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I am wondering if ee is a good choice for a photography web site. a new client of mine does weddings, portraits, etc. she would like a client area on her website that would allow her clients to log in an view the pictures that she uploaded for this particular client.

I am just thinking through the implementation steps with ee and I am not sure how she could connect a particular set of images to a particular client.

would she have to set up the user account or can her customers set it up through an online registration form in order to be connected to the pictures that belong to them..

Does anybody have some rough ideas how this sort of feature could work in ee?

best
Florian

I am wondering if ee is a good choice for a photography web site. a new client of mine does weddings, portraits, etc. she would like a client area on her website that would allow her clients to log in an view the pictures that she uploaded for this particular client.

I am just thinking through the implementation steps with ee and I am not sure how she could connect a particular set of images to a particular client.

would she have to set up the user account or can her customers set it up through an online registration form in order to be connected to the pictures that belong to them..

Does anybody have some rough ideas how this sort of feature could work in ee?

best
Florian

I’m sure Expression Engine will be great, but I would recommend using a simple portfolio cms.

does a simple portfolio cms allow users to log in to a client-only area to see only the pictures that belong to them?

I know how the membership works in ee, and I know that ee has photo gallery. I am just not sure about how to connect the two in this circumstance.

I am not sure the Gallery module would be the way to go (I’d use the weblog / channel module), but there is an easy way to only show them “their” entries: make them the author of these entries, and then use something like

... author_id="CURRENT_USER"

in your tag. Makes sense?

so, I would register the customer first in expression engine. and then when I publish the weblog (with the images) add the right user as the author. that makes sense. when they log in, it would display only their photos.

I suppose I could just use FF fieldframe or just file extension to upload the images to a weblog entry. Essentially I can then display these images any way I want, in a gallery or list, whatever.

I also need to build a way for the client to check off the photos that they want ordered. Maybe the freeform modules?

I like the weblog approach. thats the easiest.

That’s how it’d work in general terms, yes. Give it a try 😊

This is a follow up post. I am getting ready to code this web site project soon and need to find a workflow for the photos. I already solved how to attach customers photos to customers account via the author_id=“CURRENT_USER” tag. The one thing that I am thinking about next is how to let customers ‘check’ of the photos that they are interested in and submit that to me? I thought ‘solspace favorites’ module, which would have been awesome except it only works with web log entries and I cant create a separate weblog for each photo. does anybody have some ideas/thoughts?

@florian

How did you go with the job in the end florian? Did it all work out? I have a client at the moment that wants something pretty much exactly the same as what you described.

Cheers,
Dan

Hi Dan,

Project went really well. I got exactly what I wanted and what the client wanted. However, I did hire emarketsouth for 1 hour to finish some custom php and javascript. Let me know if you have any questions. I am happy to answer to the best of my (limited) ability 😊

As florian mentions, I did a little consulting to help get this to work.  In the end the user selected values from a dropdown menu for each picture which got submitted to a template via AJAX (using the jQuery Form Plugin).  That template was essentially a bit of PHP/MySQL that updated the proper database entry with their choice.  So sort of similar to a stand-alone edit form in effect, but using custom code to work around EE’s lack of field-based permissions (didn’t want to let the client edit the *entire* entry, just certain parts).

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly guys. My client has just given me the go ahead for the project so when time comes closer to building I will definitely keep you in mind for any hints, tips and advice.

Any suggestions on how to approach this sort of request (client login to view photos) or is best to treat it like a normal build and then sort out the requirements for that particular section when I get to it?

Thanks again,
Dan

I’d think about your weblog/custom field structure first from a data entry point of view (can’t make the photographer’s job too onerous since they have to use it the most), then think about how you want to present everything to the end user on the front end of the site, and worry last about how you’re going to process and store the end user’s responses.  It’s not useful to anyone if you think about it backwards and build an unusable system that technically works just for your coding convenience. If you have specific questions about any of the steps involved just ask 😊