August 13, 2024

Multitasking: Gallery Uploads

Last week’s tutorial was a lot, wasn’t it? It was pretty much a 3-in-1 and covered a lot of ground. Somewhere in the middle, I mentioned that it’s possible to batch-process your layout uploads, so today I’m going to show you how to do it. It’s a lot easier than you think, and the tut will be a quick one! I won’t go back over the entire routine, since it’s easy enough to review the tut from last Tuesday. We’re going to start on the Upload Photos screen.

It’s okay to leave the Category box on Member Galleries. We’ll change it on the next screen.

Choose your layout files. You have the opportunity to add 5 layouts per upload. [More about that in a minute.] The app will reorder them in alphabetical order by title when we move to the next screen. If you’re uploading a two-layout spread, it’s hit-or-miss if they’ll end up with the proper orientation. It helps if you’ve given both layouts the same name, but with a number at the end to distinguish one from the other. Leave the Title and Description boxes empty.

You can leave the Keywords box blank. If you’re uploading creative team layouts, you can put your designer’s name in here. If you’re uploading Challenge layouts, you can put a generic “month/year/Challenge” label in there. If you choose not to allow comments, click on the Upload/Submit bar now.

BUT… if you want praise and you want to KNOW what others have said, flip these boxes to Yes, then click the Upload/Submit bar.

Thumbnails? CHECK! So I know my layout files are the right size.

Find the correct Category for your layouts here. Again, if these are Challenge layouts, make sure the correct year is there so Missi can count them toward your Reward. The GingerBread Ladies‘ (designers’) names are also listed in the drop-down menu, as well as special-events galleries too. REMEMBER: IF YOU SELECT MORE THAN ONE CATEGORY HERE, THE SERVER WILL COUNT EACH ONE AS A ‘NEW’ LAYOUT AGAINST YOUR DAILY TOTAL. There’s a work-around though. I’ll tell you that bit at the end.

Put in the title for each of the layouts you’ve got showing. One thing I forgot to mention in last week’s tutorial is that if you enter your title on the first screen above and it contains any special characters, like quotation marks or an apostrophe, when it pops up on this screen, the special characters are lost. But if you wait until this screen to add your title, they stay put!

Now add in your credits. Please don’t skip this step.

Edit the Keywords box with the appropriate Challenge, if applicable. Then click Process. The next screen will move to your Gallery and you can proceed from there to update your Cookie Jar and post your layouts to the Forum.

Now, If you want to bypass the 8 layouts-a-day limit anomaly, once your layouts are posted to the Gallery, you can Edit Photo in the Gallery! You can also fix typos, replace lost credits (a known issue that occasionally happens and isn’t really fixable) or even replace the layout itself with an edited one. Look just to the right of your avatar and you’ll find User Options and click Edit Photo.