Not signed in (Sign In)

Vanilla 1.1.10 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

General Support: Feature Request: Flexible Gallery Organization

Bottom of Page

1 to 7 of 7

  1.  
    • CommentAuthorjordan
    • CommentTimeSep 1st 2007 edited
     
    Hi, I just started using Plogger, looks great except for one thing. I'd like the option to have no Collections, just Albums. From forum posts, it looks like others want this too. Some forum users want the opposite, to have an additional hierarchical level. Also someone posting at OpenSourceCMS.com said "Simply gorgeous. If they could just add a third tier I'd never use anything else." The solution is flexible gallery organization.

    Before trying Plogger I tried Photostack, Singapore, and Zenphoto. They have flexible organization, but they lack important features that Plogger has. Zenphoto has the flexibility thing right, but no way to turn off comments yet (they will in future). I don't want to deal with comment spam, so I switched to Plogger.

    In the ideal information system, the user creates the organizational structure, and changes it, moving things around as their needs evolve (drag-n-drop?). Just like on your own computer, or on your web hosting server, or in your file cabinet. Some people like to create multiple levels of folders within folders, some like to have many folders all in one big file drawer, some tack everything to the wall so they can see it all at once.

    It would be great if a user could choose between:
    1. No collections, no albums, just photos all on one level.
    2. No collections, just albums with photos in them. (my preference)
    3. Collections with albums in them, albums with photos in them.
    4. Super-collections with collections in them, etc.

    Just start with one container, which could be given a display name, or left unnamed. Then let the user choose: to just put photos there; or to create folders within that container with pictures in them; or to create folders within folders ad infinitum, if they find that useful. Let the user label the folders as collections, or albums, or galleries, or something else, or nothing at all.

    Plogger can attract many more users. Simply allow people to adapt it to fit their style, or the project they are working on.

    Thanks!
  2.  
    i second this motion, the current setup works for one site i've installed the gallery into but this would be a really good thing to setup
    Thankful People: jordan
    • CommentAuthorjordan
    • CommentTimeSep 5th 2007 edited
     
    I didn't find this discussion before because it doesn't use the word collections.
    http://plogger.org/forum/discussion/659/can-sub-albums-be-considered-or-is-there-a-plugin/
    Looks like the feature request above would involve a complete rewrite, and won't be implemented anytime soon. I've tried a couple of the solutions on other forum posts. Those involve altering the php code, to edit or hide the breadcrumbs links to the collections level. Don't know PHP, just XHTML and CSS. Can get breadcrumb modifications to work partially, then trying to make them more complete I break things. Probably will try again. Well Plogger is still very good even with collections.
    • CommentAuthorjammindice
    • CommentTimeSep 7th 2007 edited
     
    ok i kinda sorta felt like doing this because i had nothing else to do... but let me warn it's like highly alpha version, no admin setup yet (adding everything by hand in mysql so far) and it probably breaks alot of features :) but it works!!!

    see the demo here

    it allows for up to 5 levels right now (will be dynamic when i'm done) but does require at least one "album" level, so you can't just load pictures up into it you have to have at least one level of organization.

    you can mix and match album and collection levels. like so:








    main collection
    / \
    collection album
    | |
    album Pictures
    |
    pictures


    so you can have collections with albums that mix and match sub-albums or albums with pictures.

    collections cannot contain both a sub-album and pictures, i thought about it... but it's too little gain for the effort.

    I'm sure you can see i'm not using a common terminology... it's basically like this:

    collections hold other collections and albums
    albums only hold pictures

    well check it out and let me know if it's in the right direction and weather or not you see any bugs/weirdness

    i do already know the count for albums/pictures is off cause i'm not done there yet.
    Thankful People: jordan
    • CommentAuthorjordan
    • CommentTimeSep 7th 2007 edited
     
    This looks very good so far. See http://sgal.org/ it's offspring http://photostack.org/ and also http://www.zenphoto.org/ which is better. In all the above apps, the admin can create levels to suit.

    Those apps doesn't use a multi-layered terminology such as collection, album, sub-album, etc. to differentiate between levels. The site owner shouldn't be locked into using that. In the admin interface, just use the same term for any level, ie call any folder a collection.

    The gallery visitor doesn't care about which it is, and won't want to learn the terminology, or have to think. If the app design makes visitors have to learn any special terms to use the site, there's a problem. Navigation will happen intuitively if you get the terminology out of the way.

    I would want to delete the word Collections from the bar above the thumbnails on the My Test Gallery page, and just display the name My Test Gallery or whatever.

    Have a look at the ZenPhoto Demo Gallery. Just the name Demo Gallery displays, then the names of the two galleries: Impressionists and Demo Photographs. If you go to a big art museum with many galleries, there's no big sign saying Collections or Galleries. There's only signs saying Renaissance or Modern or things like that.

    Remember there are some photographers who want to display every thumbnail on one page, all in one album. The app should scale downward as well as upward.

    See http://useit.com/ on how to make apps and sites work well for end users.

    Bravo on such a hopeful beginning. Well now that you've shown that it can be done, that may encourage others to join in this effort. Sorry I don't know PHP.
    Thanks!
  6.  
    couple things... the terminology is just internal to the code and anything that was leftover (ie the "collections" on the menu) is original to plogger. I will see about making a "hidden" gallery that contains pictures with no organizational level but it's very difficult to do that with the way that plogger works.

    of course i will be re-writing the manage section of the admin to handle the new levels and in the admin it will be a button call "add new level" or "add new picture album"... nothing too fancy and no crazy terminology... and hopefully create some sort of "_convert.php" script that will move an original plogger3 setup to this style of database setup like the plogger _upgrade.php script.

    with this though i think i'm going to stick with 5 levels of organization (though it would be easy to add more) as it will help me finish a beta version quicker and can be easily added in later.

    but the single-only container i will try and add in there might be an easy way to band-aid it to get it working but i need my database the way it is now to setup the manage section, once the admin is complete then i can delete everything from the database and do more testing...
    Thankful People: jordan
    • CommentAuthorjordan
    • CommentTimeSep 7th 2007
     
    That sounds great. I really appreciate that you're making this happen. A lot of people will like this. A semi-pro photographer who only recently went digital told me he wants a website with just 20 pix, thumbnails all on one page, no albums. Maybe someone like that will want the ability to create albums when they get used to putting pictures on the web. Meanwhile, looking around the forums here, there's definitely folks wanting to add another level beyond what's there now. Thanks for what you're doing.

1 to 7 of 7

  1.