Easy Gallery Module: (BETA)
Development and Programming
Official Page: http://laxa.ca/ee_easy_gallery.html
This gallery module is designed to allow individual galleries to be tied to individual blog entries. So, for example, if you were to have an entry reviewing a video game then you could set up a small gallery right on the entry to show off screen shots.
Great for: - Review items like Products, Games, Restaurants, etc… - Games: screen shots. - Product: photos of different angles and different variations. - Real Estate: showing different photos of the place and rooms. - Events: events photos, random pictures of previous shows. - Articles, Weblog: photo gallery related to a particular weblog entry.
I’m just creating a module that functions similarly to my previous CMS’s gallery functionality. This is not an extension nor a modification of the standard EE Photo Gallery Module.
This will be a ‘donate ware’ Extension/Module, something that’s will help me out and motivate me to develop this software. You can send you donations by clicking the “Make Donation” link below at http://laxa.ca/ee_home.html .
Easy Gallery has these features:
* Use existing EE Weblog fields (categories, url_title, date stamp, date expire, etc.)
* Integrates with the Weblog, one weblog entry = one gallery
* Upload multiple images using Flash
* Automatically create thumbnails and resized images (Small, Medium, Large)
* Add image captions, date modified, date stamp information
* Extract the URL to be used on the weblog entry.
* Add, edit, delete images.
* Batch process thumbnails and data.
* Use Expression Engine Gallery Tags
<exp:easy_gallery:image></exp:easy_gallery:image>
Future features:
* HTML JPEG Uploading
* Enable only on certain Weblog
* Different image directory structure (entry_id, site_id, weblog_id)
* Image Ordering and Sorting
* Java/Flash/Javascript based PHP image cropping
* Watermarking Images
* Integration into the Easy Shop Module
* Slide Show (Flash or Javascript)
* More detailed options (hooks to flash slideshows, xml feeds, etc...)
* Image Comments
Required
* (Included) jQuery for AJAX style functionality (http://jquery.com/)
* (Included) SWFUpload (for flash upload) might change. (http://swfupload.praxion.co.za/)
* PHP4 (not working yet on PHP5)
* Tested on EE v1.6
Bugs
- Currently will clash with other Extensions that use Publish / Edit “TABS”.
- Keywords are currently not being used
- No way to show the “Caption” when Editing Images
- Some mysterious “Warning” messages on the “Publish / Edit” section
Troubleshooting
1) If you receive a Error Code: HTTP Error, Message: “404” dialog box when uploading pictures through “Flash Upload” then follow the directions below. This is related to the mod_security bug:
If you are using Apache with mod_security this will not work, you need to put the following in your .htaccess file to disable mod_security:
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off2) Publish / Edit: Clashing TABS, Blocks, Headers This might be an issue of other extensions conflicting. One important code that I just implemented on to Easy_gallery allows it to play nice to with other extensions. Other Extensions might not use the extension and therefore conflict not just with Easy_gallery but other extensions that it co-exists with. To remedy this you might want to check out the other extensions and make sure they use the $EXT->last_call variable.
if($EXT->last_call){
return $r . $EXT->last_call;
} else {
return $r;
}Bugs * Javascript errors on Internet Explorer * LIMIT=”3” when using the EE Tags
Feedback
- What do you think of the script?
- How do you feel about having jQuery running on the Control Panel?
- Is the Flash Uploader and external “upload.php” too cumbersome to use?
- Any Ideas to make it better?
It’s its own gallery with its own table.
It does not extend the standard EE gallery.
btw, what is “Easy Shop Module” ??
Easy Shop is an eCommerce Extension and Module combination. It allows an weblog entry to have eCommerce fields like price, dimensions, options, variations, sku, etc.
Like the Easy Gallery Module you’ll have the ability to update the products data via the Publish / Edit tabs instead of going inside the “Modules” tab.
Also have the ability to update product information via CSV document to do batch updates instead of spending hours updating several products.
It will use the Easy Gallery to showcase multiple pictures of the product.
That’s just a small list of features I have in mind for it. I’ll focus on the development of Easy Gallery first before solidifying the plan of Easy Shop.
ok i understand what you want to do, seems really promising (like if you want to have a entry that displays several pictures) like when you are doing a review of a product you can have several pictures added (pretty neat) Ok several questions: 1. Will this be paid/free? (i don’t mind paying, if it’s really good) i have some upcoming projects where i can use this. 2. Why use flash for the uploading? (on my development pc i have flash disabled) 3. Will it use upload preferences of expressionengine ? Cause look: lets say i have 2893 entries and all have a 5-7 pictures..that would be a massive clutter of images if they are not categorized/managed, one of the methods you can do the following: let the module make a directory for each entry (using url_title as name), then you have a more manageable directory structure. 4. Can this module have categories? let’s say: i have 34 weblogs and each of them has a lot of entries which pictures attached would be a little handy if you could have for each weblog a different *parent* directory 5. possible to browse the current directory and choose from them (and maybe possible to embed them in the entry itself? sometimes you need picture to use in a article) I hope you understood what i meant, if you need more explanation, would be happy to write a extended version with more samples This module has a lot of potential (it is good for review sites and sites with a extended product database with pictures) P.S. i wanna beta test (love to break things)
This will be a donate ware project. I’m not really familiar with licensing agreements and stuff but the goal is to get something out, learn more about extension and module development and have people help me out while making some small donateware money to help me out 😊
I’m experimenting on multiple upload functionalities. I like to find a way where I can drag and drop or choose multiple files to upload simultaneously. I don’t like to use flash either but that’s the only one i can find so far other than using manual Input tags.
Upload goals: - Multiple Uploads - Progress bar - Unlimited Size Upload (If you have any other suggestions or applications, java, flash, activex, just let me know.) At the moment its very clunky and not really easy to integrate.
- One Entry is One Gallery and you can customize that weblog entry to have whatever fields you need. Each image has a few fields like (caption, orderby, date stamp, date modified, etc.) the url_title will bring them to whatever template you create for it (listing of the photos, entry page for the gallery, whatever you want) I’ll have a sample page of this by next week. I’ll integrate some EE Tags so you can have extra functionality.
The images uploaded at the moment are placed into the ‘images/easy_gallery/ENTRY_ID/’ directory. I’m not sure if this is the best way, there maybe a better way of doing this. I figured this is the best and easy way to avoid having millions of images in one directory.
You can use your existing EE ‘Categories’ Tab to categorize you gallery.
I want to eliminate the current ‘Upload’ function of EE and replace it with Easy Gallery. Each picture will provide a image URL taht you can use in your article.
I hope this is coherent :D I hope to create the most useful and thought out software and getting feedback like this will totally help me out developing a module that is stable and that works out for several people.
Thanks for your interest and I’ll have a beta happening next week. It will be very clunky but at least it will get the ball rolling.
Quietly following this thread, Wil. Looking forward to a beta!
- Added “Select Cover”
- Add / Edit Image Caption
- Delete Image
- Custom Image Dimensions for Small, Medium, and Large Sizes.
- Copy Small, Medium, Large Image URL
- Create Small, Medium, Large image version of Original
Delete All Small, Medium, or Large Images
Working on EE Tags for easy EE template integration.
Attached two new screenshots of the “Edit Images” and “Image Operations” pages.
I’ll just try to get this thing up and running right away and then make the necessary clean up to the code and then add extra features that would be nice to have.
I’m sure once we get this thing up we can have people give feed back on watermarking etc. Add the ability to upload a watermark and have it on the “Small” version of the images.
Multi-Sites - not yet, what about multi sites? you mean making them work with 1.6 multi-site functionality?
Thanks for the clarification regarding Multi-Site.
The current “images/easy_gallery/ENTRY_ID” will not conflict at the moment but I do agree that organizationally wise that it might be better to insert the “SITE_ID” as well in there and make the directories a little bit more descriptive as well.
I’ll definitely implement that before the final version. :D
Browse other galleries, I agree there should be but haven’t found the best way to load other galleries yet. I’m thinking maybe having a drop down all the galleries and then have it reload the Image list. I’ll dive into that a little bit more.
Let me know what features are a big priority so I can start thinking of ways to implement them in the meantime.
Thanks for all your input. Surely it will make this script a quality script. :D
well i think the top priority is organization of the files i gave it more taught: i think the {easy_gallery_image_full_url} way is a pretty good way of doing it: since you can change the directory/url for each weblog you can have your own thing /images/easy_gallery/site_1/motherboard_reviews/ENTRYID /images/easy_gallery/site_1/cpu_reviews/ENTRYID /images/easy_gallery/site_1/hardrive_reviews/ENTRYID so in the module>easy_gallery>settings>site_id>weblog>directory you can have: Directory: /home/username/public_html/images/easy_gallery/site_1/motherboard_reviews/ Full url: http://www.mydomain.com/images/easy_gallery/site_1/motherboard_reviews/ and when you use {easy_gallery_image_full_url} in the tag for that specific entry_id it will parse: what assigned in the settings:The reason i think setting up settings for each weblog is a great feature. is that you can change the directory to what you wish. and have easy_gallery use it Example: Directory: /home/user/public_html/product-pictures/site_id/motherboards/ url: http://images-products.mydomain.com/site_id/motherboards/ you can use subdomains etc
Directory structure is definitely more elegant and I’m sure people wouldn’t delete Weblogs but they might probably rename them. I think that would be a rare thing for them to rename a weblog anyways. Maybe we can have it as an option.
Certainly “images/easy_gallery/SITE_ID/ENTRY_ID/” is the most functional but not as elegant.
“images/easy_gallery/ENTRY_ID/” is the very basic with no chance of conflicts at all. Database wise it seems like there are no duplicate entry_id created on any of the site_ids.
It seems like there’s 3 great ways to store images. We should have a setting on the module so we can pic which structure to follow.
I know you just started etc and maybe this is a little difficult at first hand, i am willing to help you with features, explaining them in full detail and give examples (i suck at programming) so that i cannot help you with. But i serious think this is wonderful/perfect module and i want to help as much as i can. P.S. I have some other ideas for other modules that can serious bring EE to the next level. But that is whole other story and much more complicated module (but with awesome power). But keep up the good work LOVE YA
We’ll talk more about these after I get the beta up 😉
I too love EE and hope I can build all the functionality that I grew accustomed to with my previous CMS that I have developed. I love developing applications like these better than designing website. I just want to stick to coding and leave the designing to the designers. 😉
Added EE Tag to retrieve Image Gallery Cover {exp:easy_gallery:cover entry_id="{entry_id}”}
Added EE Tag to retrieve Image Gallery Images {exp:easy_gallery:images entry_id="{entry_id}” orderby=”orderby|filename|date_stamp”}
I’m still thinking about the EE Tag and its parameters that I can feed it to retrieve the proper results. So far the tags above are working without any problems at all. Took me a few hours to get comfortable with “mod.easy_gallery.php” but its well worth it.
Screen shot attached show the EE Tag code and the render on the front page of the variables.
I’m trying to figure out some settings and so far these are the settings that I have thought of…
Settings - Directory structure options (Entry ID, Site ID, Weblog Name) - Base Path and Base URL - Default Dimensions for Small, Medium and Large Images - Scaling (Crop or Proportional) for Small, Medium and Large Images - Quality of Small, Medium and Large Images - etc…
aha 1 quick thing, can it use absolute path ? instead of relative pathinstead of images/easy_gallery/1/pictures.jpg
I guess that could be a setting as well. I’m just worried for Websites that use HTTPS:// in certain pages and jumping back and for between secured and non-secured pages. I would hate to see that ‘Invalid SSL’ prompt but if there’s a need for it then I’ll have that as an option.
Just to clarify that I’m reading this correctly, this gallery module is designed to allow individual galleries to be tied to individual blog entries? So, for example, if I were to have an entry reviewing a video game I could set up a small gallery right in the entry to show off screen shots, is that correct?
If so then this is very cool and I look forward to playing around with it once you’re ready to unleash it.
Just to clarify that I’m reading this correctly, this gallery module is designed to allow individual galleries to be tied to individual blog entries? So, for example, if I were to have an entry reviewing a video game I could set up a small gallery right in the entry to show off screen shots, is that correct? If so then this is very cool and I look forward to playing around with it once you’re ready to unleash it.
Yep, that’s exactly the functionality of this script. 😊
@wiL
Can you provide a URL for demo?