Guides - Creating an event press site

In this guide we'll create a new standalone website for image delivery from an event such as a festival, concert or fashion show. It can display work by a single photographer or team and is ideal for distributing content to press and media.

The "Switchable" page layout allows visitors to switch between the tiled masonry view and large image stream, to easily browse through the available content. It works across all devices, allowing them to access and download files on the go.

When the site is secured behind a login, each visitor will create a username and password to access the content. This allows you to track all downloads and see comprehensive statistics.

You can see a live demo of this site here. For your convenience, the demo site is not behind a secure login.

The site automatically creates image versions (such as those sized for Web and Instagram) for users to download.

Photo credits are automatically generated from image metadata.

Images can have titles, descriptions and keywords, all of which are searchable.

Create the site

Visit the websites screen, click on the New site tab and scroll to the Modern Narrative template.

Choose the page collection Event Press Gallery [Switchable] from the dropdown. Select an initial theme and layout for the site (this can be changed later), then click Create.

Enter a name for your website - in this example we chose the name of the designer - and click OK.

Wait for the site to be created

The new site may take a few minutes to build. Please be patient and stay on the screen while it does.

Add site information

Once the site has been created, you can replace the default text with your own information.

You can optionally add a logo to the header of the site, which is a great way to echo the branding of an event. If you skip this step the header will be displayed as text and can also be styled in the design section.

From website overview screen, click Edit Design. Here you can change the base theme and layout, as well as other design elements on the page.

To add a logo, click on Design, select Header and choose a logo file to upload. You can change the size of the logo on the page by using the Scale option.

If possible, use an SVG or PNG file for your logo. The recommended minimum width for the logo image is 2048px, which will be scaled for all devices automatically.

Add header image

Another easy way to personalise the gallery is to add a header image. From the Design tab select Topbar and choose a header image to upload.

Use a high resolution image with a standard 3:2 aspect ratio. DPG will optimise the image on upload and make sure that it looks great across all devices.

Add test images

Making your site creates corresponding sets in the image admin. Add some content to the Gallery set to see how it looks on the site.

If you don't have any images in your account go to the upload screen to add some.

Preview your site

Click the Visit button to see your site live on the testing host address.

Add website icons

You can add common website icons in the side panel of the website overview screen.

For best results your icon should be in PNG format and a minimum of 512px across, apart from the Pinned Site icon which must be an SVG file.

Securing the site

Though you may share the address of the site with a select number of users, it's a good idea to place any sites with downloads enabled behind a secure login. This will allow you to restrict access only to visitors who create a username and password.

Not only does this keep your images safe, it also lets you track user downloads and view a number of useful statistics. All files will also be uniquely encoded so that they can be traced back to the user that downloaded them.

This option requires you to be in edit mode Standard, learn more about edit modes here.

Go to the Security tab and click Options. Switch the Enable log in toggle to the on position and click the Update button.

Go to the Restricted URLs tab and create a new restricted url. Type / in the URL box to restrict the entire site from the homepage, then click the OK button.

Once you've secured the site, you'll need to make a login for yourself too, as this is separate from your DPG login.

By default users are able to sign up, verify their email address and immediately access the site with their login. You can turn on Require activation by admin if you want the ability to approve each signup before the user can access the site.

After you've enabled login, you may want to add a background image to the login screen. Go to Design > User Screens > Background and upload a high res image or choose a background colour.

Configure pages

By default, the press site is created with two pages: a Masonry Gallery and a Keywords page.

Masonry Gallery page - this is where all your content goes. Add your images to the Gallery set to see them on the Gallery page.

Keywords page - this is configured to display images with the keyword day:<% Day %>. This is a dynamic keyword. Any images with this keyword will automatically be shown on the keyword page, organised by the day they were captured. This is great for multi-day events, but if your event is just a single day you can remove this page or change it to a different keyword.

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Adding a public host

Before you launch your site you should always add a public host. It will be indexed by search engines and content served from a public host loads faster in browsers. A public host could be your own domain name or our free dpg.gallery address.

For one-off event sites we recommend that you use a dpg.gallery address as it's quick, easy and secure.

Article short link: https://dpg.support/acqb