4.18.2012

Organizing a Project Gallery/Menu

When I first started my blog, the first thing I should have done was to start a project menu/gallery, but I didn't.  When you only have a handful of posts it doesn't seem like it's really that important.  As time passed, and I posted more projects, I put it off until it got to the point where it was overwhelming to think of sizing, uploading, labeling, and linking nearly 150 images.  I tried several different ways of doing it, but none of them really worked for me.  What I needed was a way to organize my posts that was easy to keep up, took very little of my time, looked clean and neat, and didn't cost me anything--enter Inlinkz.  Just realized this sounds an awful lot like an infomercial, promise it's not! :)

Over a year ago I entertained the thought of starting a linky party and signed up for Inlinkz, but I never did anything with it. The other day I remembered that when you join Inlinkz they give you one free Thumbnail collection and unlimited text collections.   I realized that I could use the one free thumbnail collection to link up my projects in a page and set the closing date for the link as far into the future as possible (saving me from paying a $1.99 monthly fee for the next 622 days).   It took hours to link up all of my projects to date, but I'm caught up now and from here on out it will be a breeze to quickly link up a project when I post it. 


I set it up so the most recent projects will be posted at the top of the page.  This will make it easier for readers to check in and see if there is a project that they might have missed and will give new visitors a clear picture of what they can expect to find at Today's Fabulous Finds.  Also, if I have any spammers try to link up I'm sure to see it there at the top and can quickly delete the links. (I hope this doesn't happen, we'll see.)

One more perk--if you login to your Inlinkz account and open the collection, you can view how many clicks each of your projects has to quickly see which ones are getting the most traffic--fun, right?


I'm sharing all of this because I know that the majority of you that read my blog have a blog yourself and possibly some of you are just as cheap frugal as I am and might not want to pay a monthly fee just to open one thumbnail collection for a project gallery.

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I'm so grateful to each of you, that you take the time to drop by and read about what I've been working on.  I went through each of my past posts one by one to decide which ones to link to my gallery and was touched by the tremendous support that I've been given along the way.   Thank you for your support and for your friendship--you are fabulous! 


Today's Fabulous Find...Free Inlinkz Thumbnail Collection

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8 comments:

farmhouse-story said...

this is so clever, janet! i had read about the inlinkz, but, never needed it. off to check yours out! tfs this:)

Heather B. said...

Well done, Janet!

Also, I forgot to let you know that I grew wheat grass for our family's Easter table center decoration. I decided to use the paper towel method and had no problems. Like your boys, I too enjoyed watching it grow daily. I found butterfly picks at the dollar store and it looked like there were butterflies hovering over the grass.

Thanks for the great idea and my mom really liked your idea.

Hugs,
Heather

Karin said...

Thank you so so much for this post, I've been meaning to add this to my blog for months and just didn't have the energy to search for the how too...now I don't have to. If I had known how easy it was I would have done it weeks ago.

Gina @ MoneywiseMoms said...

I've been wanting to change my Recipes page to sort by photos/type of recipe. Do you think this gallery would work for that?

Janet said...

To Heather B: I'm glad that your Easter grass turned out so well! I like the idea of adding the butterflies, I'll have to try it next year!

Janet said...

To answer Gina's question: I'm not aware of any way to sort the links within one collection. If you paid the $1.99 fee each month you could add more than one collection to the page/post and sort the categories with seperate collections, like how some blogs have a place to link up crafts and another for the recipes at linky parties. If you you want is a text link then you could have unlimited collections at no charge.

I saw a tutorial at Laura's Crafty Life that uses tables to add the thumbnails. You might want to check it out, it may work for what you want.

http://www.laurascraftylife.com/2011/12/blogger-image-gallery-tutorial.html

Karen said...

Love this idea! I always wondered how people did that. Thanks for your helpful ideas Janet!!

Unknown said...

Genius!! I am so doing this :)

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