You can create a custom menu for each gallery instead of using the built-in menu. A custom menu can include the built-in menu items, such as a drop-down menu of new exhibitions or a link to your blog. A custom menu can also include any text you wish, such as HTML code to link to another website, or even plain text.

Hint: See the sample, below, for Custom Item 1 to see how to make a link to another website. Replace “www.mywebsite.com” with the name of your website. Replace “My Web Site” with the text you want to show in the menu bar.

Let’s say, you want a menu item that links to another website, www.mywebsite.com. And, you’d like a second menu item that doesn’t do anything but show the text, “All pictures copyright © 2009 by David Gross”. 

In the Administration of your website, choose the Galleries tab.  Click “Edit” for the gallery you want to edit. Then, click “Show/Hide Advanced Features” to see the custom menu settings.

Fill in the “Menu Bar Custom Items”, as shown.

When you save, you might notice that the system has changed your copyright symbol to an HTML code for the symbol, as shown below. This is OK.

Here’s a sample custom menu bar. This will show a link to all exhibitions in the gallery, your custom menu item #1, and custom menu item #2.

Your viewers will see this:

The best way to draw people to your gallery is through social networking. Many people share their favorite websites using Twitter, Digg, Delicius, and other social networking sites.

We’ve learned that just being mentioned in a popular blog can draw thousands of viewers — people who might otherwise miss your exhibition.

Here’s how to add a sharing menu to your menu bar. You will be changing the menu bar for an entire gallery, not just one exhibition inside a gallery.

Go to your administration pages, and click on the Galleries tab. Chose Edit to the far right of the name of the gallery you want to change, and you’ll see an Edit Gallery form. Then, click on Show/Hide Advanced Features. This will let you edit the menu bar.

Click the checkbox before Use custom menu bar?

You can chose each menu item in your menu. Make the last item Share.

Click on Save when you’re done. If you look at your gallery, you’ll the Share item in your menu bar. It’s the one with the “+” in a box.

That’s all you have to do, and people will be able to tell their friends and followers about your exhibition with a single click.

If your captions don’t look right because you see weird characters, your have a “character set” problem. Different computers use different “character sets” to show English, Polish, Russian, Chinese and other languages. However, picture captioning is not smart — it often does not know what language you used to write your caption.

If you’re seeing words like “itÕs” instead of “it’s”, then the software you used to add captions to your pictures did not use the most standard character set, called “UTF-8″. 

For example, Photoshop CS2 on a Macintosh, uses “Mac OS Roman” characters. Because many photographers use Macintosh, the system will guess “Mac OS Roman”.

All this means that Windows users will have trouble if their captioning software doesn’t record which character set it uses. Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture use UTF-8, so both should work well. 

This system tries its best to figure out what characters your captioning software used. If you see strange characters, the problem is your captioning software. Unless you can tell your software to save IPTC caption information as UTF-8, you’ll have to fix the captions in the Mimetic Gallery system, under the “Pictures” tab.

There are two new catalog pages you can use. They use the SlideShowPro gallery page, a fantastic Flash viewer that we use to show slide shows. The new catalog pages, called “All Shows” and “Catalog”, will show all exhibitions in your gallery.

Catalog

Both “Catalog” and “All Shows” can be added to the menu bar of a gallery. Catalog shows a grid of exhibitions on the same kind of page as you would see a list of exhibitions. “All Shows” shows the same grid of exhibitions, but on a slide show page. Both let the viewer watch a slide show of an exhibition.

All Shows

Only those of you with personal websites, or have Administrator control over a website, can add these functions. If you don’t have such power, ask your gallery owner for help.

How to add Catalog and/or All Shows to your menu bar:

1. Sign in as Administrator to the admin page.
2. Click on the “Galleries” tab.
3. Click “Edit” to the right the gallery to which you want to add Catalog or All Shows.
4. Check the “Use custom menu bar” checkbox by clicking once on the box.
5. In a menu item popup box, choose “catalog” to show the “Catalog”. Choose “all shows” to show ”All Shows”.
6. Click the “Save” button.

Now, when you open up that gallery, you’ll see a menu bar with “Catalog” and/or ”All Shows”.

The Mimetic Galleries system is optimized so that it will show up well in a Google search. You can improve how Google finds and shows your exhibition pages.

If you own a gallery, be sure to write a description for it. That description will show up in Google.

If you have any exhibitions, be sure to write a statement and a description for each one. The statement and description will show up in Google.

On your profile page, be sure to write a short biography. This will show up in Google.

A “domain name” is the name people use to find your website, such as “mimetic.com”.

You should buy the name that people will naturally think of when they want to find you: your own name. Often, you’ll have to add “photo” or “galleries” to your name (e.g. DavidGrossPhoto.com)  because someone else has already taken it. You can buy the right to use a name for as many years as you wish (if that name is not already in use). However, many people have found buying their own domain name is not as simple as it should be.

Here’s how to buy your name with my preferred service, Verio.com. Why Verio? Because they don’t steal your domain name (there are some that buy it but keep control over it), they’re reasonably priced, and they have a good system to help you manage the name.

A quick note: If you wish to buy a second domain name with Verio, don’t go through the process described here. Instead, go to your new Verio account page, the one they made for your when you bought your first domain name. Buy from there, so you can control all your stuff in one place.

Open your browser (such as Firefox, Explorer, or Safari) and go to http://www.verio.com/domain-name-registration/. You’ll see something like this near the bottom of the page:

Write the domain name you want, such as your own name, in first box under (1). Check off “.com” and “.net” and “.org” under (2). If you want to invest in a name, you might as well taken the most popular variations of it, too. Click the “SEARCH” button under (3).

If the name you want is taken, click the button that appears, “TRY ANOTHER NAME”, and start over. If all goes well, click “ORDER NOW”:

Next, you’ll see what you’re buying, and the total price. Don’t bother with the “Private Registration” options. Note that the default time is two years. It makes no difference how many years you buy. You can renew every year. When you’re ready, click “CONTINUE” here.

The next two pages are useless sales pitches. The first tries to sell you “Private Registration.” Just click “CONTINUE”. The next page tries to sell you a server. Just click “CHECKOUT”, near the bottom of the page.

Finally, you’re at the part where you give them your information and pay. It looks like this:

Fill out your information and pay. When you’re all finished, you’ll get an email with the information we need to make your new domain name show your new gallery. Send that email to us, at info@mimetic.com.

Will my website show before I’m ready to show it?

Not if you ask us not to show it! We can hide the gallery until you’re ready to show it. Meanwhile, the world will see something like “Website Under Construction.”

[See the newer posting to learn the another, easier method for adding pictures by email that works when you haven't added the IPTC caption information for picture!]

Did you know you can add pictures to your exhibitions by emailing them to your gallery website? It works this way:

1. You caption your picture with your name and the exhibition “nickname” with a catalog program, such as Lightroom, Aperture, iPhoto, PhotoMechanic, iView, and Expression Media.
2. Email the picture your gallery website. The email address is of the form, pix@mygallery.com. So, if your gallery website is Mimetic.com, then the email address to use is “pix@mimetic.com”
3. The gallery website will put the picture into the right gallery.