Online photo album for coins

I'd like to have an online album for my ancient coins. I started uploading them to Forvm but am not happy with the display and functionality. One of many things that is annoying is the centering of the descriptions. Yuck.

Tonight I looked over several free hosting sites with handy templates and drag&drop functionality and am going to give Wix a try.

So far I've only selected the basic layout and dropped in basic headings/categories and uploaded a few coins to the Greek and Roman Provincial pages to better figure out how I want it to work.

Please check it out and let me know what you think and if you have suggestions.

The site is limited in subfolders. I can only have the main pages and a single sublevel within each of those. Not sure if I'll order the coins by date or by region/date.

http://inaruvi.wix.com/tifcollection

 

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Its neat, but I prefer the forvm gallery, how i've done it for over 4 years now.

 

if the link you posted is what you have started using, i think you have AMAZING pics. i mean, really, just quality pictures. well done.

 

The pictures are terrific. The coins are great. The site looks excellent so far. I wonder how the layout will work when you have many more coins posted. Thumbnails help the viewer decide what to see when many coins are listed, and I didn't see thumbnails. Make sure your site layout can handle hundreds of coins.

 

Wow TIF, well done.Photo's are great too!!, will there be room for info...

 

looks nice!
may be hard to do an entire collection with lots of coins (as val points out), but it really does look fantastic.

if many coins bog it down, maybe do just a greek page or a roman provincial page, then break it up by sub regions or whatever.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure if there is a limit to the number of subcategories for a given category. If there is, that will be a problem in my current setup. I can add more main headings but that will make the header too wide and the extra categories will be listed under an automatic default heading of "More", under which the 'excess' headings would appear.

Right now, when you hover over a category (Greek, for instance), you see a drop-down listing all of the coins in that category. If you click the category (again for example 'Greek') it takes you to a page where there are thumbnails. Right now there are just 4 on the Greek page. I can control the size of those and may need to make them smaller as I add more coins.

You can click on each of those pictures and it will take you to a dedicated page for the coin which includes attribution. I can add other stuff to the pages too. Maps, links, additional text, whatever.

I might end up doing it that way but I'll need a workaround because I can't have sub-subcategories. Haven't explored all of the add-ons and prefab stuff they offer. Maybe there's a type of ready-made photo gallery layout which would work.

Edit: I can make an index page with a brief description of each coin (eg, IONIA, Samos. AR drachm) and each can be hyperlinked to a dedicated page which has a large picture, attribution, etc.

 

Wow, you're a star!!

=> the site, the format and your amazing coin-photos are bringin' it!!

Congrats, awesome start!!

 

Thanks Steve! I was just loading my Roman Republicans. So far so good, although it may get cumbersome when the list under each heading grows too long.

I also added an "Index" category with direct links to each coin.

 

Looks great.
What are the storage and bandwidth limits before you have to upgrade?

 

Free: 500 MB storage, 500 MB bandwidth.

Upgrade pricing: http://www.wix.com/upgrade/website

 

Wonderful gallery. At one time I had most of my better pieces here. Then they upgraded the forum and boom gone. I think you have done well. You got some great coins. Good taste. I might have to consider doing this in the not to distant future.

 

Awesome website TIF.

You have to make yourself a really awesome logo yet. It is a sleek easy set up and the index is a nice addition. I look forward to seeing all of your awesome coins on there.

I think the only downside is that the site doesn't work on my tablet.

 

Bummer, Whiz-- sorry to hear that. Hmm. I have it set to optimize for mobile devices (cells) and you'll see a pared-down display but all the elements should be there. Surprisingly though, the pictures are not enlargeable by doing the pinch/spread thing (iPhone).

I figured on a tablet it would display the same as a regular computer. But you're not seeing anything on the tablet?

 

My tablet browser may just not like it. I will fiddle with it later.

 

I like the fact that you're working on a gallery. I've always loved your photography and I think your coins deserved to be showcased.

Not sure if this has been mentioned... I think some text descriptions accompanying each of the coins on the thumbnail pages would be helpful. The size of the thumbnails on your Roman Republic page looks about right to me... neither too large or too small.

It terms of organization, does the input format make it easy for you to add coins in their appropriate place (however it is you've decided to sort them)?

Not sure how large the picture files are, but you may blow through 500mb/month pretty quickly?

All in all, very nice!

 

Took a little bit to load for me, but looks great.

 

I was wondering if that would be a problem. I'm keeping the pictures sizes ~80-150 KB hoping to keep it from bogging down. My ISP is superslow and it loads OK for me but maybe that's due to cache?

Debating whether to do that. Torn. I can see that it might be helpful for visitors but I like the way it looks undisturbed by text

Since I don't have any/many more RRs, those can stay that size. For other categories though, I may have to shrink the 'thumbnails' to improve load time and to minimize the need for scrolling. Right now I'm just loading one picture of each coin into the website database, resizing it for the group shot category page. That is probably bad for load time. If it becomes a problem I will make thumbnail-sized pictures on my computer and load them to the website's database.

I haven't looked closely at the pre-fab gallery styles available for use by WiX. Maybe I should do so before continuing in case there is a way to make one of those work for me. Any of them would work, strictly speaking, but there was a certain look I wanted that couldn't be achieved with those prefabs.

Not super simple but easy enough.

For storage space there's probably no worry since the pictures are all less than 150 KB. Bandwidth though... might exceed that.

One thing that will be nice once I've loaded all my coins is the search box. The search box was an add-on and unfortunately entails a small monthly fee. Not sure if that fee is rolled in to an upgraded account. Probably not.

 

Im on an older computer so I'm thinking maybe it was just me.