Saturday, March 29, 2014

Weebly: how to re-use the same images without uploading twice

I'm trying to move my portfolio of digital contemporary art drawings, which is currently on Tumblr, to Weebly.
One of the annoying drawbacks of Weebly is that you have to upload the same image over and over again if you want to use it on different pages or in different elements.

Single images

For single images, here's a workaround I found in this post on The Country School Technology Blog. I quote:

Find a picture you want to reuse and RIGHT click it. Select "Open image in New Tab". (This just makes the next step a bit easier.) Go to the new tab, select the URL address and COPY it. Then go back to your blog post (or whatever) and click the blue box to insert an image. This time, however, instead of dragging photos to the uploader or selecting images from your computer, select the Image URL icon in the uploader's toolbar. Then PASTE the URL you copied from the other tab into the window. That's it - your image will now appear in your new post.
In the original post you'll also find a slideshow with explanations.

Galleries and slideshows

However, this only works for single images. On Weebly, galleries and slideshows do not permit the use of URLs, you can only upload images.
To reuse galleries and slideshows, I found the following workaround myself:
  • create a hidden page, which will be your "photobucket"
  • create a gallery/slideshow on that page and upload all your photos to it
  • whenever you need a "partial" gallery or slideshow, or a copy of it:
    • go to your hidden "photobucket" page (I find it by going to the "Pages" tab, select it there and click "Save & Edit"), 
    • select your gallery/slideshow and copy it to the page in question (hovering over the left upper corner, this turns into an arrow; if you click this arrow you get a drop-down menu with the option "copy" to the page of your choice)
    • then, on the target page, remove from the copied gallery/slideshow the unwanted images and make other changes as you wish (the original one, in your "photobucket", remains unchanged)
  • Before starting to copy images/galleries from your "photobucket", add all the captions first!
It's still only a workaround. The main problem being that if you want to add pictures, you'll have to start all over again anyway. So for galleries and slideshows, we really need an option to insert images by URL as well, or an interface where you can select already uploaded images. I submitted a feature request, if it appears, please vote for it!

Alternatives

By the way, if you consider using Weebly, have a look also at Wix and Squarespace. They look more professional to me (and are, I think), but are more expensive also.