Getting Started: Glorious Gallery Making

Where was I? Oh, yes: Gallery making. The purpose of galleries is to... Oh, I already said that? Sorry again. Let’s see... Oh, now I know where I was. Whether you’re new to Neopets and you’re looking for help, or you just need some advice for spiffing up your already-existing gallery, then this article is sure to help. I’ll give you some basic pointers about how to make your gallery a reflection of you.

THE ITEMS

Neopians far and wide come to view galleries mostly for one purpose: to see different items. You could have the most awesome graphics that become invisible in moonlight, but chances are most people won’t care if the only thing in your gallery is a handful of Ghost Marshmallows. Don’t get me wrong: they’re extremely tasty and cute. But to have the best gallery you’re capable of achieving, you need to have something more.

Usually, most Neopians place their personal collections in their galleries. This can show the personality of someone, and they don’t even have to say a word. Take myself as an example: there are a lot of instruments and music-themed items in my gallery. So what would that tell you about me? That’s right: I like music a lot. The types of collections you could have are practically endless, and each can be unique just to you.

Now, if you’re still trying to figure out what to collect, I have a few pointers for you. First: Make sure it’s something that you like. It would be pointless to collect Spyder-themed items if you have arachnophobia, now wouldn’t it? Second: Pick the most specific category you can. If you try and collect every single plushie in Neopia, you’d have to have zillions of Neopoints and very little sleep. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have many Neopoints and I highly value sleep. So unless you’re a freaky alien-robot-Sloth-clone, a complete collection of plushies in your gallery would be impossible. Instead what you can do is only put a specific category of plushies in your gallery, like Faerie plushies or Aisha plushies. You can still gather up the other plushies when you find them, but they can be kept in your Safety Deposit Box while the complete (or nearly complete) smaller collection is in your gallery.

If you don’t feel like collecting is for you, then you could just show off gifts from your Neofriends in your gallery. That way the whole world will know how wonderful your friends are and make them envious of your friendships. Now if you don’t have friends, then that would be a problem, but everyone has at least one friend, right? So if... uh... where in Neopia was I going with this, anyway? It doesn’t make too much sense... Hmm... Well, the point is that you can put gifts in your gallery too. *Floating light bulb appears* Aha! Now I know what I was trying to say! If you don’t receive too many gifts, then you could put items you get from events around the site in your gallery. Like you could show Neopia how many booby prizes you’ve gotten from Tombola as sort of a protest against TNT. *chucks pencil sharpener at still floating light bulb* As I’ve said, the possibilities of what you put in your gallery are endless, so let your imagination soar! (Or swim, if you prefer. I must admit, swimming in Kiko Lake is most delightful!)

ORGANIZATION

Okay, so now you have your agglomeration of items that’s brimming with sheer awesomeness. What do you do now? ...*sigh* No, you do NOT send an attack Meepit with a basket of Tombola Pencil Sharpeners to greet Adam on his doorstep. You now have to put all of those items in your gallery in an orderly fashion.

The main way to organize your possessions is to place them into categories. You should try to organize them in such a way that you don’t have one lone item in a category by itself. Even if your categories are as simple as “Accursed Pencil Sharpeners” and “Other Junk”, it still helps visitors browse though your items with ease. But it’s only convenient if you use as few categories as possible. In other words, don’t have twenty different categories. At that point you’d probably be better off without categories at all.

Once you have your items in their appropriate categories, you can now place them in a specific order in each category by using the handy-dandy-numerical-ordering-thingamajig. You can put items in order depending on how much you like them, how badly you want to smash them with a hammer, or group them with items with the same word in it. The choice is yours, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. Well... I guess a wrong way would be some sort of combination of keys that make your computer monitor compulsively combust. But that’s just bad in general.

THE LOOK

The first thing you usually notice when you enter a gallery are the cool graphics and such that make the gallery look more fun (or the lack of such graphics). You don’t have to be an HTML Wizard to put together a snazzy gallery page. Neopets has included in the gallery page a simple way to pick the basics of what you want in your gallery categories. If you feel more adventurous after that, then Neopets also has an HTML guide located on the site, here. ...Ha-ha, made you click! Sorry, but I had a feeling you’d fall for that one. Don’t worry, the guide isn’t hard to find. If you can’t find it, though, someone on the Neoboards is sure to help you.

You can customize the look of your gallery as little or as much as you want. After all, it’s your gallery! But usually the best way to do it is to have your layout tie into your items somehow. After all, it would look kind of funny if you had a mutant background, but you have a collection of Valentine’s Day-themed items.

Oooh, a fly just landed on my nose... I wonder if I can reach it with my tongue... Darn, it flew away. Humbug. ...Oh, you’re still here? Why’s that? The article’s over. But since you’re here, I’ll impart a few words of wisdom. If you work hard enough and follow these basic guidelines, there might be a shiny gallery spotlight trophy in your future. Also, the stare of a Meepit can curdle chocolate milk in 24.53 seconds. Now go out there and make yourself a splendid gallery!