Future-proofing a Portfolio Site

[thistimj]

I'm trying to plan out a portfolio site that gives me some room to grow. I've read a lot of questions and answers on the forums regarding how to set up images for portfolio sites. Which method is the most future-proof: adding images to a page with the image field, adding images to a page using repeater fields for extra data (a proper title, tags, etc.), or giving each image its own child page and adding fields to hold any extra data?

They each have their pros and cons; which method would the ProcessWire veterans recommend?

Ryan linked this site on twitter: http://www.villasofdistinction.com/. He mentioned it had ~30k photos. Ryan, what method did you use?

Thanks!

[yesjoar]

Hi thistimj,

there is no best method.

For example you build a slideshow (image, title, text) then use the repeat field.

When you only need to upload some images, then use only an image field and set the max file input to zero, so you can upload so much images you needed.

Can you explain a little bit, how the page looks like?

y.

[thistimj]

Currently my tree looks like this:

Photography

-- Gallery 01

-- Image 01

-- Image 02

-- Gallery 02

-- Image 01

-- Image 02

Right now, each image page/template only has a title and an image field. I did this in case I wanted to add image tags or f-stop information (or any kind of extra information) in the future. The only real major downside of this that I can see is that it's time consuming. I'm wondering if a repeater field would be just as good.

[diogo]

This thread reminded me of another one that might interest you http://processwire.com/talk/topic/417-extending-image-field/

[Marty Walker]

I tend to build portfolio sites using like your current tree. It is a little more tedious but it's worth it over using a simple image field. As you say you can have as much info there about each photo as you like. I haven't used repeaters for the simple reason that some of my clients like to move images around. Like moving a photo from gallery 2 to gallery 1. I'm not sure how you would do that if you were running with a repeater setup.

[thistimj]

@diogo Thanks. I've checked that thread out. I'm not too handy right now with very advanced php, but I'll have to revisit that in the future.

@Marty I agree with you. The more I try to make just the image field do everything I'd like, the more I see that the long way is more flexible for me right now.

[AnotherAndrew]

Marty - you can use use repeaters for images and also move the order of the images around by simply drag and drop!

[Marty Walker]

Marty - you can use use repeaters for images and also move the order of the images around by simply drag and drop!

Oh I know . I meant in terms of moving a repeater from one page to another.

[ryan]

Ryan linked this site on twitter: http://www.villasofdistinction.com/. He mentioned it had ~30k photos. Ryan, what method did you use?

On nearly any site I've built, the photos are accompanying some product. So a site like that one linked above will have a single images field that all the images for the property go into. And then there are a few thousand of those properties (each represented by a page). Most properties have 20-40 photos. So if we averaged 30 photos per property, and there were 3,000 properties, we'd have 90k photos. I don't know what the actual number is as I've not counted up the totals on those sites in awhile. But there's nothing complex going on there, just a few thousand pages that each have a single images field.

[thistimj]

Dang. That's impressive.