vBGallery Attachment Intergration

[gatorsfootball]

While you are updating vBGallery to work with vBulletin 4.0, would it be possible to change the storage of the photos and place them in the "attachment" area of the forum. vBulletin has done this with the rest of their photo albums and files, and this would be nice to have them all in one basket.

[Luciano]

Well you can place them where ever you want now...
the only place you cannot put them is in the database.. (because that is huge memory hog.. Even with vbulletin attachments you should move them to filesystem as soon as you get a little bit more traffic...)

To change the location of your images, change the location of your file directory and file url...

vbgallery -> settings -> Files Path
and
vbgallery -> settings -> Files Url

Have them point to anywhere on your server...
I myself use a directory outside the gallery directory...
my structure is like this:
host.com/forums
host.com/gallery
host.com/art
All my gallery images are in host.com/art
(that gives me the keyword "art" in every image link... )

you can also place them in host.com/forums/attachments/gallery_images


btw... you can also place your attachments in the gallery/files directory.. the same way.. by editing your
acp -> options -> Version Info and Other Untouchables -> File Attachment Path
make it point to gallery directory...

But I would advise if you have many users not to put either the gallery files nor the attachments into a directory that has allready many files..

[gatorsfootball]

Originally Posted by Luciano

Well you can place them where ever you want now.....

Thanks for responding Luciano, but I do not want to "co-locate" the image files, but rather integrate them with the existing vBulletin attachment system. This way users could easily insert the images in posts, blogs, and the new CMS.

I really hope Photopost developers will give this some serious thought, because it would be a "Hot" seller and in great demand.

[Luciano]

Originally Posted by gatorsfootball

but rather integrate them with the existing vBulletin attachment system. This way users could easily insert the images in posts, blogs, and the new CMS.

Well there seem to be vb features i didnt discover yet

If i upload an image in vbulletin albums, the only way i can integrate it in forums or blogs is, to my knowledge by copying the bbcode on that images page.. and pasting it into the forum..

In vbgallery its the same...

(allthough there is a hack that allows you to drag and drop gallery image into the forum..
http://www.photopost.com/forum/vbgal...n-posting.html
I think its only available at vb.org )
[edit]foundit:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=202385
[/edit]


But you probably meen something else???
Luc

[gatorsfootball]

Originally Posted by Luciano

But you probably meen something else???
Luc

Look at the asset (attachments) demo as shown by Freddie Bingham

vBulletin Asset Manager Demo #2 - Blogs - vBulletin Community Forum


When you upgrade to 4.0, all of your albums wll be moved into the attachment system. Onvce moved, any of these files/images can be used/placed in the blogs, albums, cms, and forum.

[Luciano]

Ahh.. now i understand..
Well I dont think this will be integrated in next version.. first get running what exists.. optimizing things..

IMHO, I think this system is far to complicated for most users..
Its excellent for admins, and users that know what they are doing.. (in the demo freddy even had some probs and had to tryout stuff...), but in 99% of the cases users are novices.
they even have problems uploading an image on facebook.. (I have 2 colleages at work that ask me for help everytime they upload a pic there)
For myself, I had to look twice to find the button where i upload a pic..
its not intuitive at all. But its great for users who are familiar with the system

As a matter of fact i stumbled into a thread yesterday, at vb .com where people were complaining just about this.

Upload too complicated

but as I said, its great, for powerusers.

And it all depends what you want a gallery for.

I use the gallery, as Main element on the site (together with profile).. the forums and blogs are just additional stuff (a user will post in forums if he has problems uploading to gallery.. otherwise he will hardly use the forums.. much more will he want to showoff his images, not in forums but in a gallery.. (but thats me only)

Luc

[gatorsfootball]

Originally Posted by Luciano

IMHO, I think this system is far to complicated for most users..
Its excellent for admins, and users that know what they are doing.. (in the demo freddy even had some probs and had to tryout stuff...), but in 99% of the cases users are novices.

but as I said, its great, for powerusers.

And it all depends what you want a gallery for.

Well Luc, it's part of vBulletin 4.0, and that's the new attachment system. There are no other option unless you chose not to upgrade to 4.0. I'm not here to debate the ease of use of the vBulletin product, but rather to request to have the product provide more integration into the existing vBulletin system. It reduces space by not having to upload images multiple times for each area; thus making it easier for the user to deploy images in the Blogs, CMS, Social Groups, Albums, and the Forum. That's all...

[Luciano]

I totally agree... (although with the add img hack there is no extra upload)
but to make a long story short, i doubt (doubting is not knowing) that it will be added in next version..
Luc

[0ptima]

Originally Posted by gatorsfootball

Look at the asset (attachments) demo as shown by Freddie Bingham

vBulletin Asset Manager Demo #2 - Blogs - vBulletin Community Forum


When you upgrade to 4.0, all of your albums wll be moved into the attachment system. Onvce moved, any of these files/images can be used/placed in the blogs, albums, cms, and forum.

This would be the ultimate gallery integration!

[fairwea1]

This would be the icing on the cake!

[Luciano]

Well I had some thoughts about it...

As I understand it, it would implement a complete rewrite of gallery.

But maybe I am wrong, so if someone is very familiar with the attachment system please correct my thoughts.

1. Either images would have to be stored twice, (once in filesystem and once in attachment system) otherwise they would not be backwards compatible.. (a no no for big galleries.. webspace 30 vs 60 gigs)

2. OR they would have to be moved completely to attachment system. Now I have a bad feeling about some galleries, (i got an example of one with 390 categories and over 600.000 images) as vbulletin by default stores all images in database. Of course you can move them to file system, but if I am not wrong, vbulletin changes the filename to something completely different.

----

The solution for me would be to have sort of "softlinks" in attachment database, dummy images with no image data. so this so instead of pulling the stuff from database or vbulletin filesystem, it would pull the images from gallery filesystem. and just have the full links in attachment database.
I admit I do not know if this is possible. If there are hooks in the appropriate locations. I will look into it, but only after 3.0 gold is out.

Luc

[fairwea1]

Hi Luc,

I don't know how it all works but it sounds like it'd be a lot of work to get this done.

I will say as generic of a gallery as vbulletin has, the integration is making me second think what I would like to do. As of now in vbulletin users can create folders and subfolders to store there pics then use them in the forums, blogs, or cms at any time via the editor. Although there wouldn't be a nice categorized photo gallery like in vbgallery, all pics would be in the forums and in the members albums. Not ideal, but!

Or the option I'm using now, use vbgallery but it's half used. The reality is this, if I told users to add their pics to vbgallery then they could use them in the forum, life would be grand.

I like vbgallery but at the same time we all need to face reality. Users are not going to upload the same pics to multiple area of the website. Just not gonna happen. So as nice as vbgallery is I'm still left with a decision. inferior product which users use or nice product they don't use.

Thanks,
Eric

[gatorsfootball]

Thanks for giving my suggestion some thought . If you can successfully integrate "VBGallery" while utilizing the existing VBulletin Attachment system, you will sell a million copies of the software.

A small importer would also be needed to move the existing Gallery images to the attachment database.

As much as I like VBGallery, I am considering dropping VBGallery from my site and moving toward the existing attachment system. I really do not like having two galleries (VBulletin & VBGallery). Although VBGallery truly looks nice, it complicates the existing attachment system. What I mean by that is the user does not understand the difference, or where exactly to upload their images. I base this on my personal oberservation and communication with users.

As previously suggested, I know I can simply deny users access to the built-in image/attachment system, but I really like the ability of users to have easy access to the images so they can directly insert the images from the attachment library.

With that said, I would also like to say that you have done a wonderful job with the VB 4.0 port. VBGallery has never looked better, and it will pain me to remove it from my site. I also appreciate the fact that you have taken the time to answer all of our questions in the forums ...it really makes customers happy ...especally this one

[cory_booth]

There is a mod that does exactly this...
Photo Popup...

Works VERY well...
Cel Photo Popup - Insert pictures from vB Albums, Attachs, Photopost, vBGallery - vBulletin.org Forum

[gatorsfootball]

Originally Posted by cory_booth

There is a mod that does exactly this...
Photo Popup...

Works VERY well...
Cel Photo Popup - Insert pictures from vB Albums, Attachs, Photopost, vBGallery - vBulletin.org Forum

Yes, that's a nice Mod, but it doesn't solve the issue I speak of.

[fairwea1]

Originally Posted by cory_booth

There is a mod that does exactly this...
Photo Popup...

Works VERY well...
Cel Photo Popup - Insert pictures from vB Albums, Attachs, Photopost, vBGallery - vBulletin.org Forum

Nice mod!