People love to see photos, and we try to put photos of our main events online immediately after the event. This increases our traffic and creates buzz about our website. It is also good “advertisement” for those who did not attend the event. The problem I find is displaying the images in a unique and fun way. Here are some flash slideshows that you can easily add to your website. Most of these don’t require any knowledge of Flash.
Flash Slideshow - Polaroid Gallery - YC Historical Photos
This is a great free slideshow. It is very unique. It looks like a table with photos scattered across it. You can zoom in and move the photos around. This flash slideshow also can be used to display flickr RSS feeds.
Flash Slideshow - Slideshow Pro - Moyer Photos
I really do love slideshow pro. I have used it many different times. It is very customizable. You can customize your transitions, color, buttons, thumbnails, you name it. You can also play videos in your slide shows. It is not exactly free ($39) but well worth it. I really like the new full screen feature. I have used it for Youth Conference, Pastors’ Conference, Missions Trip and much more.
Missions Trip Photos using Slideshowpro
Simple Viewer Slideshow - Bears' Slideshow
Simple Viewer is just that, simple. It is also free. It’s a great way to show your photos in a minimalistic way. If all you want is people to see your photos without being too flashy, Simple Viewer is for you.
Flash Nifties Flash Slideshow - NV News Home Page
We use Flash Nifties XML Flash Slideshow v2.1 for the simple navigation. I like the fact, you can easily navigate through the pictures with the buttons. We use this for our NVBC main page and also for the North Valley News Flash Header.
Flash Nifties Flash Slideshow - NVBC Home Page
FlippingBook Flash Page Flipper - YC 2009 Digital Brochure
If you want to show a digital version of a brochure online, this is a great way to do it. You can use it for free as long as you have a link back to their site. It is very elegant and has great ease of use. You can zoom in, download the pdf, and browse the book with this. We always get great comments whenever we use FlippingBook. We use it to send out a Christmas greeting card by Pastor Trieber to our large email mailing list. People gladly receive it and we usually receive many emails back.
FlippingBook - Trieber Family Christmas Card
These are great tools that we use all the time to enhance our website. If you know of other Flash slideshows, please share it below in the comments.
Michael Moyer
2 Comments
I definitely agree with you guys using Flash Nifties Flash Slideshow on the NV News Home Page. I remember when I first visited the site, I couldn’t navigate through the slideshow and it annoyed me, but the next time I came back, you guys fixed it.
Thanks for doing this, Mike. Been helpful already. some suggestions for topics to post… how about dreamweaver. i still make websites in phostoshop so basically right now dreamweaver functions as my FTP client :p
I don’t know much about CSS either – when I try adding text and images in dreamweaver nothing goes where I want it – it can be pretty frustrating.
Thanks, again!