We'd like to thank Steve Johnson for this very helpful "how-to" writeup.
I started looking into using Gallery2 and figured it would be too difficult to incorporate it into a Sandvox theme however it turned out quite simple. The hard part is getting a Gallery2 template to match a Sandvox design.
Step 1 - Pick the design you are going to use for your Sandvox site. I tried a couple and found that the only ones that work well are the “wide” ones. I ended up using the "Cubicle Wide" design from BlueBall Design which is 990px wide.
Step 2 - Install Gallery2 on your webhost and design your Gallery using the Gallery2 interface. You will need a new template I recommend you clone on of the templates provided which means modifying the css to match the design you chose for your site. The instructions are pretty clear and if you are comfortable manipulating css, easy to do. The specific changes I made to make this fit into the Sandvox design were:
- Match the background color
- Delete the heading image file. This allowed the gallery to fit in better with the Sandvox site.
- Make the breadcrumb text for the current location match the menu color of the Sandxox menu text.
There are more changes you can make, however those were the ones I made that affected how Gallery2 fit within Sandvox.
Step 3 - Add an “external page” page to your website. Then from the Inspector:
- Enter the url to the gallery2 location which will look something like http://yourdomain.com/gallery2/main.php
- Select “Page within Page” for the type of link
- Make sure the width is 100%
- Adjust the height as necessary for your albums. If they are all on a single row about 600px should do it.
I don’t recommend you use pagelets on this page since it will drastically reduce the landscape you are working with and make your users have to scroll around to see your gallery.
Step 4 - Publish and enjoy!
You can see a sample site at http://www.1000wpwebsites.com/mntimages.