How do you create photo galleries in Dreamweaver?

The answer to how to create a gallery in a web page in Dreamweaver isn’t as simple as you might expect. There were some automated tools for creating galleries in previous versions of Dreamweaver, but they had limited options and used an old version of Flash. Those features were cut from the program a couple of versions before the current CS5.5.

If you want to create a photo gallery in Dreamweaver today, here are a few options…

You can still create galleries using Flash and then insert them into Dreamweaver, but you need have Flash, and know how to use it, to do that yourself. (You’ll find an article about how to use Dreamweaver to  insert a flash file once you’ve created a gallery in Flash here.)

You can download gallery tools from Adobe. Many people use the extensions to Dreamweaver from the Adobe Exchange site. You can add gallery extensions to enhance the features in Dreamweaver and create a variety of different kinds of galleries.

This link will take you to the search results for Dreamweaver gallery extensions.

You can, of course, create custom galleries in Dreamweaver yourself with the page creation tools, and you can create templates, to make adding and updating pages more automated in Dreamweaver. In that case, you have to decide if the gallery want to create will have two pages or twenty or more, and how much control you want over the design. (You can get started learning Dreamweaver in the Dreamweaver Training Center.)

As a general rule, the more automated the system, the more the design needs to be consistent from page to page. If you learn how to use Dreamweaver to create, link, and optimize pages, you can use the template features in Dreamweaver to creating custom designs more effiiently, but that does require some experience with Dreamweaver.

If you want to see an example of a custom photo gallery created with Dreamweaver templates (using the .dwt file type), you can check out a site I created for Photographer Jasper Johal. That site is featured in my book, Web Sites DIY For Dummies, and you can download the templates that come with the book to create the same design yourself if you like that site. (Warning: this link goes to Jasper’s live site, which does include some nude art photos. http://jasperphoto.com/ I used a simplified version in my book.

Here’s another custom gallery site created with Dreamweaver’s template features for an artist to showcase her work: http://www.inplainsightart.com/. I’m planning to use that site in a new book and video soon.

Another approach to creating photo galleries is to use an online photo hosting service. Because photographers are such a big market, there are several sites that specialize in photo galleries and even selling prints with templates and plugins and everything you need for a monthly fee. Among those options, I believe http://www.zenfolio.com/ is especially popular for professionals and, of course, you can use www.flickr.com for free.

I hope that helps you find the best solution for your gallery,

Janine