Photo Gallery for Ebay auctions

This page contains a free custom photo gallery generator that will produce a gallery suitable for use in Ebay auction listings. The photographs will need to be hosted by a free image hoster such as Photobucket. The photo gallery is designed to be used with any of Ern's Eporium auction templates. It will also work with many templates from other designers.

How to use the gallery

One way to use a photo gallery is in conjunction with the Custom template page. To do this open the Custom template page in a new tab or window, copy and paste the finished gallery code into one of the text boxes and then complete the custom template.

To do this the text box width will need to be set to auto. Also ensure that the template width is set to a width wider than the photographs width. To co-ordinate the colours copy the colour code in the colour selection list and paste it into the colour picker in the Custom template page.

Design selections

Below is the colour picker and a schematic diagram of the photo gallery layout along with the design options. For colours, select the item then pick a colour using the colour picker. Click the Set Colour button to update the code and diagram. Below the schematic is the area for adding links of up to 20 photographs. When completed go to the code-view panel to copy the code.

Tip; The colour picker, schematic diagram and some of the boxes can be moved by dragging with the left mouse-button.

Important! For best results the auction listing/template should have a fixed width to suit the width of the widest photo. Also, the tallest photo and caption combination needs to be the first image in the gallery, this is to allow the Ebay page to expand to the maximum required height.

Copying the code.

To create or update the code click the Make Code button, this will load the code into the code-view panel. The gallery may then be previewed by clicking the Preview button, this will either open a pop-up window or new tab. The design can be changed by going back to the design area, then click the Make Code button to update the code and the Preview button for a new preview.

When satisfied with the design click the Select All button to highlight the code. Copy the code by right-clicking on the highlighted area and then select copy, alternatively use Ctrl-C keys to copy the code.

Once the code has been copied open a new blank text or HTML document using notepad or an HTML editor, paste in the code and save the document. The gallery has now been created, now make a second copy for use as a back-up.

Guidance notes

Setting colours.

To set a colour, select an item from the list then pick a colour using the colour picker. Click the Set Colour button to update the code and diagram. The colour code numbers in the colour picker and the set colour list are editble and can also be set by typing in a colour hex code.

Photo sizes

For best visual effect the photo's should be of similar size in width and height. Next best is to have photo's the same width or the same height. Widths of up to 600px are good for Ebay auctions, a width 600px is ideal if the gallery is used in a template with a width of 940px.

There is information about how to resize photographs in the image editing page.

Adding images and captions.

Enter the number of images required, from 0 to 20, and then click Update. This will create the image and caption fields, if required each photograph can have a caption below it. Add the image's url's and caption, if no caption is required leave the caption field empty.

The gallery is designed to use an external image hoster for storing the auction photos. One image hoster that can be used for storing auction photographs is Photobucket . Upload the photo to Photobucket and they will supply the url/address for it. This image shows the links as provided by Photobucket, the Direct Link is the one to be used.

Information; Photobucket have made changes, it is now necessary to hover the mouse pointer over the image to display the links.

The image link will look something like;    http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o47/eporium/jktwmk.jpg , this is the type of link that should be pasted into the image link area.