Thread

I was wondering how much agreement there has been on migrating off EE 1.x’s Photo Gallery module? We’re still 1.6.9 but presumably we’re going to need to go to 2.x at some point.

The problem is, our sites rely on lots of ‘slide shows’ and we use Photo Gallery for that.

I’ve seen some posts saying that EE 2’s Channels are ideal to replace Photo Gallery but I’m struggling to understand how this would work. Aren’t Channels essentially the replacement for weblogs, or am I not understanding well? One post suggested setting up a Channel for images and then using Categories to group them. We have hundreds of slide shows, though, so I’m not sure Categories would scale.

Ideally I’m looking for something that would integrate with EE 1.6.9 and 2.x, that offers (and auto-generates) thumbnails for all pics in a slideshow, that allows us to put each image in a slide show on its own page (in order to generate page views and ad impressions) and that, on the back end, puts the images for each slide show into a directory for that slide show (we’re finding now that performance is really suffering from having thousands and thousands of image files lumped into 1 directory).

Obviously if there’s a way to migrate data from Photo Gallery to this unknown new replacement, that’s be awesome, but if not we’re willing to do it the brute-force way.

Any suggestions?

In a nutshell, you’ll need to pay more for a 3rd party module. Capitalism y’know?

That is nonsense. In EE 1.6 we have seen a huge number of people using the weblog module for their image galleries; in fact, the gallery module was largely a clone of the weblog module (with fewer features) plus some image manipulation features thrown in for good measure. We have those now for EE 2 so it makes perfect sense to drop the gallery module as such and let people use the channel module (formerly weblog module). There is nothing sinister about it. We are working on a migration path but for now moving them over manually / programmatically, as it were, would be the way to go.

I’ve been looking at using channels but I’m not sure how it’ll scale. We have as many as 4-5 slide shows/week and hundreds live now. Most systems I see use categories to identify which entries go with a slide show… will having hundreds of categories be viable? Does each ‘slide’ have to be it’s own document?

Also there’s the end user situation. Training our editors to set up categories and all that. I was hoping for something a bit less labor-intensive.

We don’t mind paying… this is a commercial site and cost of labor vs cost of software is a valid argument.

That is nonsense. In EE 1.6 we have seen a huge number of people using the weblog module for their image galleries; in fact, the gallery module was largely a clone of the weblog module (with fewer features) plus some image manipulation features thrown in for good measure. We have those now for EE 2 so it makes perfect sense to drop the gallery module as such and let people use the channel module (formerly weblog module). There is nothing sinister about it. We are working on a migration path but for now moving them over manually / programmatically, as it were, would be the way to go.

Well, where is the migration path? I’ve been waiting for a while.

*bump*

Since it’s so easy, I’de like to know how it’s done. Assume I have 600+ images, and comments associated with many of the images.

I’m still interested in hearing what other people are using for slides shows and photo galleries.

Please don’t hijack my thread. Thanks.

Although the silence is pretty deafening.. maybe there are no good options? Do we need to start thinking about moving to a new CMS? Please tell me know…that’s an ordeal I really don’t want to undertake.

@ Peter Smith:

The answer I and many others get is, stick with the version 1 system.

I do, in fact, consider this a viable option. Otherwise, moving your images shouldn’t be too hard, although it would probably require some custom dev work. If you have used the “Weblog” module for your “Gallery”, as many people have done, converting this to use the “Channel” module makes things easier still. As I’ve said, we’re planning to provide a migration path / conversion tool eventually, but there’s no ETA yet. If your site depends on a complex “Gallery” implementation continuing to use EE 1.6 might be the best option for now.

But aren’t you discontinuing support for 1.X in the next year or so? I thought I read you’d support it only through 2011.

But if you say having hundreds of categories for a particular channel won’t adversely impact site performance, then that’s how we’ll do things.

I still feel like there’s an opportunity here for an enterprising EE Module Developer, though!

As of right now, on one site (we have 6-10 on EE) we have 9,273 entries with 3,704 comments, all in the Photo Gallery module. Performance isn’t great so we’re actually looking forward to getting onto something more efficient. If we lost the comments in the transition it wouldn’t be the end of the world…

But aren’t you discontinuing support for 1.X in the next year or so? I thought I read you’d support it only through 2011.

That’s true, but I assume a solution will have been found before then:)

But if you say having hundreds of categories for a particular channel won’t adversely impact site performance, then that’s how we’ll do things.

No, I don’t think categories are an issue. The Gallery module used them, too.