Here are screen shots, showing all of the windows, preferences and features in the Mac OS X version of Web Photos Pro.

Notice that we’re “eating our own dog food” here. We’re using Web Photos Pro to manage, annotate (with title and description), and upload these screenshots.

The following is the Quick Start tutorial for Web Photos Pro on Mac OS X. This same tutorial is also available for Windows XP/2000.

This tutorial assumes that you have a web site, and can access that web site via ftp.

You should be able to complete this tutorial in under 10 minutes. At the end of this tutorial you will have uploaded a folder of photos from your computer to a directory on your web site using Web Photos Pro.

If you have any problems with this tutorial, please let us know by using the Quick Start support forum.

1. Download and install the software for your machine
   Download the installer for Mac OS X, and install it on your computer.

2. Start Web Photos Pro
   When you first open Web Photos Pro, it opens to an empty list of albums, as shown here:

   

   
   

3. Gather some sample photos
   Find a folder of photos on your hard disk. Or create a new folder and copy a dozen or so photos into it. You will use this folder of photos for the remainder of this Quick Start tutorial.

4. Create a photo album in Web Photos Pro
   Choose “New Album” from the “Albums” menu.
   

5. Name the album
   A dialog will appear asking you to name the album. You can accept the folder name, or type in a different name.

   

   
   
6. Thumbnails are created and images resized
   After you click OK, Web Photos Pro loops through all of the photos in the folder and creates resized images and thumbnails for each photo. As this happens the following progress dialog appears:

   

   
   

   Note: Web Photos Pro does not resize your original images, it makes a copy and resizes the copy into thumbnails and resized images.

7. Enter an album description and date
   After all resized images and thumbnails have been created, your List of Albums window will look like this:

   

   
   

   Now would be a good time to fill out the Description and Date fields.

8. Create a web gallery
   With Web Photos Pro you organize photos into albums, and albums into web galleries (or sometimes referred to as simply “galleries").

   A web gallery is equivalent to a directory on your web server. By the end of this tutorial you will have uploaded your photos to the gallery directory on your ftp server.

   You can upload any number of photo albums to a gallery. Everytime you upload an album, Web Photos Pro automatically updates the gallery web page, which shows the cover photo for each album.

   Let’s create a web gallery for your photo album:

   1. Open the Preferences window.

      From the menu bar select “Preferences” from the “Web Photos Pro” menu.

   2. Click on the Web Galleries tab.

      You will see the window shown below:

      

      
      

   3. Click the New button.
      

   4. Enter the following information:
      
      1. Gallery Title

         For example “My First Photo Gallery”

      2. Description

         This text will appear on the gallery web page created by Web Photos Pro.

      3. URL

         This is the URL to use when accessing this web gallery from a web browser.

         Example: http://www.my-server.com/my-first-photo-gallery/

         Notice that this is the web gallery directory.

      4. Date

         Today’s date is automatically entered for you. You may change it.

      5. Link check box

         Do you want to link the albums in this web gallery to a weblog or other web page? If so, click this check box.

         If checked, the link created with <a href="Link URL">Link Title</a> will appear in the “breadcrumbs” at the top of the gallery, album and image pages produced by Web Photos Pro (example).

      6. Link: Page Title

         If you clicked the Link check box, what is the name (or title) of the weblog or web page?

      7. Link: Page URL

         If you clicked the Link check box, what is the URL of the weblog or web page you are linking to?

      8. FTP Information

         Enter ftp information for this web gallery: the ftp server (name or ip address, e.g. ftp.your-server.com or 192.168.0.8), your user name and password, the path where the gallery will be uploaded, and the mode (if you don’t know what mode means, most ftp servers want it set to Passive).

         Note: The path is the directory on your ftp server, relative to your home directory, where the albums in this gallery are to be uploaded. When you access these albums via a web browser, the gallery web page will be retrieved from the URL specified by the Gallery URL (see step 3 directly above).

         If you have problems specifying the path correctly, please refer to the FTP Settings Tutorial.

      9. Web Server

         If you have Web Photos Pro Server Edition installed on your web server, then click the check box.

         Otherwise, specify the name of the index file you want Web Photos Pro to create when it uploads the gallery and album web pages. Most web servers use either index.html or default.html. If you use a different index file name, e.g. index.htm, choose the “Other” radio button, and type the name of the index file into the field next to it.

      10. Save

          Save this web gallery by clicking the Save button. Your Web Galleries preferences window will now look like this:

          

          
          

   5. Test your FTP and URL connections.

      Click the Test button to the right of the FTP Server field.

      Web Photos Pro will first upload a test file, via ftp, to the path you specified in the step above. If the web gallery directory does not exist, you will be asked whether you want Web Photos Pro to create the directory (as shown below). Click “Yes".

      

      
      

      Then that same test file will be downloaded, also via ftp, to make sure it was uploaded properly.

      Then that same test file will be downloaded, this time via http, from the Gallery URL (see step 3 above), to make sure it can be downloaded properly.

      Finally Web Photos Pro will open the test file in your web browser, using the Gallery URL specified in step 3 above.

      If everything is correct, you will see the following dialog, and the test file will be loaded into your browser displaying the date and time that the test file was created.

      

      
      

      If any errors occur, you will need to modify the FTP and/or URL settings until the test is successful.

      If you continue to have problems, there is an FTP Settings Tutorial available.

   Once the ftp test has succeeded, you can close the preferences window and return to the List of Albums window.

9. Open the album
   From the List of Albums window, double-click on the photo album (or choose “Open Album” from the “Albums” menu). The window that opens will look like this:

   

   
   
10. Change the cover photo
    To change the cover photo, CTRL-click on the photo you want to be the new cover photo, and choose “Set As Cover Photo” from the popup menu (or you can use the “Image” menu to perform the same action).

    

    
    

    Notice that the green border moves from the previous cover photo to the new cover photo.

11. Enter some photo information

    Click the “Edit” radio button (next to “Display:"). The photo album view will change from the slides view to the edit view as shown below:

    

    
    

    In this view you can enter title and description information for each photo.

    When you are done entering information, return to the List of Albums window.

12. Upload your photo album

    From the List of Albums window, click the “Upload” button as shown below:

    

    
    

    You will be asked to confirm the upload:

    

    
    

    And as the upload proceeds, a progress dialog shows you how many photos have been uploaded, and how many remain:

    

    
    

    After the upload is complete, you will be asked whether you want to open the album in a web browser. Click “Yes”

    

    
    

13. View your photos on the web
    Congratulations! If everything has gone right, you will see the album you just uploaded in your web browser. You can click on the thumbnails to view the photos in your album.

    

    
    
14. Where do I go from here?
    There’s lots more documentation on Web Photos Pro, or you can wing it, and start adding more albums.

15. Problem? Questions? Comments?
    If you have any problems, questions, or comments, please use our support bulletin board.

Web Photos Pro Server Edition, written in PHP, can be installed on most any web server. It works in tandem with the Web Photos Pro application to give your web site five enhanced capabilities – photo search, private albums, “tagging", a “most recent photos” album, and a “most recent photos” RSS and PhotoRSS feed.

1. Photo Search
Search is an important feature for both internal and external web sites. If you’re a professional photographer, or a modeling agency, then you want people to find the pictures they’re looking for, not leave for another competitor’s site. And if this is an internal web site, at an architecture firm or catalog company for example, then you want to reduce the number of calls that ask “where is that photo again?”

With Web Photos Pro Server Edition installed, your photos become searchable – instantly! A search box is added to all of your photo and album pages, making it easy for visitors to search any of the data that you have input – title, description, keywords, location, date, etc.

2. Private Photos and Albums
A private album is one that is password protected, and whose photos can only be viewed after the correct username and password has been entered. (Each combination of username and password is called an “access group", and with the Web Photos Pro application you can create any number of access groups.)

To make an album private, you select the “private” radio button, and then choose the access group for the album. After you upload a private album to the web, Web Photos Pro Server Edition protects your album by asking for the username and password before allowing any photos from that album to be viewed.

3. Tagging
Tagging is the hot new blogging sport, and has been implemented in sites like del.icio.us and Flickr. With Web Photos Pro Server Edition, you can tag your photos, and then use those tags to quickly browse the photos on your site.

The best way to understand how tagging works is by seeing an example. Here are two albums that have had their photos “tagged":

1. My first photo album (with tags!).
2. Lots more tags.

4. “Most Recent Photos” Album
If you have a large number of photos, albums or web galleries, it can be hard for your visitors (and you!) to keep track of what’s been newly added and updated. Web Photos Pro Server Edition simplifies this by producing a “Most Recent Photos” album. This album contains pointers to all new photos, as well all changed albums and changed web galleries.

5. “Most Recent Photos” RSS and PhotoRSS feeds
The “Most Recent Photos” album is available as both an RSS and PhotoRSS feed. This makes it easy for visitors who use an RSS reader to track your photos to see all of the most recently uploaded and updated photos, albums and web galleries, in one feed.

Future Enhancements
We have big plans for Web Photos Pro Server Edition. We will be adding features such as providing statistics about which photos are being visited most often, as well as enhanced protection features, such as the ability to password protect your original images.

Whether you have 10 photos or 10,000 photos, Web Photos Pro makes it easier for you to organize, manage, customize, upload and search your photos.

It can also create web standard RSS and PhotoRSS feeds so that RSS-readers can subscribe to your photos.

Here are some of the most important things that Web Photos Pro can do for you:

    1. Organize
    2. Manage
    3. Customize
    4. Smart Upload
    5. Search
    6. RSS and PhotoRSS
    7. Private Photos and Albums
    8. Works Well With Others

1. Organize
Web Photo Pro has three organizational components:

• Album: Organize your photos into albums (an album can have any number of photos). Web Photos Pro automatically creates an album web page with a thumbnail of each photo.
  

• Web Gallery: Organize your albums into web galleries. Each web gallery has a unique URL, and can contain any number of albums. Web Photos Pro automatically creates a gallery web page showing the cover photo of each album.
  

• Photo Workspace: Finding it hard to keep all of the photos you’re working on straight? We have a solution for you – photo workspaces. Create a new photo workspace for each project you’re working on, and add just the photos that pertain to that project. This makes it incredibly easy to keep your photo projects separate and better organized.
  

2. Manage
Web Photos Pro automatically resizes and compresses your photos in any of four sizes (without modifying the original photo), creates thumbnails in any of three sizes (even square thumbnails if you want them), and builds all the requisite web pages to create an online photo allbum. Automatically.

Collect an album worth of photos into a folder on your hard disk, point Web Photos Pro at the folder, and it does the rest. Then click on the “Upload” button, and Web Photos Pro will upload everything to the web for you – images, thumbnails, and web pages.

3. Customize
The ability to customize the HTML created by Web Photos Pro is critical, especially if you have an existing web site you need to match.

Customization is fast and easy. Create a “skin” (or template) in 10 minutes (we show you how). Then tell Web Photo Pro to use it, and voila, gallery, album and photo pages that look the way you want them to look.

4. Smart Upload
A single click on the “Upload” button is all it takes to have Web Photos Pro upload everything – resized and compressed images, thumbnails, and web pages.

“Smart Upload” means that if you’ve added a new photo, or moved some photo around, or changed the title and description on one or two photo, only the changes you’ve made will be uploaded the next time you click “Upload".

5. Search
Whether you are running an in-house web server, or a public web server, providing photo search can mean the difference between your users finding what they want, or leaving to visit one of your competitors.

Install Web Photos Pro Server Edition and make your photos instantly searchable on any field – title, description, keywords, location, date or geoInfo (latitude,longitude).

6. RSS and PhotoRSS
RSS – Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication – is an emerging web standard that provides a way for users to view syndicated content without using a web browser. Using an RSS reader users can subscribe to your photos, and see whenever you change or add new photos and albums. Web Photos Pro is the first photo product to produce RSS files for all of your photo albums and photo galleries.

PhotoRSS is a newly proposed web standard, similar to RSS, that is more photo-centric, and which will enable a new class of PhotoRSS readers that will be able to search and display photos in new ways.

7. Private Photos and Albums
A private album is one that is password protected, and its photos can only be viewed after the visitor enters a user name and password. If you have Web Photos Pro Server Edition installed on your web server, you can make any (or all) of your photos and albums private.

8. Works Well With Others
If you’re using a PC, almost all photo programs create separate folders for each photo album. Simply point Web Photos Pro at the folders you want to upload, and it will do the rest.

If you’re running Mac OSX, then chances are you’re using iPhoto to manage your photos. Web Photos Pro can connect to iPhoto and read all of the albums that you’ve created. You can quickly and easily upload some, or all, of your albums to the web using Web Photos Pro. The flexibility and power of Web Photos Pro makes it the perfect iPhoto companion, better than the built-in Web Pages feature, or any of the other plug-ins that are currently available.