, and then drag the your newly-created folder into "Fetch".

7. Add the entry to the global list.
Slide show names are usually affil_lastname_slideshow, eg, affil_wagner_slideshow. The purpose of this is to assign a name (like affil_lastname) to the URL that you have chosen, so that it is easier to refer to this page later. For example, affil_wagner_slideshow will correspond to /resources/slideshow/wagner/index.php in this database. If the slide show is not by an affiliate, then it's usually lastname_slideshow. Add this to the global link list, which is in /global/links.inc. The format is pretty clear when you see the list. Try to do it so that it's added in alphabetical order.

8. Upload to the server.

•  Before uploading your modified files to the server, be sure to rename them:
TEMPLATE_SLIDESHOW_INDEX.php should be renamed to index.php, and TEMPLATE_SLIDESHOW.inc to lastname.inc (where lastname is the name of the folder).

•  All files, including pictures, for this new slide show should be in a folder named whatever you had picked earlier -- eg, wagner.

•  Upload files to /resources/slideshow/lastname on the server.

9. Add the slide show to the Images page.
There are a list of slide shows on the Images page, which is located here: www.pluralism.org/images/index.php. Modify this index.php file to include your new slide show; follow the formatting of other entries on that page.

GraphicConverter for Slide Shows

You can use GraphicConverter to resize and append either "_med" or "_tmb" to the end of image names to many images at a time. This is useful if you have many pictures for a slide show and dont want to do each by hand.

1. Open GraphicConverter.

2. Go to File->Convert.

3. In the first window, navigate to the folder of images you want to resize or rename. In the second window, navigate to the folder you want to put the newly resized or renamed pictures into.

4a. To resize, click on "Batch". Under "Possible Functions", navigate to "Max Size". Click "Add". Enter the max dimensions you want the picture to be (either 420x420 or 192x192; see number 2 in How-To). Make sure that "Proportional" is checked, and that "Fit to Value" is not checked.
Then select the pictures you want to resize from the first window (usually Edit->Select All), and click "Convert". Be sure to leave the computer alone till this process is done, otherwise GraphicConverter may crash on you.

Stop here. Before renaming, go back to step 3, then proceed to step 4b.

4b. To rename, first select the pictures you want to rename from the first window (usually Edit->Select All). Click on "Rename". Check "Change Extension" and enter .jpg Check "Add Date" and "After Name" and under "Use" enter either _med or _tmb depending on whether you're renaming for medium pictures or thumbnail pictures.