EE2 Photo Gallery Management -- Channel Images vs Slideshow Pro Director API ?

It’s not funny at all, especially if you build your everyday work upon a software and, i’m sorry, there’s a difference between how the OSS world should works (in theory) and how it works

I buid/develop web apps during my day job, and freelance web design on the side. Normally, I feel safer with OSS products than non-OSS as on more than one occasion, the proprietary software company went under, leaving me in a lurch with no means of upgrades, support, or even source to maintain it on my own. For this aspect, OSS is normally safer. Where OSS has its disadvantages is the politics involved, but thats always a strength. If you don’t like the direction a product is heading, fork it and make it your own.

I’m not saying that EE is less than OSS software, but currently, the product seems on par with those OSS options. I -needed- the image gallery module for my purchases, and was willing to pay to get this as it brought needed value to the product.

Mmh maybe they had good reasons. Did someone from Ellis official responded to this?

I think the official position is that the Photo Gallery module was discontinued because of improved support for images/files in Channel entries in EE2.

Mike Boyink of Train-ee wrote a blog post in 2008 comparing Photo Gallery module to using a Weblog to handle images: http://www.train-ee.com/courseware/free-tutorials/comments/24-photos-in-expressionengine-gallery-module-or-weblog/

Between “improved” native support in EE2 Channels, Channel Images, and Brandon Kelly’s Matrix now being EE2 compatible, there are options.

The big limitation I see currently is reusing images in multiple albums / galleries. For clients like photographers, who need to build a site with large collections of images, this is a problem.

After following this thread and several others on Photo Gallery module and EE2, my conclusions are:

1. Channel Images or Brandon Kelly’s Matrix are good solutions for image galleries within a single entry.

2. Slideshow Pro Director API provides a good third-party solution for a true image management system for albums/galleries/tagging/image resizing/dynamic thumbnail/batch uploading. SSP Director is not free, but having used it extensively, I can say it is entirely worth the cost. As we know with EE, you generally get what you pay for.

3. For photographers specifically, Photoshelter might also be a viable solution for managing a large collection of images. They offer some (limited) customization/integration options, and an API (though it’s not nearly as accessible as SSP Director’s API). It’s not free though – $30/month minimum for a plan that can be customized/integrated.

Normally, I feel safer with OSS products than non-OSS

Dude, seriously.

This is not an OSS thread.

Please stop hijacking this thread. Keep on topic if you have something constructive to add.

Otherwise, feel free to start your own thread on OSS vs non-OSS and continue the debate there.

Thanks.

I buid/develop web apps during my day job, and freelance web design on the side. Normally, I feel safer with OSS products than non-OSS as on more than one occasion, the proprietary software company went under, leaving me in a lurch with no means of upgrades, support, or even source to maintain it on my own. For this aspect, OSS is normally safer. Where OSS has its disadvantages is the politics involved, but thats always a strength. If you don’t like the direction a product is heading, fork it and make it your own.

My experience is different and i don’t like free alternatives very much but i totally respect your opinion 😉

Trying to keep the discussion in track, is it possible to have an answer to the question “Why did Ellis remove gallery module from EE2”? 😊

Ok, been thinking about this today.

I’d like to offer a little thought experiment for a possible system for handling image galleries in EE via SSP Director API: http://wiki.slideshowpro.net/SSPdir/API-API

I’ve successfully used Director’s API in EE projects to handle images simply, but what I really want to implement a complete system to handle images in albums and galleries within EE.

I see two approaches to loading image data from Director into EE:

Approach #1: Create ONE entry with MANY images Approach #2: Create MANY entries with ONE image per entry

Approach #1 is cleaner if the images will only be used in that specific entry – e.g. if you had an event as an entry, and wanted an image gallery of pix someone shot from that event.

Approach #2 is cleaner if the images will be used all over the place – In fact, Approach #1 is actually crippling if that’s the case

So Approach #2 is what I want to do here – Create MANY entries with ONE image per entry.

The key questions are:

• How to get the images from SSP Director into EE in a way that is relatively painless and easy?
• If a change is made in EE or in SSP Director, how do to ensure both are synced up correctly?

I think SSP Director should have the priority for image metadata, since it’s specifically designed for that. Therefore, we want to sync from SSP Director to EE, not the other way. Changes made in SSP Director need to be updated in EE, and changes made in EE should just not be done, since they will get overwritten by the next sync with SSP Director.

Here’s my idea for a solution:

1. Write a PHP script using Director’s PHP API class that pulls specified album / image data in from SSP Director into EE (I’ve done this, it’s pretty easy – I posted one solution here: http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/130588/ and Andrew.n wrote a plugin here: http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/93790).
2. If an existing entry for an image or album is found, modify the entry in EE.
3. If a new image or album is found, create a new entry in EE.
4. If an entry for an image or album that doesn’t exist in SSP Director (i.e. was deleted) is found, delete the entry in EE.

After running this script, the net results should be:

1. One entry per image in EE with an up-to-date copy of all current information from SSP Director.
2. Any changes in SSP Director would be reflected in the EE entries after sync.
3. Any new images added to SSP Director would be created as new entries in EE.
4. Any deleted images from SSP Director would be removed as entries from EE.

The tricky part is #4.

If we parse for each of SSP Director’s entries, it’ll reference all existing and (potentially) new images, but won’t (obviously) reference images that have been deleted.

If we parse for each of EE’s entries, it’ll do the opposite: reference all existing content and (potentially) deleted images, but won’t reference new images.

There needs to be a way to flag entries with deleted images.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

1. For each entry checked, a flag will be superficially toggled from A to B, or vice versa.
2. Any entry that exists in SSP Director will trigger the toggle, and any entry that no longer exists in SSP Director will not trigger the toggle.
3. Logically, any entries that haven’t been toggled must therefore not have been present in SSP Director to get checked, so they must have been deleted.
4. Delete all untoggled entries.

So far, so good, I think?

The fly in the ointment is image order.

SSP Director allows images to be manually sorted in albums. It would be possible to preserve this ordering in EE, however, I think it would be awkward to have to dip into SSP Director’s control panel to modify what is really a UI issue. I think SSP Director should be used for only image/file metadata.

So therefore, EE could track entry order.

What do you think?

Does this sound like a fairly clean solution, considering I’m talking about seamlessly integrating two completely separate content management systems?