CHAPTER 2: CUSTOMIZING iView Media Pro Templates

Each set of templates (think of them as themes, or skins) are grouped in sub-folders under HTML Templates

 

Make a copy of the Aqua folder or any theme folder. Call it whateve you like. In my case I started with the Photo Tech folder and made a copy called, My Photo Tech-v2. You don't want to muck around with the original templates. When you are in the Make / HTML Gallery of the catalog, iView will allow you to chose whatever Theme, including the one you just copied and named, that it finds in the HTML Templates folder.

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So here are the two template files: Index.html and meida.html. These files are used as templates when you generate your web gallery.

iView Media Pro is going to use the index.html file as a model for all the numbered index files that it sticks in your web gallery folder.

It will use the media.html file as the model for your full-image page (all those pages that have the names of image files in the source folder).

TOKENS

As iView generates these pages, it will substitute the information from fields in your category set where it finds iView tokens.

Open a catalog. Select one image and make sure that the info tab is clicked (selected). On the left you'll find the stuff that the catalog can include in gallery files.

 

You won't see the following fields listed in your version: Print Size, Mat Size, Price, Show. These are custom fields and I'll get into that in the last chapter when I get into how to generate a gallery that uses Paypal to accept orders. (My own site is using my own cart mechanism, but the idea for passing custom field info through the Web Gallery generator is the same).

Note: the names of fields in the catalog don't always match the tokens that are used in the template files. For example: at the bottom, where you fill in the description it says, Description.

Fine and dandy, but in the media.html template the token that translates that field is:

(iView:Caption)

So now go into your trusty html editor and open the media.html file. You should see a piece of code that looks like this:

(iView:Caption)

When you generate the gallery - the text from your catalog description field ("This shot was originally...") will get substituted in the web page that is created for this image.

As an aside, you are also able to set a switch (it's on the settings tab when you are creating the gallery) that allows caption data to be passed through as html. Which is to say if you wanted to put the bold code <b>be bold</b> in the caption box, it would be passed through as is. I can't say that I've found this useful - but who knows - maybe one day.

You will find a list of of all iView Media Pro tokens and how and where they can be used here:

Some only make sense to use on the media.html template page, and some are used on the index.html page.

As far as the look and feel of the web gallery - that is left up to your own imagination. You can modify the cosmetics however you like. In my own case, I added the menu bar at the top and moved things around a bit.

WHAT SHOULD ALWAYS BE BACKED UP

The iView Media Pro catalogs are stored in the folder iViewCatalogs. These files not only contain all the pointers to your web image tif or psd files, but all the annotations you've added.

If this file, catalog_2005_raw.ivc (example I'm using) is corrupted or lost or whatever - all the entries that you've added will be lost as well. Assuming that just the catalog is gone, all your image files are still around and you would need to sit and re-enter all this information again. (egads).

So the files to be backed up whenever changes or some substantial amount of time is expended on them:

1) Your iView catalog(s)

2) The Templates that you've customized.

And of course as a general rule it's good to have backups of your image files - but that has nothing to do with iView.

In the next chapter I will describe how to use Custom iView Media fields to create a Paypal cart mechanism, and a couple of other tricks.

But you should now have enough of a feeling for how this works so that you can create your custom gallery and publish your vision to the world.

Page 3 (Customizing iView for Paypal)

Page 1 Introduction