Organize Freebies / database (?!)

Cherubit

Hello :)

I've been thinking it would be so nice to be able to organize my freebies with pictures, name, link where I got it, who made it, type, etc. in a way that I could search easily for them with keyword, or something like that...

Does anybody know a good free software that lets me do that?

How do you do to organize your freebies?

(Also because some of my freebies when I install, don't work, and I would like to be able to keep track of that too)

IceDragonArt

This is what I do.  http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Installing-Content-in-DAZ-Studio-508155677. ; I label my folder !hair, !clothing etc. with sub folder for Genesis, Genesis 2 etc.  But you can set it up any way you want to.

Cherubit

silverriverjewelry said:

This is what I do.  http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Installing-Content-in-DAZ-Studio-508155677. ; I label my folder !hair, !clothing etc. with sub folder for Genesis, Genesis 2 etc.  But you can set it up any way you want to.

Hi :) Thanks for the answer. Yeah, actually I can install the files, but I never know where to find them haha... So I wanted to learn how people organize the list of the items they downloaded (freebies), as if they make a table in excel, or i dont know other options... I started in excel, but it's not simple to post pictures there (at least, I dont know how to put a picture in a cell)... and even so, mine looks messy :/

IceDragonArt

I have files on my desktop with the names of the people that I have either got freebies or bought from which holds the original download as well as all the read me files.  Or you can do files for each site or each category and just have the subfolders with the names of the person who made them.  Although I just drop all of my clothes in my !clothes file and if I know its a genesis clothing prop i go to that file in my daz studio and just run down the list.  Its just a matter of figuring out what works for you.  Took me several tries to figure out what would work the best for me.

 

SixDs

"organize the list "

Assuming that we are talking about an actual listing, rather than organizing the files into folders on your hard drive, I can offer some insight. The first thing that I will say is that in the beginning the whole thing will be somewhat dynamic - you'll probably find your organization will evolve as you go along, making changes that make it easier for you to find or access the information. No two people will likely end up organizing things exactly the same way. The second thing that will likely occur is that you will tend to follow the same pattern when categorizing your list as you do with organizing your content into folders on your hard drive, except that your list may contain more refined categories and subcategories than your actual folder structure. It depends on whether you are a "lumper" or a "splitter".

There are two routes you can go in producing your reference or list - database or spreadsheet (a text file in a tabular format might do as well, of course). Most people will probably be more comfortable using a spreadsheet format and it offers the advantage of being able to view everything at once, rather than relying on queries and reports. I do have a spreadsheet (actually a series of spreadsheets for each primary category, i.e. free versus purchased, etc.), and the categories that I use are arranged much the same way as the fields in a database - with the table column headings corresponding to various categorizations, and the actual categories entered into the appropriate records (row and cell) for individual items. For example, there are fields or column haedings for Source, Product Name, Filename, Category, Subcategorie, etc. If you are going to do this, start early and keep it up to date, as starting from scratch once you have accumulated a whole lot of content can be a monumental task.

As for embedding images in the spreadsheet, even if that were possible (I'm not certain that it is) I'd advise against it, since the cell sizes would need to be very large, even for thumbnails, and make a large spreadsheet even more unwieldy. Instead, if you want images, create a new column for reference images, and use hyperlinks in the respective cells for each item, linking to either full images or thumbnails. That will put them only a click away.

Finally, just to show what you are potentially embarking on, the spreadsheet for my free content alone only contains eleven columns, but it contains more than 5700 rows! That does not means that I have 5700 individual pieces of free content, but, since I keep track of filemames as well, some items have more than one row. My purchased content spreadsheet is a little more manageable, at about 1200 rows.

P.S. for those who might question why I would do this rather than simply using the built-in database in DAZ Studio, the answer is simply that I do not have all my content "installed" in the DAZ Content Library at any given time. Plus I have multiple PCs each with their own unique content libraries. I do use the built-in database, but it never contains all the content I have available. The latter is only found in what I refer to as my content repository on my file server (and in my backups, of course).

Cherubit

Sonja11 said:

I have files on my desktop with the names of the people that I have either got freebies or bought from which holds the original download as well as all the read me files.  Or you can do files for each site or each category and just have the subfolders with the names of the person who made them.  Although I just drop all of my clothes in my !clothes file and if I know its a genesis clothing prop i go to that file in my daz studio and just run down the list.  Its just a matter of figuring out what works for you.  Took me several tries to figure out what would work the best for me.

Thank you for answering. It makes sense :) Only yesterday I was able to figure a good way for me, since I had to reinstall my daz I took the change to start over installing and organizing my freebies.

SixDs said:

"organize the list "

Assuming that we are talking about an actual listing, rather than organizing the files into folders on your hard drive, I can offer some insight. The first thing that I will say is that in the beginning the whole thing will be somewhat dynamic - you'll probably find your organization will evolve as you go along, making changes that make it easier for you to find or access the information. No two people will likely end up organizing things exactly the same way. The second thing that will likely occur is that you will tend to follow the same pattern when categorizing your list as you do with organizing your content into folders on your hard drive, except that your list may contain more refined categories and subcategories than your actual folder structure. It depends on whether you are a "lumper" or a "splitter".

There are two routes you can go in producing your reference or list - database or spreadsheet (a text file in a tabular format might do as well, of course). Most people will probably be more comfortable using a spreadsheet format and it offers the advantage of being able to view everything at once, rather than relying on queries and reports. I do have a spreadsheet (actually a series of spreadsheets for each primary category, i.e. free versus purchased, etc.), and the categories that I use are arranged much the same way as the fields in a database - with the table column headings corresponding to various categorizations, and the actual categories entered into the appropriate records (row and cell) for individual items. For example, there are fields or column haedings for Source, Product Name, Filename, Category, Subcategorie, etc. If you are going to do this, start early and keep it up to date, as starting from scratch once you have accumulated a whole lot of content can be a monumental task.

As for embedding images in the spreadsheet, even if that were possible (I'm not certain that it is) I'd advise against it, since the cell sizes would need to be very large, even for thumbnails, and make a large spreadsheet even more unwieldy. Instead, if you want images, create a new column for reference images, and use hyperlinks in the respective cells for each item, linking to either full images or thumbnails. That will put them only a click away.

Finally, just to show what you are potentially embarking on, the spreadsheet for my free content alone only contains eleven columns, but it contains more than 5700 rows! That does not means that I have 5700 individual pieces of free content, but, since I keep track of filemames as well, some items have more than one row. My purchased content spreadsheet is a little more manageable, at about 1200 rows.

P.S. for those who might question why I would do this rather than simply using the built-in database in DAZ Studio, the answer is simply that I do not have all my content "installed" in the DAZ Content Library at any given time. Plus I have multiple PCs each with their own unique content libraries. I do use the built-in database, but it never contains all the content I have available. The latter is only found in what I refer to as my content repository on my file server (and in my backups, of course).

Thank you for your answer :) it was very enlightening and since I had to start over with my DS, I took the chance yesterday to organize my freebies from scratch as well, I decided to go with the spreadsheet, since the database looked like it would be too much effort for something that in the end turned out to be so simple. The images I named the same as the zip files in my computer, and the rest of info go into spreadsheet :) wow yours have 5700 rows! that's a lot!! mine still only has around 15... hahaha... Still havent installed most of the items I downloaded...