Shozam Community

Today I did a couple of albums to begin the process of converting an existing batch of pages that show photo coverage of 12 games of the 2003 Women's World Cup (soccer).  The existing pages were built using a method best described as "brute force".  While serviceable, that old process was somewhat tedious.  I want to get back into more game shooting this summer, so I'm looking for something to speed up my workflow.

  http://www.soccer-shots.com/wwc2/FIFA%20Womens%20World%20Cup%20USA%202003/

I'm still wrestling with the small details in my modified theme.  I have used a green background for professional soccer in the past, but I'm not sure how well it works with the animation on the Intro page. I may need to use a different background image (like solid black) for the middle of the intro page, keeping the shaded green for the album pages (if that's possible).

The HTML blocks end up being essential for work like this, since you are dealing with three tiers of information:  (1) the gallery name would be used for a league, series, or team; (2) I'm using one of the HTML blocks for the information on the game which appears over the picture (with <b> to boldface); (3) I need one or two lines of text below the picture as an individual caption.

I still have to figure out the banner.  In the early Beta I could use an apostrophe (as in "Women's"), but this version tells me that this is an illegal character.  In some cases punctuation is defined in the usage rights by a sport's governing body.  One solution may be to build an image file with that text in it -- once I figure out the dimensions of the banner block, and assuming I can block the gallery title.

It appears that to get even non-commercial functionality out of the program (HTML features) I have no choice but to buy the highest priced version.  But maybe I'll be able to convert the "Generated by Shozam!" advertising link into something more useful.
 

Larry, I really like how it came out. I think the green in the intro works better than the usual black. The animation looks like it turns the images in green duo-tones, rather than just fading them out as when the background is black. In any case, if you want, you can apply a different image to just the intro background by choosing a background image for the Flash intro page in the Theme Editor (Go to: Theme Editor --> Intro Flash Animation --> Image File:...).

Regarding some of your other points... We are fixing the gallery title to accept extended characters. We are also implementing an affiliate program (for Advanced and Business Editions) so Shozam! sales generated by any of your galleries will provide you with a 10% sales commission. This should provide you with some "usefulness" for the credit line (while keeping with the "green" theme ;-}

One suggestion: Take out blank spaces from the gallery parent folder. When the name becomes part of a URL, spaces are turned into "%20" which makes the URL look unwieldly... So instead of:

http://www.soccer-shots.com/wwc2/FIFA%20Womens%20World%20Cup%20USA%202003/index.htm

Have somehting like (index.htm not needed at the end since it is one of the default names):

http://www.soccer-shots.com/wwc2/FIFA-Womens-World-Cup-USA-2003/

Razvan Neagu:

One suggestion: Take out blank spaces from the gallery parent folder. When the name becomes part of a URL, spaces are turned into "%20" which makes the URL look unwieldly... So instead of:

http://www.soccer-shots.com/wwc2/FIFA%20Womens%20World%20Cup%20USA%202003/index.htm

Have somehting like (index.htm not needed at the end since it is one of the default names):

http://www.soccer-shots.com/wwc2/FIFA-Womens-World-Cup-USA-2003/

 

This may have something to do with the way I build my sites and upload.  My hard drive essentially mirrors what's on the host.  I don't use step 6...I just copy the set of files generated by Shozam! to the host using an FTP program.  Right now the gallery's primary folder name is tied to the Gallery Title as generated in Step 5.  Does uploading via Step 6 allow me to separate the primary folder name from the gallery title?  Or am I actually asking that the gallery title be named separately from the primary folder name (in which case we might solve the illegal character problem -- which wasn't a problem in the earlier Beta.)  Or can I import or link to a TXT file for the gallery title?

 
Larry 

Uploading using Step 6 does not upload the parent folder; only the files that are generated within it. In the Step 6 Presets Tab you would use the "Sub-directory" field to create a parent folder on the server; then your gallery files will get uploaded in there.

I'll look into taking spaces out and replacing with "-" for the parent folder.