cant wrap my head around galleries

[infernal.serval]

i have been worrying about my site falling apart recently.

my initial idea was to make a few gallery pages for my art, which seemed manageable. then i thought to sort those pages by year so that pages don't take too long to load. that multiplied the amount of pages i have to deal with, which is even more moving parts. then, through looking around on here, i realized that managing images on websites is much more complex than i had thought. i have to make sure my resolution is low i think so that the images load quickly (?) and a lot of discussion that went over my head. in addition, when i returned to add art to my site i realized i didnt remember how most of it worked, so i was anxious that i might accidentally break it and be unable to fix it. i decided to try and rewrite and simplify my site, but i wasn't able to make a working gallery at all and so am still leaning on the old design as a crutch and afraid to add any more images.

im wondering if i should turn to commissioning someone to build the site for me and then just explain how to plug in an image (and if so, how i would do that). i even debated returning to social media to store my art due to how much trouble i was having, but i can't stand it over there. however i need to have a digital portfolio.

i have tried to look at w3schools and peoples discussions online here and on stack overflow but i genuinely don't have the base level of knowledge needed to comprehend the advice.

[chilblands]

i have been worrying about my site falling apart recently.

I'm not sure what you mean by that 

Assuming you are a beginner coder/ new to coding, I recommend starting with templates such as  Crotovane's gallery template. Personally, I think altering templates is a good way to start and slowly learn. Don't be afraid to add comments in your coding files. Also, don't underestimate your brain! Your past knowledge will aide with your learning and strengthen your memory so don't give up yet.

Good news, you are on Melonland forum and you can start learning webmastery stuff through the search bar! For example: previously asked post about image compression for gallery.

What exactly are you having trouble with? Can you break it down to smaller learning contents? Do you look at any other guides/ information websites other than W3School? The beauty of the internet is endless duplicates of the same information explained by different people. If W3School is confusing to you, consider other websites like MDN. Search it up, look at different websites for different explanations. You got this 

[fairyrune]

i would really recommend dan's guide for a javascript-free gallery. i used this to create my gallery. your thumbnails don't even have to be square, they can just be a smaller version of the large image! the thread walks you through everything you need to know step by step. if there's ever anything unfamiliar about it, you can look up that part specifically.

contrary to chilblands, i find templates overwhelming! if i don't understand a lot of what's in it, i struggle because i have to look a lot up and i don't know where to start. i found the thread dan posted useful in that regard.

the reasons for low image resolution can vary. these days, our internet is typically fast enough that it can load big images pretty easily. however, i still recommend you compress and scale down files as much as possible, because it eats into your neocities storage space - and even with the upgraded internet tech, large images can still take a moment to load! it's about finding a good balance. the thumbnails are mostly so that you can fit a lot of images onto the screen at once for easy browsing and selection of which images you want to take a closer look at.

if you want to have a digital portfolio and that's it, you could consider sites like squarespace. though i'm sure you've thought about that already! if you have, what is it about hand coding it yourself that appeals?

if ever you're afraid you'll break something, keep backups! i myself make backups of my site whenever i make a significant change (like remaking an entire page, for example), so if something goes wrong - either i can't put back what i took out/edited, or my site is taken down - i can always pull out the old files. different hosts have different ways to download your site; neocities has a button at the bottom of your site's file browser which will download a zip file for you.

most important of all: you can always fix what is broken. asking questions is the first step. i hope all that makes sense. i'm not so good at explaining some things!