Back to basics - Thumbnail Galleries...

If you're just getting started in this business, and you're planning to make some adult webpages (and hopefully some money!!!) then one of the things you're going to spend a lot of your time doing is creating what we call thumbnail galleries. There's just no escaping 'em, and they're a huge part of the adult webmaster's life, so I figured we'd take a look at some of the basics involved here this morning.

What's a thumbnail?

Long before the web, and long before porn on the web, designers used to do small drawings on pieces of paper to give themselves and other people a clue as to what their final 'bigger' picture would look like. It allowed them to work out on a smaller scale some of the problems they might stumble across when they come to do the final, larger picture. A thumbnail image (or 'thumb') is just a small picture that allows you to see what the larger picture will look like.

Speed problems, surfing and a great solution!

Most people surfing the web right now have pretty slow connections and it would be impractical for them to download say 25 pictures every time they went to a website. By showing them a small preview of each image they can choose which picture they'd like to see. This saves YOU money as they will download or look at 'less' pictures, and it makes for a better surfing experience for the surfer as there's less waiting around. Naturally, as porn sites usually have pictures on them, the thumbnail picture is used a lot in that line of website building.

The 'gallery' part.

If you've ever been to an art gallery and checked out the paintings there, then visualizing a thumbnail gallery should be pretty easy. It's basically just a page filled with small images and each one of them links to the "full sized" version. Click the small one and you'll see the full-size version! Thumbnail galleries can have any number of pictures in them, depending on what kind of site or page you are making. So when you click the preview image you're really saying, "I want to see the full size version of this pic..."

Here's an example of a simple thumbnail gallery page:
http://www.xxxfootpics.com/gallery-1.html

Tables - the glue that holds the gallery together.

The "hidden" part of thumbnail gallery (like the one shown above) which you don't see is the webpage which holds the gallery together. There is usually one or more rows of 5 thumbnail images with neat little spacing around each small pic. The only real way to do this is with an HTML Table. Tables are great for giving your pages an exciting look. Here's a tutorial on tables:

http://www.december.com/html/tutor/tables.html

And here's the code you'll need for a standard adult webpage thumbnail gallery table:

<TABLE BORDER=1 CELLPADDING=10 CELLSPACING=0>

<TR>

<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>

</TR>

<TR>

<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>
<TD>Pic here</TD>

</TR>

</TABLE>

That's for 2 rows of thumbnail pictures. If you want to make life really easy for yourself then make sure you get a nice free WYSIWYG visual editor when you're starting out, as tables can be a bit confusing and tough at first.

Advertising...

Don't forget the reason you're making this gallery too! To make you some money. Don't be tempted to just make the gallery and forget about the ads. You should be able to fit 2 - 3 ads on each gallery page that you make. You can simply put a banner at the top and bottom, or you might want to make the thumbs go all the way around an ad. You might want to have an ad to the left. Let's look at some more examples here:

Example 1
Taken from a FREE site.
Thumbs all around the advert and an ad at the base.
http://www.sexwithfeet.com/amateur-feet/main.html

Example 2
Taken from a TGP2 gallery.
Less thumbs and ads top, left, and above.
http://www.thongphoto.com/wife-fuckers/index.html

Example 3
Another free site gallery!
Ad to the LEFT of the thumbnails.
http://www.bare-foot-hooker.com/gallery-2.html

As you can see, there are many ways to make thumbnail galleries - but the main thing to make sure is that you're positioning your ads so that the surfer can NOT miss them. They have to look at the thumbs, so if you put your ads NEXT to the thumbs - it's gonna be practically impossible for the surfer NOT to see them.

Creativity with thumbnail galleries

It's worth spending time looking are as many other people's gallery pages as you can. Learn from what they are doing right - using interesting layouts and so on, and what they are doing wrong - not enough ads or using the same layout as everyone else! Get creative and play around with table and see if you can come up with some NEW layouts as well as mastering the basic ones that I've posted above. Have fun!

TOM ^"^