Custom category avatars (thumbs)

[drare]

Chuck,

I reviewed all possible items on Cat avatars, all of them, at least most of them are about how to set up a cat avatar, I found this long ago.

But here's my challenge, don't like to call it problems anymore!
We allow per cat a max. no of photo's of 750, when I assign a photo from the database to the cat index in time this will disappear, and not all photo's a uniform in size, so here is what I was thinking.

I place all cat thumbs on the server, do some coding in categories.tmpl and done, yeah right, thinking like a dummy, of course this won't work. I've looked at the template and the pp-inc file

This code shows the cat thumbs:

Content visible to verified customers only.

But I'm stuck from there on how to actually get my uniform custom thumbs on to the category indexes with some extra coding, It looks like it should be possible, even when the thumb is not in de database, can you help me out, or direct me to a post I missed with the same question?

Thanks in advance Cuck.

[Chuck S]

Not sure what your trying to do but lets explain how it works.

Category Avatars are set by you clicking MAKE INDEX THUMB when viewing a photo.

There is an option in Admin as well to set all cat avatars to the first photo uploaded in that can under Scan Database in admin.

[drare]

Yes Chuck I understand this, but in time when a cat reaches the 750 photo limit the oldes, which may in time be the photo from which I made the Cat avatar is gone because the photo is no longer in the database, so I loose the cat avatar (or not?)

Since the photo used for the cat avatar may vary in size, landschap, portrait, I want a uniform avatar, preferbally aquare, that's when I got the idea to altar the code to have the avatar not from a photo in the database but a avatar I put on the server.

Hmmm I hope I did explain it a little better, I need to upgrade my English chip in my head so I can explain it better, sometimes I'm not sure how to say it in English, but so far we do understand each other most of the times :-)

[Chuck S]

what 750 limit? You lost me there. There is no limit

Your free to modify your code however you wish but I am not aware of any limitations. The thumbnail field which stores a photo id is an int 15 digit limit which is like photo ids alway through the trillions

If you want uniform thumbs why not set use in upload options in admin the uniform thumbnail feature if your using imagemagick and regenerate your thumbnails?

[drare]

Chuck, sorry I ment this the: "Max number of images in category" in each cat., we have set this to 750.

I've got an idea to work this out and going to give this a try tomorrow, tired now after a long day at work.

Thanks so far Chuck.

[Chuck S]

Ah okay your talking some other feature got ya.

You can do something harcoded and simple like this

Content visible to verified customers only.

could be something like this

Content visible to verified customers only.

That would require you to do two things which would make static avatars

1. create a directory under your gallery install called catavatars

2. You need to create static uniform jpg images to load for each and every category and upload them to that directory.

[drare]

Top! It's working just the way I wanted to work, you're the best Chuck, thanks! I really think this is an addition for more users of PP.

Gerard

[Chuck S]

Actually in classifieds or reviewpost I do something similar but different. I add the ability to add a url in the thumbnail field in the category table so one can specifically add a custom avatar from where ever or simply use the default code.

This above is a simple quick and dirty hack for you.