Categories + Widgets = Album Pages

by Nikkibons, adapted by Josh

taha567 recently asked a great question on the KickDev message board: As KickApps doesn't yet offer built-in photo album functionality, she asked, is there some other way to make albums using KickApps?

In response, veteran AppKicker Nikkibons explained how she used categories and widgets to create custom album pages. The following general instructions explain how to make album pages like Nikki's; you can follow along in the notes to see how she implemented each step to create her photo album page.

  1. Create categories, sub-categories, and/or sub-sub-categories for your albums. You can create categories in the Affiliate Center under Configure > Media Categories.
    • Nikki used the major media types for her top-level categories--Audio Uploads, Blog/News Posts, Photo Categories, and Video Uploads. She then created a number of sub-categories for each top-level category.
    • These categories and sub-categories appear on the media upload page so that members can assign their media items to them. In the screenshot at right, I'm selecting the "Cutie Pie Photo Gallery" sub-category of the "Photo Categories" category on Nikki's "add media" page.
  2. Make widgets for each of these categories and/or subcategories. You can do so in the Affiliate Center under Deploy > Widgets & Video Players. Pick your desired kind of widget and filter its contents by your categories and/or subcategories.
  3. Embed these widgets into a custom "album" page.
    • Nikki made widgets for each of the sub-categories that she created for her top-level photo category, and then embedded these widgets into a custom "Photo Galleries" page as separate "albums":
  4. Modify your main navbar to include links to your custom album pages.
    • The last step is to link in your custom album page. Nikki accomplished this by using JavaScript to rewrite the link of the "photos" tab in her main navigation to point to her custom album page. See the "How To Add Tabs to your Site-Wide Nav" tutorial for detailed instructions.

That's all there is to it! Cruise on over to Nikki's photo album page to see the finished result. In the coming months we'll be releasing built-in functionality for creating media sets and photo albums like this. In the meantime, this is a great way to adapt existing functionality to achieve the same end. Nikki's site, Mahogany Butterfly, is filled with clever workarounds like this. If you're ever wondering whether there's a way to do something on KickApps that isn't yet built-into the platform, the answer is often yes. Nikki's site is a great example of this, and a great place to go to gather inspiration for your own site. Nicely done, Nikki!

Did you enjoy this tutorial? Have questions, comments, or want to submit one of your own? Contact us at support@kickapps.com.