I am wondering if there is a direct way, or sorta easy way, to have two different 'album pages' on my website, that use the same batch of pictures ?

For example... in my travels, I take lots of photos. On a family trip, one day is at the Zoo, one day is at the beach, one day is the family reunion, but one day is at a museum.

Second example... on another trip, one day I visit one museum, next day I visit another museum, and third day is at my neice's play.

With these examples... on my website I have a section that is just showing photos from museums I visit.

In another section on my website I want to share my travels and family photos.

These are separate areas that do not link on my site... lets say for this example, I have two websites, one for museum trips, another for family trips. They are not cross linked, but hosted on the same server, so folders next to each other.

When family and friends go to my personal trips site, they see the albums for the Zoo, the Beach, the Family Reunion, and the Neice's play. Each page has its own text and the 'return' link goes back to the 'personal trips' site.

When friends and others go to my museum visits site, they see albums for various museums I visited, on different days and trips. These have more geek tech museum wording, and the 'return link' goes back to the museums page.

Thus, like two sites and each it's own list and albums.
But there are some cross-over where the one-off museum visits on a family trip, can be accessed from two sites.
Each has it's own wording, and each returns to it's own site.

• - But both 'albums' point to and use the same sub-folder on my server, to avoid having two batches of the same pictures online

Unique, different, but I have a handful of times when this happens and I want to avoid creatnig two complete 'albums' with two sets of the same pictures.
. . 30-50 pictures at 500kb each adds up, so twice the set over many pages, reallly adds up

Wondered if could just create both albums, same photos with same names, then edit one to pull the picture files from the other's sub-folder ?

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Update: I am using the Tiger skin, as seems to allow for more base options.

Edited by: Frolin on 27 Mar 2026, 21:26

Edited by: Frolin on 27 Mar 2026, 21:27

Here's a sample gallery that has two sub folders ("Stone" and "Nature") that both share images from the same hidden "Images" folder:

https://testing.jalbum.net/Shared%20images/

Just download and unzip the included project and inspect it. It uses "internal linking" to reference images from the common "Images" sub folder. To create these image references, enter the common "Images" folder and copy the desired images to your clipboard, then paste them to the destination folder(s). When pasting, select "Link" when jAlbum asks you how to paste. If you don't see this question, change "Preferences - Explorer - When adding files" to "Ask".

Some of this might be skin-dependent, but you can do some interesting things if you make all of the folders "hidden." You can then give a visitor a link to Stone, and he can't navigate out of that.

Just tried it with Plain, and I still get an uplink from Stone. The top-level index page is blank, however, with only a title bar.

With Neptune, I get a Stone folder with no uplink, which seems like what you'd want. But in that case, if Stone has a subfolder, there's no uplink from the subfolder, either, so that's also a bit of a nonstarter.

It has to do with the way I'm generating navigation icons. If all the folders are hidden, the skin doesn't think there are any folders, because the category count doesn't see them.

All very tangled.

ETA: Hiding all of the folders also makes the skin think that there are no images, so it doesn't include the lightbox script. Hilarity ensues.

David, thanks will have to look at this closer to see if it does more what I want, as your example does not show what I need... going back to different places on the 'return'

The only way I can think of to accomplish all of those things would be to include some Javascript on every index page that would, based upon the name of the current folder, alter the target of the "up" link.

Given that even bargain hosts offer almost unlimited storage, it doesn't seem to be worth the effort, all just to "save" a few tens of megabytes of storage space.

That adds an external link, but the "up" arrow still points to the parent index page. As expected.

ETA: You can, however, set parentIndexPage to an arbitrary URL. That seems to work in most skins, but I can't shake the feeling that it will mangle something else....

Depending on the skin, that would create havoc. There are all sorts of "do this only at the top level" or "do this at all levels below the top" actions in most skins. The up arrow is the least important of them.

Gents,

Thank you for the replies and tips. Will be testing these shortly... got side-tracked with a URL masking issue (see new topic thread).

Note: have stuck with the Tiger so far with a push to load pictures for now

And while Server space may not be a big concern, lots of room, it's still a waste to have hundreds of duplicate pictures over a year's various trips. Just looking for cleaner.

While this is not a major matter, was wondering if a simple option.
Happy to have same text, but would be nice if could have different text.
Just hoping to have two 'album pages' that have a different 'return' button link.

More things to try in the coming days / weeks of testing!
thanks again