Tardis:2023 archive/Galleries
Galleries are a quick — but limited — way to display a number of photographs on a single page. In general, they should be avoided on this wiki. It is much preferred that pictures accompany blocks of text. Galleries, by their nature, replace text.
For details on how to create galleries, you can read the potted Wikia help file below. Even better is the more detailed help file.
Things you might not have thought about
The potted text, below, will give you an overview of the gallery process. But it won't tell you much about how the function behaves in live examples. Here are some things to think about.
Enough is enough
Theoretically, you can use galleries to display a very large number of pictures. This poses a problem for users who have slow connections, a few users who are clinging on to older machines, and almost everyone who's viewing on a smartphone. Don't assume that everyone has a computer, or internet connection, as good as yours. The gallery function gives you the ability to make pages which . . . load very slowly indeed.
To help with this problem:
- Use .jpg files only. Other file types are either unscalable (which is vital to galleries) or far too high-quality for the purpose of galleries.
- Reduce the file-size of your gallery pictures to around or below 50kb. Certainly, don't go over 100kb with any one picture. You can reduce your filesize most easily in Photoshop by saving for web (as opposed to normally saving), and dialing down the quality to around 20.
- Find a way to limit the total number of pictures in a single gallery structure. Do you really need all 200+ images of, say, Doctor Who Adventures covers on a single page? Or can you create a page for each publication year?
Rules of use
There are a few absolute rules which should be observed when using galleries. Failure to observe these rules could end in blocking:
- Never use a gallery for a single picture. Single pictures should be placed on pages using the syntax:
[[file:PicName.extension]]
as described at Help:Files. There is simply no advantage to using the gallery structure for a single picture; the wikitext for file display is invariably superior for the task. - Always hide the galleryadd button. All galleries must begin with a command that looks like this:
<gallery hideaddbutton="true">
