Can I create an Image and Video library on EditorX using Wix Pro Gallery?

Hello!
I want to create an Image and Video Library on EditorX, similar to the NASA Image and Video Library. (Take a look at it to get an idea of what I am talking about - www.images.nasa.gov )
(I have no experience in coding so I will rely entirely upon EditorX and Wix Apps)

The website will require the following features:
:black_small_square: The ability to download images/videos to a device.
:black_small_square: Images/Videos should have a Title and a Description Description .
:black_small_square: The Image/Video can be tagged to group similar files (For example: #sunset, #nature, etc.)
:black_small_square: The ability to categorise images/videos into Folders/Albums/Groups (Not necessary if hashtags are there).
:black_small_square: The ability to search the images/videos using Site Search. (I know this feature isn’t available for EditorX but I hope it gets added soon).


I tried using some Wix Apps to see if its possible.
:black_small_square: The Wix Pro Gallery can be used but it does not allow tagging/grouping or searching.
:black_small_square: The Wix Shared Gallery could be used but it does not allow tagging or downloading.
:black_small_square: The Wix Photo Albums could be used but it does not allow tagging, and in the future, will not be compatible with site search since photo albums are a separate site.
:black_small_square: The Wix Forums app can be used since it allows search and tagging but the site would not look visually appealing.
:black_small_square: The Wix File Share app can be used but it does not allow search or tagging and the site would not look visually appealing.


CONCLUSION

I will be using the Wix Pro Gallery since it meets mosts of my needs but I have some questions:
:black_small_square: Does Wix Pro Gallery let us upload images/videos from the Wix Mobile App?
:black_small_square: Does Wix Pro Gallery let us upload and download videos and images in the highest quality?
:black_small_square: Does Site Search let us search images/videos in the Wix Pro Gallery?
:black_small_square: Is there a limitation of file size while uploading images/videos to the Wix Pro Gallery?

Thank you! (:

2 Likes

Hi! Sure, I mean… sure u can! :v
I will try to adress each point –for most of them at least– of your detailed question regarding the Editor and Wix Pro Gallery:

:black_small_square: The ability to download images/videos to a device
You can do so by toggling on this setting (highlighted) in the Options menu of the app settings. I am not sure if this allows to download the video files, but at least I know for sure it works to download the image files.


Videos in your gallery can be set to play automatically, onClick or onHover, with sound on or off, among other particular settings. Now, these settings only modify the display of videos in the gallery’s main layout, not the expansion mode . These options are available in Settings > Advanced.

:black_small_square: Images/Videos should have a Title and a Description
Indeed. In fact, depending on the default settings, the gallery app doesn’t leave an image without a default name and description that you can later change (there are two ways I can think of doing this; but it depends and… keep reading).
To actually show each image’s Title and Description you need to mark both checkboxes (‘Title’ and ‘Description’) at Settings > Layout > Text.


Depending on the settings above, titles and descriptions will be shown in all images or just the hovered one, above or below the image or even covering it, and you can of course customize their style formats (font, size, color).

:black_small_square: The Image/Video can be tagged to group similar files
This is a tricky one. To do this and be able to perform them according to their custom tags, I would recommend to use your Content Manager and create an image database , then to connect your pro gallery to it through a dataset .
Once you create your database, you’ll have to name and administrate (and optionally arrange for better comfort) your fields per item; I assume for what you’re asking you’ll need at least these fields: Title (text), Description (rich text), Image and Tags. You’ll be able to filter your items by their tags through the connection.


This is a very different process than that of manually adding your images to the gallery the “normal” way (‘Manage items’), but gives you that and more capabilities and, although it may sound a bit techny , doesn’t involve code (or not necessarily). Among the benefits of using an image database is the ability to upload new items (your images) directly from your site’s manager without the need to open the editor, and these changes are visible on your live site instantly.

Although I do must warn u that you’ll have to learn the differences between Sandbox & Live . I have to warn you too, that –as I sense– if you want to display all images in your gallery and let your user filter them by tag live in your site you do will need some coding through Velo, but as I remember it is possible and not extremely complicated (others have achieved so too) (I may be wrong tho).

:black_small_square: The ability to categorise images/videos into Folders/Albums/Groups
Maybe Wix Pro Gallery isn’t the app for this; if you’d want to display your images grouped in folders or albums then –and I didn’t know it either before but– there is an app for that: Wix Photo Albums . Try that one instead if albums are what you want to achieve, but I couldn’t tell you for sure if it’s available in EditorX since many of the Wix Apps aren’t \:

:black_small_square: The ability to search the images/videos using Site Search (Well this feature is indeed not available for EditorX but we all hope it gets added soon)


:black_small_square: Does Wix Pro Gallery let us upload images/videos from the Wix Mobile App?
Yes , since it has a dashboard that allows you to manage your apps and their contents. But most probably if you have uploaded your images traditionally and not through databases (not sure); then again I couldn’t tell if the content manager is available from mobile.

:black_small_square: Does Wix Pro Gallery let us upload and download videos and images in the highest quality?
It downloads them in the same size, format, quality & resolution as originally uploaded. No reductions as far as I have understood and tried out myself.
Nonetheless, it reduces their quality onDisplay (when they are shown in the live site without downloading) with the best compression possible not to affect quality nor page-load speed. This percentage, however, can be manually changed in the app settings:

:black_small_square: Does Site Search let us search images/videos in the Wix Pro Gallery?
No. Even when available –which isn’t yet–, Site Search worked pretty poorly every time I tested it in the classic editor.
Now, if you’re talking about Search Engines (like Google/Bing/Ecosia), Wix does indeed allow your galleries’ contents to be found and indexed by them; but for them to appear in search results efficiently… well that’s another story, since Wix’s SEO is quite good for Premium sites but barely existent for Free ones ':

:black_small_square: Is there a limitation of file size while uploading images/videos to the Wix Pro Gallery?
Read This Article and look up for ‘File Size Limits’ column on the right of the table.

I hope I’ve helped somehow to solve your doubts :slight_smile:

P.S. - sorry all my screenshots are in Spanish ':l

@ricardoherrera994 Thank you so much for your amazingly detailed answer! Needless to say, you solved most of my doubts! :smiley:

Even though the screenshots were in Spanish, I surprisingly understood them all!


So it turns out that the Wix Pro Gallery (for the time being) does not allow either tagging images/videos or searching them :confused:


As you can see, these are still feature requests. It is to be noted that you can search images from the Media Manager but unfortunately, that is of no use to me since I want the user to search for images on the live site.
I don’t know why they haven’t added these two crucial elements to the Wix Pro Gallery. I’ve voted for these features and I will also send an email to progallery@wix.com and urge them to add these features as soon as possible. I will also post about it to the Wish List to draw the team’s attention to this.

Using the Content Manager to tag images/videos is indeed a good idea and fortunately, I’m familiar with it too, but it doesn’t sync media to the Wix Pro Gallery’s Media Manager.

So what I’ll do is I’ll wait for the Wix Pro Gallery team to add these two features and, till then, I will create a library without these two features (at least for now). But I hope that these two features will be added soon.

Thanks once again Ricardo for spending so much time and writing a very detailed answer for me! Also, thanks for adding the screenshots (even if some of them were in Spanish! XD) I really appreciate it! (:

@pratham You’re welcome! :smiley:
Always glad 2 help/shed some light.

I’ve added my vote as well for these feature requests already, fingers crossed indeed to see them in a future.

1 Like

@pratham , you are seriously excellent. Your approach to web design as a non-coder is particularly insightful to myself and I imagine, many people who use wix and editor x to build websites. Your detailed posts are most appreciated.

With that said, I am wondering if you made any headway on this project? I too, am working on a project that requires members to be able to search for specific videos within galleries / albums on a member-website. In addition I need to be able to allow for the member to save their selections within their own personal albums in their profile. Let me know if you have any insight on this, and / or there have been any developments in your own conquest to have searchable galleries on wix / editor x.

Thanks again!

  • Jake

Hey Jake, firstly - thanks for your compliments! (:

About my project - it was mostly a personal thing and unfortunately, I got busy with something else so never got the opportunity to make that thing. However I did look up the Velo forum, ( www.wix.com/velo/forum ) and after reading the posts of a couple of users, I guess it is possible to add a search bar to your gallery (though they didn’t exactly mention how they did it :confused: ), and also to remember member choices - using the .contains function and the Wix Storage API respectively. As far as I know, there isn’t any no-code feature that lets you do this, but if you can write some code, then it should definitely be achievable and the Velo community members will surely help you out if you get stuck at some point! :+1:t2: