Thread

I’ll have a need for a very basic gallery for an upcoming site.

I know the photo gallery module allows you to do batch uploads, so, aside from that, what benefits does the photo gallery have over just a simple weblog with some custom fields for generating a simple photo gallery with categories on your website?

I used a weblog for NiceStylesheet and it seems to work fine. With the new site, I don’t anticipate uploading tons of images at a time, so I can’t see the batch upload as being a big help.

Hi there Deron,

I personally always create Galleries using weblogs and not the Gallery Module every single time. I don’t think the Gallery Module was ever supposed to be anything more than quite a simple affair anyway. I know a few people have modded it to do extra things but really you can do so much more with a weblog that to me anyway there is no competition, it’s just weblogs every single time.

I am currently in the process of creating a very large photo web-site that will be selling images and I envisage (read hope 😊 ) that in the end there will be many tens of thousands of images for sale on it. Using a weblog I am able to have more than one image per entry if I want, I use Lightbox scripts to display the images and my own implementation of Linklok URL to hide the large file download once a person has paid for it. This is all tied in with the Simple Commerce Module and a couple of extensions that a fantastic developer on these forums created.

As to bulk uploads I’m really never that bothered as I could bulk upload via FTP if I wanted. You still have to go through and put in the titles and everything else afterwards so not really a time saver to me.

I just make sure that there is a really nice simple naming convention and everything works 100% every time. I am also using the fantastic Tag module and will be using the Favourites module on the site also. The Tag module is being used almost solely as the main way of searching the images but I have also implemented categories and the normal search so the power of finding an image is immense. This is probably a bit overkill for what you describe you will be doing but in my case is totally imperative to the site operation.

I think it is personal preference as to which to use (weblog or gallery module) but I personally would back weblogs all the time as I truly believe that you can do many thousands of more things using weblogs than you can with the gallery module.

Admins - Please don’t take this as a knock down of the Gallery Module in any way. Whilst it is totally suitable for many peoples sites I just believe that more can be done with weblogs as that is the way I have always done it. 😊

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the great overview! This is really what I was thinking. It never crossed my mind to even upload the images via FTP (as dumb as that sounds). I guess sometimes we get tunnel vision and see only one way to do something, even if maybe an easier solution is right in front of us.

The favorites module is something that I’ve not thought about, but then again, I don’t have much experience with the member templates. I’m hoping to create some sort of member functionality with this site, and at least for now, intend on using the User Module to do it.

Thanks again Mark

Hi Deron,

No problem. If you ever need any ideas on workflow or anything like that then I am always here to lend a helping hand wherever I can.

Best wishes,

Mark

As to bulk uploads I’m really never that bothered as I could bulk upload via FTP if I wanted. You still have to go through and put in the titles and everything else afterwards so not really a time saver to me.

Mark, can you explain the process that you go through for this.

I have fought withe Gallery Module and I do have it up and running, but is certainly feels quite hacky as I had to write 2 plugins and one extension to get it to work “right”.

I am looking for something simple, but I would like to be easy for my wife to upload the photos and add them (titles, captions, etc).

Thanks

As to bulk uploads I’m really never that bothered as I could bulk upload via FTP if I wanted. You still have to go through and put in the titles and everything else afterwards so not really a time saver to me.

Mark, can you explain the process that you go through for this.

I have fought withe Gallery Module and I do have it up and running, but is certainly feels quite hacky as I had to write 2 plugins and one extension to get it to work “right”.

I am looking for something simple, but I would like to be easy for my wife to upload the photos and add them (titles, captions, etc).

Thanks

I’ll let mark chime in with his thoughts, but if you ask me, the easiest method would be to use a weblog (like we’re talking about) and simply create a custom field for the image and use the built in functionality of the EE publish page to upload your image (upload button under the “quick save” button). That’s all I do with NiceStlesheet (site in my signature). Just a simple weblog with two custom fields. One field to hold the image, and another to hold the URL of the site (or caption or anything else).

Ya, but I uploads 10s of photos at once and just need to give them a cute title and caption. That is what drew me to the Gallery Module…the batch upload.

Ya, but I uploads 10s of photos at once and just need to give them a cute title and caption. That is what drew me to the Gallery Module…the batch upload.

Well, you could essentially create a template for your gallery that included some conditional statements (if statements) and then just create more custom fields to suit.

So, great one custom field for the first image, a second for the caption. A third custom field for the second image and a forth custom field for the caption of the second image, and so on. (make sense)

You would still have to manually click the “upload” button on the publish page 10 times to upload ten images, but I’m guessing that may be easier than showing your wife how to use FTP?

If you did want to use FTP, you could upload them all at once to maybe the “images >> uploads” folder (that’s what I use for my image uploads). Once they are there, you would simple have to fill in the fields of the new weblog entry.

Like Mark was saying too, the batch upload is good, but you still have to add titles and captions (and anything else) to your photos when using the batch upload, so I guess when it comes down to it, for a basic gallery, there isn’t much difference.

Wow the post got big whilst I was away!! 😊

Erin to quickly let you know what I am doing on a site at the moment for photographers to upload images to the site :

1 - Freeform Module - sending an e-mail to a moblog and uploading the file to a folder on the server. The entries are preset to be closed so that they don’t go live until I want them to.

2 - I get notification of the e-mail and can then check the moblog placing the new entries into the weblog. I can then check them out on a page that just shows ‘Closed’ status entries.

3 - I change the status if I like the image and also move the images via FTP to a secure download folder (This part wouldn’t be needed in your case though).

4 - The entry now goes live.

There is actually a lot more to it than that as I am also using the Tag Module on the entries too but if you just want to upload images and the titles etc very easily then this is a way that I have found to be very good.

N.B. I had to up the memory limits in a php.ini file for the server I am on though as the images can be anything up to 20MB in size!!

Hope that helps.

Best wishes,

Mark

I have an additional question related to this topic (bit of a noob here).  Once I upload a file.  How then do I refer to the file in the template. I guess what I am asking is how to set up a custom field to record the URL of a file I’ve uploaded.

Cliff: when you insert the image in a custom field, you can address that field in the template.

Which brings me to my question: I’ve made a portfolio page in the style of Slideshow pro fully based on the Photo Gallery. The thumbnails, full images and pagination are addressed through the Gallery tags.
If I would do this via the weblog entries, I would have to upload the image and thumbnail separately in two different fields with custom sizes, making the upload process complicated, or am I missing something?

The great thing about the photo gallery is that thumbnails are made automatically and you can use them through an EE tag. Would be great if I could do this in a regular weblog entry.

Thanks for the reply.

If you were to do it as a weblog entry in the upload window (under resize) you’re allowed to generate a separate file which can be then used as a thumbnail.  However unless you wish to distort your thumbnail it will have to be sized proportionally to the original.

I would like to know if there’s a way to set up a Photo Gallery so that I can upload a photo and a seperate thumbnail image in the same gallery entry.  That way I can control sizing of the thumbnail and cropping on my end.

Hiya,

Just to address a couple of the questions that have popped up here.

Cliff if you have a custom field - let’s say called {my-image-location} then referring to the file in your template really depends on how you place the information for that file into your custom field. Myself personally I currently do a lot and I mean lot of image uploads so I find it really easy just to FTP up all the images and then just place the image name - my-image.jpg into the custom field. This way I can then do whatever I want with it in my templates. I can create the link(s) to the image in whatever way I see fit. I also make them all 100% strict XHTML so I have no problems there either.

I can also create the links so that I can use the fabulous Lightbox Javascript to display the images at a larger size also. You can use either phpthumb or the fantastic Image Sizer Plugin. These can automatically create the much needed thumbnails so I literally just upload my original large image and then these will create my thumbs at whatever size I need. I can even do this multiple times so I can get as many different thumbnails at as many different sizes as I need for the site(s) that I am creating.

Hope this helps a bit on the thought processes going on in this thread.

I must also say that I never use the Gallery Module. It’s not that I don’t think it is any good but I do stand behind my beliefs that much much more can be achieved using a weblog to store all the information.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hey Mark
Thanks for you reply.  In a perfect world your solution would totally rock.  However I’ve got a client who is insistent on updating her content but is not super computer savvy (so FTP is out).  I think in the end to get the control that I want while keeping my client in a “safe” environment, I’ll end up having to go the Weblog way.
The photo gallery (at first glance) does not allow me the control over thumbnails that I require (the ability of uploading my own thumbnails along with the image), oh well batch uploading would have been nice but I think in the end weblogs will offer me a more robust solution.

does not allow me the control over thumbnails that I require (the ability of uploading my own thumbnails along with the image)

Will you be uploading a completely different thumbnail image than the full size image? If the thumbnail will be the same as the full size image, you really would be doing extra work in uploading two separate images. I would really check out the image sizer plugin, it’s great.