I am trying to make a custom arrangement of thumbnails for my client's homepage, and I am trying to find the best way to go about it. I want to show 3 random thumbnails from 4 albums, each in columns, forming a table of 12 thumbnails on a single page. Clicking a thumb will take you to the detail page for that item. I also want to provide a dynamic search gallery that show 12+ images from a specific query, so I feel like I should keep a separate template for the homepage (I at least need some logic to use different CSS). Is there a way to check which page the user is on and use a different template?

I am customizing the Zenpage theme, as I will have static pages as well as gallery pages.

Here is an image of what I am going for.

I appreciate any suggestions!

`$imagenames = $album->getImages(0,0,'random');` will give you an array of image names from the album in random order. You will of course need to be sure that there are at least three of them.

`$imageobj = newImage($album,$imagenames[0]);` gives you the image object of the first random image.

`$imageobj->getThumb();` gives you the thumbnail image link which you can use in an <img src...> tag to display the image in your table.

Thank you so much, this is a HUGE help!

How do I target each album to include thumbs from more than one album on the same page?

The main part I am still trying to understand is how to include this custom functionality as the default for my gallery index page (3 images each from 4 albums, in columns), but also include a dynamic album with a more standard view (all 12 images from one search). I want the same menu item to remain active for both views. Is this possible?

It is possible to assign themes to top level albums. Besides that you can do everything on the theme pages directly by coding.

I suggest to review especially the theming tutorial and the object model tutorial.

Your object model tutorial is AWESOME. Thanks for the tips!

Here is the code for a custom thumb table in case anyone is curious :)

`

<?php $gallery = new Gallery(); ?>
<?php $albums = array('earrings','rings','necklaces','bracelets'); ?>
<?php for($n=0; $n<count($albums); $n++){ ?>

<div class="albumCol">
<?php echo $albums[$n]; ?>
<?php $album = new Album($gallery, $albums[$n]);
$albumNames = $album->getImages(0,0,'random');

for($i=0; $i<3; $i++){
$imgobj = newImage($album, $albumNames[$i]); ?>

<div class="thumb">

[img]<?php echo $imgobj->getThumb(); ?>[/img]getTitle(); ?>" />


<?php } ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>
</div>
`

thanks for the code, I'll try this myself.