1. What is a gallery?
A gallery is a virtual space for you to display your photographs so that anyone on the internet can see them. Shutterpixie generates the gallery for you--all you have to do is upload the photographs! My gallery, for example, is at paulszynol.shutterpixie.com (or just www.paulszynol.com).
2. What can I name my gallery?
You can create any name you want for your gallery (within reason). Mine, for example, is paulszynol (that's my name). Once you choose the name, your gallery will be available online at name.shutterpixie.com and name.shutterpixie.org, where name is equal to the name you chose. So, since I chose paulszynol, my gallery is visible at paulszynol.shutterpixie.org.
3. Can I get a .com, .org., net., etc., name for my gallery?
Yep.
You can register a fully qualified domain name--one that begins with www. and ends with .com, .org, .net, and so on--and have it point to your Shutterpixie gallery so that users can access your images directly.
To do so, you must first register your domain name with a web site that specializes in this service. For example, I registered my domain names at www.register.com. This usually costs around $30 per year.
Once you register the domain name, you have to make sure your domain name resolves to your Shutterpixie gallery. To make sure the domain name points to your Shutterpixie gallery, login to the web site where you registered your domain name and set the DNS servers to ns1.kattare.com and ns2.kattare.com.
This last step sounds much harder than it is! Just look for this option on the web site. Register.com tells you how to handle this step in its FAQ.
4. What are albums?
Albums are the themes around which photographs are organized--landscapes, portraits, kids, dogs, etc. You can think of them as rooms in a gallery, or individual portfolios. You can create any album you want and you can create an unlimited number of albums. You can assign any number of photographs to a single album.
5. How much does this cost?
It's free.