What is the future vBG?

[attroll]

What is the future of vBG? Are there any plans to have vBG catch up to the functions that PhotoPost offers.

No disrespect intended when I say this:
It seems that ever since vBG was taken over from Brian that you all have only done what takes to keep the gallery going. I have not seen any new implementations done to it. I was hoping it would be brought up to speed to have all the functions that PhotoPost has.

Is there any plans for bring vBG up to speed with PhotoPost or are you all just going to keep doing only what it takes to keep the gallery going?

As I said before no disrespect intended.

I would have switched from vBG to PhotoPost but my gallery is to large for me to do so I am stuck with vBG. But it saddens me to see that nothing has been done for us that are stuck using vBG. Please, can we see some progress.

[Michael P]

No disrespect taken.

vBG has been difficult to maintain with the huge changes that vB has gone through the past couple years. It's taken all of our effort just to keep vBG up-to-date, let alone time to add in new features. We did get vBG up to the latest versions, but through all of that had neglected the interface of PhotoPost PRO. We're in the final stages of releasing an update to address that and once that is done we can look back again at vBG.

We're a small company, our resources for updating all of our products is limited and we do the best we can to keep up. I don't have any specifics for you, but once we get PRO out the door with the 8.0 update, we can look closer at vBG.

[attroll]

Some of us know the story of how vBG started and I am sure if we knew the whole story when we purchased it, we would never have purchased it. Now that you own the product, I/we feel like we have been left hanging. Keep in mind it is not our faults for purchasing it when it originally came out, we had no clue and we should not be penalized for that but we feel like we have been.

What I would like to see done is to have an import file made so that we could do away with vBG altogether. Is there any way of doing this and still be able to keep the image urls the same?

I would convert now but I do not know of a conversion file. Even if there was one the old urls that users posted in messages would not match up with the PhotoPost urls.

Here is how there differ.

vBG:
forum/vbg/showimage.php?i=13368&c=558

Photopost:
forum/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=206

I hope I am making sense here.

[Chuck S]

Well as Michael noted we can only do our best being a small company. Most companies would have retired the product were as we choose to keep developing it. I think we have done alot of work with vbGallery and added alot of features over the years especially remembering the 1.0 code base we started with. The code base we started with had lots of unresolved issues that we had to fix and lots of new additions since then and I know the 3.0 code base for vb 4 series alot of work was done with that to support vbulletin4. That was essentially a complete rewrite of the code.

Does vbGallery have all the features of Pro no, however take into account that Pro is alot more mature of a product having been in existence about twice as long as vbGallery.

We have had a vbGallery to Pro import script available for along time. It is available for download in the PhotoPost Pro import script forum here.

Photopost vbGallery to Photopost Pro Import Script

There is nothing we can do about your urls in posts with any absolute certainty here because these are two separate products with different url formats and even different file structures. We have no control over links placed in outside applications. However if you do decide to switch based on your example urls above there is a query you can use that might switch your links if they are as you are posting above. You would need to backup any database and my example would change any links based on your direct example but its a powerful query something we do not directly support since this has nothing to do with our coding.

UPDATE post SET pagetext = REPLACE(pagetext, 'vbg/showimage.php?i','gallery/showphoto.php?photo');

Now look at the query basically what it is going to do is find any reference in your forum posts of that portion of wording and change it the second part which should make the links work. There is nothing I can post that is going to help you with direct file structure links in posts. Hope that helps

Personally I like all the work we put into PP8 and I think you would like it. You are permitted a test install if you lock it down via htaccess so it is not web accessible to the public. You could do a test import of vbgallery using the script I noted above. You could then see if the new Pro 8 is to your liking and decide if you want to switch. If so then you could make it permanent and do the database query I noted to try and change post links to your new Pro install.

[attroll]

Chuck

I am aware of everything PP8 has. I have four licences for PP. I also have one licence for vBG. It just so happens that my biggest gallery is the one that has the vBG installed in it with 44,242 images in it. I would like more than anything to be able to switch it over to PP8 but the problem is the url structure. It is not just the urls that are in the messages on my web site, it is the urls that are on other web sites that would need to be changed too.

[Chuck S]

Yeah understand like I said not much we do about that as any links outside our application we have no control over. The little query I posted helps with links that are in posts on your site which of course are under your control.

This discussion about the links just brought me back to years ago when we switched the file structure in Pro 5 to make better use of file space and allow triple the amount of files in any one category. This is why Pro has seperate directories for medium and thumbnails images. While we technically have no limitations in the software on the number of images one can have in any single categories you are limited by the filesystem of the server. The old way we use to store things meant 3 times the amount of files for one photo in one single directory. vbGallery still uses this old way of storing files. That means that theoretically if one can relistically say a single directory can house 10-15 thousand images that means any one user in vbGallery could not upload more than 5 thousand images. Notice I said relistically as the number of files is higher I think like 65k. You start bogging down the servers filesystem with huge amounts of files in any one directory and that can slow down the gallery. If this is something we look at in the future with improvements to vbGallery you can be assured then file structure would change in that product as well just like it did in Pro.

I am not saying we would change the file storage structure only that this discussion here about urls in posts outside our application does bring up the point that if we do try and bring vbGallery up to the standards you want then some things might change that you might not want. There are always trade offs.

[attroll]

Let me pass something by you Chuck.

Would it be possible to install PP8 into my web site and leave vBG also on the web site? I am pretty sure this can be done. But can I also import the vBG gallery into the PP8 gallery and leave the vBG gallery still available?

Here is my train of thought for doing this.
If I can leave the current vBG gallery on my web site and just turn off the uploads then the urls will still work from posts in messages internally and externally.

In doing this I can also import the vBG gallery into the newly installed PP8. This will transfer all 44,282 images into PP8.

I would have to keep the vBG gallery online so that all the old urls would still work but this would solve the problem and also allow me to start using PP8.

I hope this makes since?

[Chuck S]

A PhotoPost license grants you the right to run one instance (a single installation) of PhotoPost on one web server and one web site for each license purchased.

You can not have both operational on one license.

You can leave the vbGallery available as I stated but you would need to lock the Pro up via htaccess or something so it is not web accessible. Your licensing permits you to have a non web accessible test copy up for testing purposes. What I was suggesting with a test install above is that you could install Pro locked down to the public via htaccess do an import verify everything is as you wish then you can switch but once you make Pro active to the public you would need to switch off vbGallery.

The only way to do what you wish if you want both active would be to use one of your other Pro licenses you currently have if your not using it somewhere else. Otherwise you would need to purchase a new license to leave both intact.

Hope that clarifies the issue. It is pretty much the same as vbulletin you can only have one active install running on one license. Allowing users to install multiple instances while only purchasing one license would put software companies out of business.

[attroll]

I am aware of the way the licenses work but thank you for mentioning it in case others are thinking of doing the same thing.

I am thinking about leaving my vBG up and installing PP8 and then importing it into PP8. I want to keep them both up and running so that all the old urls that were posted in messages internally and externally will still work. I have a large active web site and gallery and need the external image urls to keep working.

With that also said. I was hoping that Micheal would be willing to work with me in some manner. I can assure you that if I did this that I would turn off my vBG for uploading purposes and it would only be there for the purposes of the urls. I only want to use vBG to keep the old urls working. There are just to many external posts on other web sites that are linked back to my vBG gallery images. I do not want those urls links broken. What do you think Michael? I want to switch my site to PP but can not see paying for vBG every year just to protect the old urls that would end up being broken if I switched.

Thank you Chuck for answering my question.

[Chuck S]

Michael does not make the licensing policies for the company he is merely a developer like I am. We follow the rules given to us by the owner and the licensing policy here is very clear. Neither one of us would be able to give you a different answer.

I can assure you I totally understand what your trying to do here but my answer is based off the licensing policies. You would not be able to install both applications being web accessible and have them both running at the same time. You would have to remove vbGallery from the server. It would not matter if you disabled uploading on the vbGallery it would still be running and web accessible which would be a violation of the licensing.

[attroll]

Very understand able, thank you for clarifying.

One few more questions.
If I were to install PP8 onto my server and do the import.
1. Would it create a whole new database for the new gallery?
2. Would it leave the old vBG database untouched?
3. Can you think of any side effects that it would cause by having both galleries on the same VB install?

Thank you for your patients

[Chuck S]

Not a problem I am glad to help thats why I am here. I do all the support and installs so I am very familiar with all this as I do it day in day out.

1. That is up to you. Pro unlike vbGallery allows you to specify a different database you have setup for the gallery or you can use the same database as vbGallery. You specify the database information on the initial install config settings should clarify which database information is needed. One is for the pro database and the other is the user database settings ( FORUM DATABASE ). If you are installing into the same database as the forum info then the forum database information gets entered in both spots otherwise put different database info under the photopost part to use a different database from the forum.

2. Yes it does not affect vbGallery at all which is why I stated you can do a test copy of Pro behind the scenes since it will use its tables.

3. None that I know of. Only thing is I would not think you want to activate any Pro plugins for vb4 if your going to be testing the new beta.

[attroll]

I may still have a few more questions but right now I would like your opinion on something.
I have a very large VB database now. Would you recommend installing PP into my current database or in a separate database?

[Chuck S]

Personally if your database is larger I would install PhotoPost Pro into a separate database. This is how I use the databases in separate ones to keep things as slim and fast as possible.

[Ramses]

Originally Posted by Michael P

No disrespect taken.

vBG has been difficult to maintain with the huge changes that vB has gone through the past couple years. It's taken all of our effort just to keep vBG up-to-date, let alone time to add in new features. We did get vBG up to the latest versions, but through all of that had neglected the interface of PhotoPost PRO. We're in the final stages of releasing an update to address that and once that is done we can look back again at vBG.

We're a small company, our resources for updating all of our products is limited and we do the best we can to keep up. I don't have any specifics for you, but once we get PRO out the door with the 8.0 update, we can look closer at vBG.

That's why I was very disappointed when Luciano left.
He did a great job with the vbg development and it was very clear without him the development will stop. Same was long time ago with Zacheriah.
It works best if there's an additional dev/supporter for vbg.
Otherwise the same game continues, pp pro 8 after follows Reviewspost 6 after pp classifieds 4.3 and pp pro 9 etc...
How long do we wait for a full editor? 6 months and no progress on this issue.
It's disappointing.

[Chuck S]

Actually the gallery development is in its own cycle path since Michael is the main developer for PhotoPost Pro and vbGallery.

I have been helping with PhotoPost Pro 8 quite a alot but I am the main developer on the other two products so I would turn my attention to Classifieds 5.0 and Reviewpost 6.0 when we wrap up Pro. This is totally separate from what Michael will work on since I maintain those products alone.

Michael will as he posted once we release Pro 8 turn attention to vbGallery.

[Ramses]

Thank you Chuck.

[Chuck S]

Most do not fully get how small of a company we are. You do with the resources you have.