Several questions regarding Photopost import and current setup

[rbl]

Hi!
After browsing through the Gallery forums there are still a few questions left.
Case scenario: my current Photopost (PP) site has 24 categories, 400 members, 2000 photos and 10000 comments.
I divide users between regular and sponsor, with several sponsor usergroups. Regulars can only post 1 photo per day, the photo must be admin/mod approved, 1MB limit of disk space and no restrictions regarding number of comments, ratings etc.
Sponsors can post an unlimited number of unmoderated photos per day, can create user/personal albums, have no restrictions regarding comments, ratings, etc and only differ in disk space allocated to each level or usergroup.
Everyone should be able to edit their own photos and comments but no one can delete them.
No other filetype beside .jpg (and .jpeg) is allowed.

If there is something from the scenario above undoable in Gallery, please let me know.

Upload limits. Haven't seen those anywhere. This is of the most importance to me. Is there a way to limit the number of uploads per usergroup?

1 - About importing. Reading another thread I got the impression that I must keep PP after importing to Gallery. I found it hard to believe, is this true?
1.1 - I don't use custom fields in PP. Can I assume no data whatsoever is lost after importing? I mean: in PP, photo A, under Category XYZ, has 23 unique comments, 20 different ratings with a median of x.y points and that will be exactly the same in Gallery.
1.2 - PP prefixes each uploaded photo with the owner's userid and saves it to the category folder. Everytime I need to change the photo's category, the actual file must be moved on the server. From what I read, Gallery saves each photo to a separate user's folder. Can you explain better how Gallery handles files and how this affects the import?
1.3 - The Description Character Limit is just 250 characters. I need at least 1024. Is it possible?

2 - Thumbnails. I've made a simple hack to PP to make it create square thumbnails out of the value I defined as thumb size in the admin. I suppose would be trivial to reproduce in Gallery, am I correct?

3 - Watermarks. All photos are watermarked on upload with a transparent png file but besides that, PP allows for a second non-permanent method called on-the-fly, i.e. a new jpeg is created to display the watermarked photo and then dumped.
Using on-the-fly, I've made another simple hack that checks if the user has its own watermark and if it does, it watermarks that photo with an additional watermark. It's a simple "if /userwatermarks/$userid_watermak.png exists, then watermark it".
Can I do this, or something similar in Gallery?

4 - Integration. How is the integration done in CMPS pages and also in forum pages?
4.1 - User values like number of photos or comments can be integrated into current forum pages like user profile or parts like the postbit?

... and finally...
5 - Gallery user profiles. All user links point to their forum profile. Is there a page with all member's photos and albums/categories?

Uff!! That's a long list of questions! Thanks for taking the time to read it! =)
Ricardo

Originally Posted by rbl

Upload limits. Haven't seen those anywhere. This is of the most importance to me. Is there a way to limit the number of uploads per usergroup?

Currently that is not an option. It would be fairly easy to write a quick hack for it though, so if it's needed please let me know after you purchase a copy and I can give you the code.

1 - About importing. Reading another thread I got the impression that I must keep PP after importing to Gallery. I found it hard to believe, is this true?
1.1 - I don't use custom fields in PP. Can I assume no data whatsoever is lost after importing? I mean: in PP, photo A, under Category XYZ, has 23 unique comments, 20 different ratings with a median of x.y points and that will be exactly the same in Gallery.

No, there is no reason to keep PP after importing. Currently the import script will import the images, categories, replies, and ratings. The only thing that you may want to note is that we do not store ratings in the same way as PP and it does not display who rated the image in the comments like they do.

1.2 - PP prefixes each uploaded photo with the owner's userid and saves it to the category folder. Everytime I need to change the photo's category, the actual file must be moved on the server. From what I read, Gallery saves each photo to a separate user's folder. Can you explain better how Gallery handles files and how this affects the import?

Our gallery basically handles files about the same was as vBulletin handles attachments. If your userid is 584, then the folder your images are stored in would be gallery/files/5/8/4. This will not affect the ability to import from PP as the images are just moved to the new folder during the process.

1.3 - The Description Character Limit is just 250 characters. I need at least 1024. Is it possible?

Yes.

2 - Thumbnails. I've made a simple hack to PP to make it create square thumbnails out of the value I defined as thumb size in the admin. I suppose would be trivial to reproduce in Gallery, am I correct?

Shouldn't be too hard to add to vBa Gallery if you were able to hack PP to make the change.

3 - Watermarks. All photos are watermarked on upload with a transparent png file but besides that, PP allows for a second non-permanent method called on-the-fly, i.e. a new jpeg is created to display the watermarked photo and then dumped.
Using on-the-fly, I've made another simple hack that checks if the user has its own watermark and if it does, it watermarks that photo with an additional watermark. It's a simple "if /userwatermarks/$userid_watermak.png exists, then watermark it".
Can I do this, or something similar in Gallery?

vBa Gallery doesn't currently have watermarking on the fly. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to add a permanant watermark with the same method though.

4 - Integration. How is the integration done in CMPS pages and also in forum pages?

It's not really integrated with the forum pages unless you add something to your forums from the gallery. It is very easy to integrate with the CMPS though. Just two lines of code need to be added to the top of your gallery_global.php file and it will integrate all pages with the CMPS, or you can add those lines to individual files if you don't want the CMPS columns on all pages.

4.1 - User values like number of photos or comments can be integrated into current forum pages like user profile or parts like the postbit?

Shouldn't be hard to do if you know a little basic PHP.

... and finally...
5 - Gallery user profiles. All user links point to their forum profile. Is there a page with all member's photos and albums/categories?

http://www.vbadvanced.com/gallery/br...er&imageuser=1
Shows all of my images... Hadn't thought about adding the categories to that page, but I think I may have to add that as well at some point.

[rbl]

Thanks Brian! =)

Originally Posted by Brian

Currently that is not an option. It would be fairly easy to write a quick hack for it though, so if it's needed please let me know after you purchase a copy and I can give you the code.

Thanks!! =) This is very important to me because a lot of users tend to ignore the rules and try to post 15 images in a row.

The only thing that you may want to note is that we do not store ratings in the same way as PP and it does not display who rated the image in the comments like they do.

It's not very important to me and since the voter userid is kept, it could probably be hacked to display it also along the comments.

I have changed my PP to prevent users from rating without also making a comment. Can this be done also in Gallery?
Another thing, can I change ratings to 10 stars instead of just 5?

vBa Gallery doesn't currently have watermarking on the fly. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to add a permanant watermark with the same method though.

On-the-fly is not a difficult method using the imagecreate functions in php.
Anyway, it is not an indispensable feature for me. I can add it along the way.

http://www.vbadvanced.com/gallery/br...er&imageuser=1
Shows all of my images... Hadn't thought about adding the categories to that page, but I think I may have to add that as well at some point.

If you look at my PP profile page, you'll see some personal albums on the top and images posted into "general" categories.
Don't mind the design... it looks like a beggars hat website =)
If something similar could be done, great! =)

Any plans of including spider friendly urls to Gallery? And talking about plans, any public "roadmap" of Gallery?

And the $1.000.000 question, what's your policy about refunds?
Like I've said to you earlier in my pm, I'm satisfied with PP. It's a great product and I do like it very much. But in some aspects, its a royal pain in the butt.
I'm very impressed with Gallery and I like the way it integrates with vB but I'm seeing from afar.
I don't want to exchange one nightmare for another.

Thanks again for you time!
Ricardo

Originally Posted by rbl

It's not very important to me and since the voter userid is kept, it could probably be hacked to display it also along the comments.

It may be a little difficult to display the ratings with the comments unless you're pretty good with PHP, but shouldn't be too difficult to at least display them seperately.

I have changed my PP to prevent users from rating without also making a comment. Can this be done also in Gallery?
Another thing, can I change ratings to 10 stars instead of just 5?

There's not an option for this. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to just remove the rating options from everywhere but the reply page though. Not sure if this would be an issue, but keep in mind that the ratings are not linked with the replies at all, so it wouldn't really be possible to display them together.

On-the-fly is not a difficult method using the imagecreate functions in php.
Anyway, it is not an indispensable feature for me. I can add it along the way.

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to add and probably will be a feature in the future, but I had to quit adding options and such at some point and get the thing released.

If you look at my PP profile page, you'll see some personal albums on the top and images posted into "general" categories.
Don't mind the design... it looks like a beggars hat website =)
If something similar could be done, great! =)

If I add the user's categories on our user search it will most likely be done with the categories being displayed the same was as they are on the homepage. Same concept pretty much, just a different look.

Any plans of including spider friendly urls to Gallery? And talking about plans, any public "roadmap" of Gallery?

I have thought about making an "Archive" similar to the way vBulletin has theirs, but I can't really say when that would be or if that's even the method I will use. I am planning on looking into that some more though to figure out what the best method will be.

And the $1.000.000 question, what's your policy about refunds?
Like I've said to you earlier in my pm, I'm satisfied with PP. It's a great product and I do like it very much. But in some aspects, its a royal pain in the butt.
I'm very impressed with Gallery and I like the way it integrates with vB but I'm seeing from afar.
I don't want to exchange one nightmare for another.

We've never had a request for a refund yet. It would depend on the circumstances though whether one was given or not.

[rbl]

Originally Posted by Brian

There's not an option for this. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to just remove the rating options from everywhere but the reply page though. Not sure if this would be an issue, but keep in mind that the ratings are not linked with the replies at all, so it wouldn't really be possible to display them together.

Maybe a simple javascript can prevent the rating from being submitted if the comment text area is empty... just thinking out loud...
But I'm not sure if you had replied to the star rating question. Can I change them from 5 to 10?

We've never had a request for a refund yet. It would depend on the circumstances though whether one was given or not.

I would only ask for a refund if after installing it wouldn't work properly or at all. I believe I've covered most ground with all this questions but experience thought me better than that.
For example, my host has a very strict policy about changing php settings and because they are sponsoring my site, giving me the necessary space and bandwidth, I really can't make any demands.
I suppose that if I'm able to run PP and vB, there won't be a problem running Gallery although there is no requirements page.

Originally Posted by rbl

Can I change them from 5 to 10?

Sorry I overlooked that. You would need to change the radio buttons and such to add 6-10 plus add some new images for those, but other that that it shouldn't really be too hard to change.

I would only ask for a refund if after installing it wouldn't work properly or at all. I believe I've covered most ground with all this questions but experience thought me better than that.
For example, my host has a very strict policy about changing php settings and because they are sponsoring my site, giving me the necessary space and bandwidth, I really can't make any demands.
I suppose that if I'm able to run PP and vB, there won't be a problem running Gallery although there is no requirements page.

If that was the case and I was not able to make some adjustments to get everything working properly then a refund would of course be given.

[imported_alwin]

How to delete the photo file from gallery?

Can vbadvanced's Gallery be integrated into the vB forums (e.g. putting random images at the top of the forums, as seen here: http://www.disneyworldtrivia.com/forums/)

Also, can I assume that a Photopost import will not let me lose any comments, etc.?

Finally, is there any way to install vbA gallery, import photopost to test, but leave bot hgalleries running to ensure that vBA Gallery suits my needs?

Thanks!

Lou

Yes, yes, and yes.