Pictures in unit history

Is there a way to select the picture that’s used as a thumbnail for a story.

wrigjef wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 8:16 am Is there a way to select the picture that’s used as a thumbnail for a story.

Can you provide some more information? Are you trying to have one image to display above the story and a separate image displayed, in the larger format, when the image above the story is clicked? If so, then the answer is no. The thumbnail sized image(s) above the story is/are just a smaller version of the image(s) uploaded. Perhaps you could submit feedback about improvements using the feedback link at the bottom of the page to get a user preference option for thumbnail images.

Our history person isn’t looking to put a separate picture on the cover of the story, but she wants to be able to define which picture from her story appears on the front. For example her story o out an activity might contain several pictures of individuals at a youth activity but it also contains a group picture. She wants to be able to make the group picture be the cover that the members see.

Also is there a way for history specialists to know when there is a story waiting to be approved?

wrigjef wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 4:15 pm Our history person isn’t looking to put a separate picture on the cover of the story, but she wants to be able to define which picture from her story appears on the front. For example her story o out an activity might contain several pictures of individuals at a youth activity but it also contains a group picture. She wants to be able to make the group picture be the cover that the members see.

There is no cover image/picture. The current implementation merely shows thumbnails of all the images in a row across the top of the story. I don't know if the row will wrap to a second row if there are more pictures (thumbnail images) than will fit on one row for the page. What has been frustrating for me is that the thumbnail images have no title, caption, or any way of identifying a specific image in the story text. I attempted to make the order of the images flow with a story but there was no way to do that because the images are not displayed in the order they are uploaded but are ordered by file size from smallest to largest.

The only solution for my problem and for your unit history specialist is to create the story in another application like Microsoft Word or Publisher in a layout that best meets the presentation of the story with the pictures embedded and then save or convert the file to a PDF format. Then the story in the Unit History application is a short introduction or summary of the uploaded PDF file.

wrigjef wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 4:15 pmAlso is there a way for history specialists to know when there is a story waiting to be approved?

There currently is no push notification for new stories needing approval from Unit History application to the history specialist, or any other approver. The history specialist, for now, will have to schedule regular times to visit the Unit History application to see if there is anything new.

I hope that push notifications for new posts is being considered for a further enhancement. We can use the feedback link to ask.

For me looking as a member, row of pictures or thumbnails appears when I open a particular story. But there is a single cover picture for each story. When I initially select the unit history resource, I see a screen showing each approved story from our ward, each has a cover. When I select a story/cover then it opens up to show a row of pictures and text.

My question had to do with the submitter deciding or defining what the initial picture in the story list. If I understand correctly, that cover or front picture is defined by file size.

wrigjef wrote: Sun Mar 24, 2024 8:01 pm My question had to do with the submitter deciding or defining what the initial picture in the story list. If I understand correctly, that cover or front picture is defined by file size.

I see what you are talking about now. When the story is published and when viewed in the Story Manager the image displayed is the first image shown in the list. That image is also the smallest file size image. So if there is a desired image to show for the "cover" image it would have to be edited or compressed to be the smallest file size image.

Wow, the secret is solved! I had no idea how the pics were being "randomly" selected as the cover pic, but given this discussion, I'll go back to all of ours and confirm that's what's happening with our stories (I'm sure it's the case, I just previously couldn't find a rhyme or reason).

We have one story where we ended up only including a single picture because of this "feature". There were a number of pics we wanted to include, and the one we wanted as the cover pic wasn't ever selected as the cover pic (very similar to what @wrigjef describes, we wanted the group pic to be the cover pic). So we only uploaded that one to ensure it would be the visible picture when members were browsing the stories.

I have found that the order of display of the pictures is based alphabetically on the file name, not image size. The order of the photos displayed can be altered by renaming the photo file name by adding a prefix of "A." for the first photo, "B." for the second and so on to the file name. For example if I have three photos named "Photo 1.jpg", "Photo 2.jpg" and "Photo 3.jpg", I can reverse the order of display by renaming the photos "A.Photo 3.jpg", "B.Photo 2.jpg" and "C.Photo 1.jpg". The first photo "A.Photo 3.jpg" will be the one used as the thumbnail in the main directory of stories.

However, I would also like to see the software changed to include the ability to pick any of the pictures as the main thumbnail.

I am the ward historian. When I go to preview, why does the picture I uploaded not show up? I want to make sure it is there before I approve and publish.