Photo Gallery Installed - Limited Access Feature

[Mike]

I am happy to announce the Xen Media Gallery has been installed, is configured and is up, running and open for business.

The Gallery is a premium feature and will only be accessible to Supporting Members, Forum Sponsors and Forum Staff Members only.

I am currently setting up user permissions, but my intent is to be extremely flexible with that configuration. Members with access to the Gallery will be able to do considerable editing to their own, uploaded media.

Watch this thread for updated information, but members of the above usergroups can now access the Gallery via the Media link in the NavBar.

Enjoy!

 

[Mike]

Ahhh, you have to love code. We'll be right back with the gallery.

 

[Mike]

OK, we're back.

The video library and the photo gallery were sharing the same path. I thought I could pull some sleight of hand and change the gallery path on the fly, but that broke both the library and the gallery paths.

The bad news is that I have had to remove the video library. Since I was the only one who had ever posted any videos to the library, I don't see that will be a tremendous loss to anyone. The good news is the Xen Media Gallery will soon have provisions for videos, as well.

More good news is the basic framework of the Gallery is well-written. It is very well-integrated with the forum software.

I logged into the forum with another account and rated an image I had uploaded with the Mike account. And the forum's Alerts system notified me there was a comment awaiting me.

You can see by the indicated stars, the rating is reflected on the index thumbnail.

And the rating also appears on the image page, itself.

Commenting also works as expected.



As you can see in the right-hand column, the URL for the image, the BBCode URL, for displaying the image within a forum post and even the thumbnail URL for displaying thumbnails within a forum post are all right there for you to use.

It won't be too much longer and we will also be able to offer each user their own albums, as opposed to having a site-wide album. And each user will be able to set permissions for their own albums, so user albums can either be publicly-shared or private.

I think we're onto something good here.

With respect to the images in the old Invision gallery. Yes, I still have them. Yes, there is some working being done on importers. No, we will not be importing the old images into Xen Media Gallery. Since the gallery is a premium feature offered to a limited number of users, it would require wading through the old directory and removing images for those individuals who will not have access to this gallery. And, as well all know (well, at least I know), just as soon as I remove someone's images, that will be when they step up to donate. And then have a boo-boo lip, because their images are gone. I still have the directory archived, so if anyone really needs any images they had uploaded to the old gallery, I can pull them out.

 

[Don'tCallMeJimmie]

Welp, lemme open the first ticket on this. My profile says "supporting member" but when I open the category pulldown on the add media page, I can't choose anything.

Firefox 20.0.1, Win7.

 

[Mike]

Give it another try. Some numpty forgot to add permissions for the other usergroups to the categories.

You just can't get good help these days...

 

[AnotherTest]

OK, here is a caveat.

If you are viewing the site-wide album and click on Add Media button, you may (as in maybe you will and maybe you won't) see a blank dropdown menu, ala the Donation Manager issue.

The above screenshot was taken whilst using Chromium, the unbranded version of Goober Chrome.

However, this image was taken whilst using Firefox.

Bottom line? It is not a cross-browser issue. If you open the menu and cannot see any menu selections, just move your mouse around in the white area and menu options will be highlighted as you hover over them.

 

[Mike]

Chrome and Chromium seem to be the only browsers with the issue. Firefox, Epiphany, Midori and Opera all display the menu items. Obviously, I do not have Internet Exploder or Safari, so I cannot test them. I suppose I should look into installing them under WINE, but that is really a low priority for me.

 

[Mike]

Imagine that. Running Internet Exploder on a iMac that is operating on Linux. Now, I just need to sort how to get WINE to report as Win 7, rather than XP, to see if I can update both browsers to something a wee bit more current.

But I can now report both Safari and IE display the menu as they should. Looks like Chrome/Chromium is the only problem child.

 

[lincolnuT]

Great,, Mike I just put one up for a test.....................

 

[Mike]

Good job! I assume everything worked well?

 

[RocknT]

Must have a size limit I got file to large on the first one,,but the second went no problem VERY Easy Thanks Mike

 

[Mike]

Yes, there is a 1 MB limit.

For Windows users, I have always recommended IrfanView as an image editing script. It is a freed download and has a lot of features the average user will never tap into. If you want something a bit more powerful, there is always GIMP, and it is cross-platform. Being completely unfamiliar with OS X, I am really not too sure what other offerings are available, but I'll wager there is something that sells for less than $100. Linux users, grab a copy of Mirage from your distribution's repositories and if that isn't enough for you, then grab GIMP. Those are two must-haves for me, on all my systems.

Keep having a play with it and let me know if you hit any snags. I'm away for a few hours sleep.

 

[Mike]

Well, I'm not seeing any reported problems, so maybe that is a good thing?

I'm really pleased with how tightly the gallery is integrated with the forum, itself. And I am also pleased to report the developer is making huge strides with his coding. A new version is already working in Alpha, allowing video embeds. The video embedding will work with categories, same as the image gallery already does, but I will be able to set up separate categories for video, or allow them to be embedded within the current categories.

A sneak peek at a video page -

It is a lot of fun to be able to work with a developer that is this passionate about his products.

I have suggested he add a watermarking function to the script, so we will hopefully have that available, as well. He has already implemented a handful of reasonable suggestions (which is another good sign), so I really have high expectations for where this add-on is going.

 

[Mike]

More news on the soon-to-be-released gallery update.

It will be leveraging browser caching, to help you see previously-viewed images faster. But the huge benefit is that it will not require previously-viewed images to be served to your browser on subsequent views, which will free up the server to perform other tasks. Speed, speed, speed and you all know how I love to optimize sites for faster performance.

It will also be implementing proxy caching, which will speed up the downloads of images on the client side. Which means you won't have to wait as long for your browser to download images.

This add-on just continues to get better and better.

 

[Mike]

I will be closing the photo gallery down for a few minutes, to perform an upgrade. Be right back!

 

[Mike]

Hehehe...

Yes, boys and girls, you can now add videos to the album.

Carlos Santana making lovely music, right within our own Media Gallery.

And check this out -

You can now add captions to your images and videos.

The above video is playing from the Media Gallery.

• Videos. You can now embed videos in the gallery as media items. Embed code is generated by running video URLs through the XenForo BB Code Media sites feature. This means you can embed ANY media into the gallery as long as you have a BB Code Media site set up for it.
• You can globally set which BB Code Media sites can be used for embedding into the gallery.
• Create categories that accept either Images, Videos or both.
• Limited Style Properties for adjusting some basic CSS quickly and easily (e.g. sidebar width)
• Images now include browser and proxy caching based on Google recommended best practise
• Set the title and description of all media items in one click.
• Usernames in comments now use the rich format.

Enjoy!

 

[Mike]

And I've just performed another upgrade, to fix a bug in the version installed less than 30 minutes ago. This coder is one of the good guys.

 

[Mike]

I found a small bug that would not allow videos to played directly in the thumbnail view. A wee edit to remove a line in a CSS file corrected the problem.

 

[Mike]

Yes, we have upgraded the Photo Gallery, yet again. As you likely saw on the forum home page.

This upgrade was huge, as it added a ton of new features.

• Much improved thumbnail generation
• Cache rebuilder to handle thumbnail recreation
• Cache rebuilder to handle user media count recounting
• Extension of "What's New" to include "New Media" as well as "New Threads"
• Mark Media Viewed (or mark current category as viewed)
• Search media items (media title, description and caption) from search
• Contextual search on media pages (search media only, search this category only etc.)
• Latest Comments block
• Top Contributors block
• Completely from scrach rewrite of the thumbnail container (updated HTML and CSS)
• Fully customisable thumbnail container using Style Properties
• Thumbnail container now resizes automatically based on the content within it and the thumbnail dimensions set in the Options.
• New alert for when your media is rated
• Ability for you to completely customise which alerts you receive
• Different behaviour with regards to the Add Media button
• Image previews now show in Recent Activity
• Adds option to display New Media block on forum list (off by default)
• Various DataWriter fixes
• Small performance and bug fixes
• Different positions for new media block
• Option to show recent media block instead of new media block

Enjoy!

 

[Mike]

It just dawned on me, many of you will not be able to see that gallery upgrade on the forum home page. Only the donating members and the sponsors will see it. So, here is a teaser image -

There is now a display block for new gallery media.