Well, I ended up taking a lot longer to get to this than I expected, but today I finally uploaded the first iteration of this new system.
You can see a good example of how this works by checking out
The Hibiscus Database.
Notice the plant care guide appears first, and over on the right (or below if you're on mobile) you see a nice selection of images. It shows the most popular image first, and then it shows 21 thumbnails that when clicked on swap out with the thumbnail. It shows you the most thumbed image from each gallery (seeds, plant, bloom, stalk, etc). I think this is a nice way to give an overview of the various components of each plant type.
My next task is to copy over the plant care guides that we already have for all the types of plants, and then after that I will make it so that moderators/admins can edit the text, and also to allow members to submit proposals to edit it.
There are 205 custom databases and my goal is to have detailed care information for each of them. I'm hoping to have sections for:
About this plant
Special Features
Site Selection
Planting Instructions
Ongoing Care Instructions
Propagation information (cuttings, division, seed germination details).
Underneath of this you will then find the usual stuff you have always had.
