General Support: multiple users

What exactly is it that you guys expect from the "multiple users" feature?

Do you want to give your friends the ability to create their own albums and upload their pictures without affecting the rest of the gallery?

Is there anything else you want to see implemented?

There are many ways this can be done, let's not just copy the feature over from some other gallery, but instead create something new and actually useful.

Please reply with your ideas/wishes

Considering as a personal gallery;
as you said - "Do you want to give your friends the ability to create their own albums and upload their pictures without affecting the rest of the gallery?"
Thats an Yes there.

Considering as a site which is completely based on the script,
- Allow people to get an account and submit their images,
- Admin to review the image, description, category... and enable the image to appear in teh gallery.
- Admin/mod users (mods can also approve images and manage the gallery)

bump. Anybody else care to add to this? We really need your input to make this product solid.

Hi Mike and Anti-

Looks like you guys are really rolling with development and thats great. For me I would like users to be able as you said create and manage their own galleries, but as gangavalli says ultimately an ability to approve images in any gallery would be nice if desired by the site admin. I also think profile wise it would be nice if users could add fields like Vanilla does for profiles. Other then that private gallery could be something other to consider.

I'd like to see all images added to the gallery just as they would by normal admin uploading. Ofcourse a private feature is always nice.

Here are 2 ideas I had:

The first one is more of a personal request though. I would like it if I could batch import pictures and assign them to a user-/Full name. Or even allow those added users to batch import their own pictures.

As for the second one. Many galleries nowadays allow multiple users to have access. Having tested quite some of those galleries one thing that was always bugging me is how this is reflected in your file structure (whereas most of them don't have a logical file structure at all). You really can't tell who uploaded what file. I think plogger could make a difference here. For example have it like this: username/collection/album.

Personally I wouldn't like to see this back in the gallery though as in userbased albums (or using mod_rewrite even, although support for it is always nice). But whatever you guys choose to go with I think this would be a great feature.

Other then that I can't really think of anything. The same plogger with those features would be great !

It's a hard call. I hear the request for multiple users from a lot of people, but I think even more people do not need the added complexity. Besides it being a huge amount of work to get coded properly, I'm not sure a complex system is necessary.

I think a simple user system is appropriate in this case, however, the best way to implement this is still not fully fleshed out. Like Derek said, creating a simple "user-upload" form based on plog-upload.php would be really easy. You could put it in the uploads directory itself, make it password protected, etc.

Why not just give them the admin password? They are friends right? The worst they could do would be deleting a collection or album accidentally, but I don't think it would be a problem. Tell them to stay away from the configuration settings, I think they would be able to figure it out.

If you wanted to write this functionality yourself, you could do a really basic "tab hiding" scheme where certain users could only see certain tabs. Basically you would have to rewrite /admin/plog-globals.php to check username and passwords other than the main admin password, you would probably have to create a user table in the database with a username, password, and maybe a user level. Then you would have to write a simple utility that creates users by populating that table (optionally, you could always do it manually).

Next you would just modify that function "display" in admin/plog-globals.php to conditionally display tabs based on userlevels. Like user level of 3 would see all the tabs, user level of 2 would get upload and manage, and user level of 1 would just get upload. Of course you can make that however you want.

It would just be a matter of adding some logic to determine which tabs to build based on the user. It really wouldn't be that hard, but you would have to know what you were doing.

If they run on the same database, you should be able to change the login authentication to check for different credentials by changing the SQL; though you won't be able to track which user did what, etc, it will give the basic functionality you're after.

edit: Also note that authentication in one zone (your Blog) will not allow them to directly access Plogger admin. They will still have to login again; it will just check for the same username and password they use on the blog. The credentials your blog gives will be different from Plogger, and vice-versa.

Cheers,
Derek

I would love to be able to take advantage of a parent apps user system. In other words, I could read in the existing session data to validate a user and assign them a "base" collection that would act as their home directory - the could not access collections outside of the base collection. Perhaps this could be done by including a "customization" file within the main admin folder - people could then adjust variables in there to help set whether a member is logged in and what their base collection is.

It seems like something like this would keep plogger light, but still give it the flexibilty to work with other systems.

I managed to get my wishes accomplished (see above) by changing a a good chunk of code in the current version. I don't know if I could begin to document all my changes, but it really wasn't that hard.

I just discovered this thread, here's my idea:
Each uploaded photo could have an additional 'owner' ID assigned. So while keeping the full admin area only available to the admin, other users could have a basic admin area (only manage + import) that gives them the right to change / delete the things they created / own.
This method would be both simple and powerful.

Hello!
Miri, did you find time to document the changes you've made?
That's would, for sure, help some of us!

Hey Mike,

I think what people are looking for is the ability for users to register for an account with different privileges than the admin user. This user should then be able to add/edit/delete their own images within their own album or maybe "public" albums...

It would be a very useful feature and would broaden the scope of what plogger can be used for. Eat your heart our flickr :)

Cheers,

Si

Mike?

You haven't commented on this thread since this time last year? Any chance of this feature in the near future?

yes, please. I'm sure there are people who would be interested. It would be great to be able to look at your code too! :D

p.s. - Are you using Beta 3.0 as your base code, or have you upgraded to the latest nightly?

excellent, nvts. There have been some improvements (mostly bug fixes) like having all of Plogger translatable. If you want, the most current, up-to-date code can be found here -> latest SVN trunk

But I think if you base it on 3.0 Beta, that would be great too! :D

nbuck,

Yes, I am finished with User module for the Admin side and the User side for their collection. I am now documenting and creating a install for this. It works great on my site.

Cheers...

I almost chose another gallery script over Plogger just because it didn't have multiple-user support. But hopefully this will work out just fine. Thank you so much nvts.

A few questions: Can administrators and users be assigned to the same album, so they can both edit it? Also, is it possible to take away actions from basic users, like disallowing them to delete files in specified albums? This is probably a stretch, but I'm just curious. :)

nvts, I am hearing since so long that you have finished the user module and its working great on your site. Many times people have even requested you to provide the files but still I see nothing here. Could you be so kind to let me know from where I can download your version of Plogger?

regards

just to kind of answer your first question. I think multiple users should just open up the back-end to have more than just 'admin' and also make available a user management tab and a simplified version of the back-end for users so they can upload photos, create albums and collections, but not mess with anything not created by them. That way the front end stays simple and as-is, but you can have new users register or be created by the admin, then have access to add stuff.

Also, for the front end, you might want to have a 'members only' section that can be turned on or off and requires a user login to view tagged collections/albums/photos that are 'members only'

that's my input

adam

Oh dear. I finished installing a nicely customized Plogger system on a new website today. I have just been told that they need visitors to be able to upload pics and have them approved by an admin. Unfortunately I have to get this done today so I'll have to find another gallery :(