Thread

Hello there,

here is what I want to do:

(Batch) upload pictures onto website (with automatic watermark + thumbnail creation), and then somehow integrate into a shop system, so that costumers can choose a picture and then be able to buy it. An additional thing would be that the customers can combine their picture(s) with other products, e.g. T-Shirt, mugs, etc.

Would this be possible with the Commerce modul?

I was also thinking about using Mal’s E-Commerce solution.

Any hints or opinions or are more details required? Thanks

Hi there,

Hmmm.. some of this is possible and some would be a little harder to do with the current tool set in EE. Not to say that it is impossible though but you would probably need to get a developer on board to create a module or two depending on just how far you want to take it all.

The easiest way to upload images in my mind is to name them all using a nice easy convention and maybe with the same title as the EE entry. That way you can then easily dynamically pull out the image name when needed.

Say you had an entry called :

Me At The Docks

You could then upload an image called :

Me_At_The_Docks.jpg

and EE can easily use the title of the entry along with the required ‘.jpg’ suffix to get the image that you need. That takes care of the first part.

Watermark and thumbnail creation is at the moment not possible (as far as I know) using EE but you can always use phpthumb which can take care of these two items and a whole bunch more!! This can all be dynamically dealt with also so once set up on a template it will work for as many entries as you have in the database.

If you want people to be able to then combine the images with a T-Shirt or mug etc. then it all depends on just how far you want to take this. On a lot of sites you can take the image and place it just where you want on a T-Shirt and so on and so forth. This kind of thing would require some pretty heavy programming to attain this but if all you want is to ask people what they would like the image to be on then when the page is created you can have options in a form that allow people to choose what they want and the price updates accordingly. Still would need some good programming to get it all going but would be about a thousand times easier than the former.

So to answer your question this kind of thing can be handled with EE but depending on how far you want to take it then you may need to program some functions / modules or get a programmer in on the job for you. All definitely doable though.

Also as a word of notice as you will be selling items using EE you will need to purchase the commercial licence to cover this.

Hope this helped a little.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hey Mark,

thanks for your input.

Watermark and thumbnail creation ist possible! Check this out:

The ExpressionEngine Photo Gallery Module allows you to manage your photos on the web. The gallery module supports advanced features like image watermarking, cropping, resizing, rotation, thumbnailing, nested categories, batch importing, multiple galleries, and more.

(Source)

And the combination of images and different items will only be limited to “what image” and “what item”. I will definitely not offer customization to the single articles. That would be crazy. I thought about showing sample images of the completed product. Especially because there will NOT be a thousand different varieties.

Well, I guess I’m just going to give it a shot and see how far I’ll get. And oh yeah: Of course, I’ll be using the commercial version. 😉

Actually, you don’t have to use the gallery module, though that would definately be possible.  You can access those image functions in any plugin/module/extension as well, so if you roll your own, it wouldn’t be at all hard. 

You could, just thinking out loud here….  batch upload everything, then run a small plugin to mass convert all of them to thumbnails/watermarks. 

Putting them into the shopping system is a bit harder, of course.

Hi again,

Sorry have never really used the built in gallery module as I used it when it first came out but it was never really powerful enough for what I wanted to be able to do. Whilst it does have quite a few clever features it was always (don’t know if it still is or not) quite difficult to add new features or change the layout with ease so I always use a weblog for galleries as I find I can add in a lot more configurable options if I need to.

That’s why I wasn’t really sure about watermarking in EE.

All really should be possible and the fact that you have said that you are going to give it a shot is a very good thing as it shows that you are willing to have a go. Once you get your head around how everything works in EE which shouldn’t really take too long then you will probably find you get a very long way in quite a short time.

Hope it all goes great for you.

Best wishes,

Mark

Here’s another suggestion;

1. upload image files via ftp
2. batch generate watermarked thumbnail files
3. batch generate Simple Commerce items for each indvidual image

You’ll need a custom module to handle sales of more than one item at a time,
have a look at the Pro network for a developer that can handle it.