i have a bunch of old photos that i have stored on discs that i am in the process of uploading to the dreamhost server as backup but now im thinking since they are already there can i just move them over to gallery2, if i were to install it, so they will be viewable by my friends or will i need to upload them all over again?
thanks!
i know very little about websites by the way.
The Gallery web site has documentation that explains how to do what you want.
The link is How to Add Items from the Local Server (or with FTP)
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Please remember that you are not allowed to use your Dreamhost account for backups (anymore). So to make the storage of you pictures “legal” I would recommend adding them to a Gallery2 gallery. 
As Atropos7 already mentioned, you can import the pictures which you’ve already uploaded - it works great, I do it all the time and my gallery has >11000 images in it already. Later you can even still access the original files as your Gallery2 stores all the original pictures in the g2data/albums directory, so it’s still a backup.
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