Password protecting gallery categories for viewing - can it be done?
Development and Programming
I put this on an old old thread response, but figured I may do better with a new thread.
From the outset, let me say that I could just be trying to set this up all wrong, and there could be a better way of doing it that I’m just not seeing.
I am doing a website for a Photographer who wants to be able to easily upload, watermark, etc etc photographs for people for whom she has done shoots to view. I have literally only started playing with the Gallery module this morning, so I may be being more than a bit slow here, but is it possible to extend the password access restrictions to specific categories?
For example:
I have set up 2 galleries - one for her portfolio shots called, cunningly, ‘portfolio’, and the other for client shoots called ‘cl In client, I figured she could create a new category with its own folder for each shoot. So she may have gallery ‘cl with parent category ‘client’ and sub category ‘andy_white’, if she had done a shoot for me, say. She then can batch upload the photos from my shoot into my category and job done.
I can then get a user name and password from her so I can access the templates the client galleries are displayed by, and the URL to my category page, but, and here is the question, can I set up logins so each one only accesses a particular category - ie mine only accesses the one for my shoot, or can I lock down categories with password access?
It’s possible I am being unrealistic, or maybe there is a better way to set the whole thing up. It’s the ease of use of the gallery that makes me want to use that over a weblog - the client is stressing that whatever it is she has as a solution must be the easiest possible to use, and while locking down a category to specific users is not vital - the template lock down makes it good enough - it would be a nice touch.
Appreciate any ideas/help from anyone further down this track than me.
Cheers
I can then get a user name and password from her so I can access the templates the client galleries are displayed by, and the URL to my category page, but, and here is the question, can I set up logins so each one only accesses a particular category - ie mine only accesses the one for my shoot, or can I lock down categories with password access?
Password access is normally not done with EE. Unless you’re talking about creating an account in EE that would have access to a particular blog or group of pages. So each client would either have their own gallery (not a category, but a full gallery) or a blog that would be linked to a gallery.
So the workflow would be something like this:
Assuming the client is the Johnson Family of Kansas City.
Create the JohnsonFamily account, and the JohnsonFamily member group. You need to use a group because that’s how access restrictions are done best.
Create the JohnsonFamily gallery. During the gallery creation process, a template group gets created for the new gallery.
Change the access for each gallery template to only be available for the JohnsonFamily member group. Have a 404 page identified or a redirect page to send someone to who isn’t logged in or isn’t the JohnsonFamily logged in user.
Upload / edit whatever the gallery for the clients.
Having said all of that, I’d not use EE for this task, I’d get an account on SmugMug. It has the features you want. You could use EE to interact with SmugMug instead.
Thanks Sue - that makes sense. Before I satrt work on it, though, I’ll check out Smug Mug - not heard of that - thanks for the detailed response, appreciate the info.
SmugMug looks interesting. I’m going to look at two paths together, one of which is the EE gallery (I’m not disregarding your advice, Sue, but I’ve never used it so I see this as a bit of a learning opportunity, even if I ultimately go the SmugMug or similar path).
Quick question. Am I right to assume that it’s the tmpl.gallery.php that generates the templates, and if I want to make the gallery look and feel like the rest of the site, if I edit that file with my own template designs, then any new galleries will have my templates in them rather than the standard ones? I did a bit of playing and I’m 99% sure that’s what’s happening, just looking for some confirmation, or otherwise on the validity of that as an approach.
You could use EE to interact with SmugMug instead.
Sue … I’d love to have ONE gallery solution that includes online sales and print delivery … since EE gallery understandably doesn’t have photo sales/printing/delivery then I’m left with smugmug - which is a very beautiful solution for photographers IMO.
However have any tools, plugins, etc been developed to help integrate Smugmug and EE?
when you say “use EE to interact with Smugmug” are you talking about some kind of integrated, dynamic delivery of smugmug content in EE templates? Or do you just mean cutting and pasting manually each image link to smugmug images by hand (Uggggg!)
Thanks from Tasmania.
Thomas
Hi, Thomas. I have a FireFox addon called ImgTag that lets me right click on my SmugMug image and creates a valid img link to paste into EE. That’s not true interaction.
The only thing I’ve seen so far is Solspace’s Flickr plugin. No one to my knowledge has done anything like that with SmugMug.
The only thing I’ve seen so far is Solspace’s Flickr plugin. No one to my knowledge has done anything like that with SmugMug.
That’s what I was affraid of :long:
Speaking of Solspace … Mitchell is the bloke who’d I turn to to do this job. Might have to commission something?
I wonder if there are other EE / Smug users out there? Do you have any feeling for how many EE / Smug users there might be? I’d imagine the two communities could both gain from the integration?
I assume you see the value in what I’m proposing?
… thanks for your reply and the FF addon hint as well!
I wonder if there are other EE / Smug users out there? Do you have any feeling for how many EE / Smug users there might be? I’d imagine the two communities could both gain from the integration?
Leslie is a SmugMug user too. 😊 I don’t have any idea how many people would need this sort of functionality.
I haven’t used SmugMug, but I keep hoping someone will develop integration with Google’s Picasaweb….
Just a completely off-topic side-note. =)
I haven’t used SmugMug, but I keep hoping someone will develop integration with Google’s Picasaweb…. Just a completely off-topic side-note. =)
Heya LJ …
It’s not off-topic really, IMHO.
Fact is that from my POV, the EE gallery as it stands has certain use and functionality but not at a level that most photographers (even at casual / hobby level) need.
There are so many great tools out there for photographers - why not just leverage them and offically support integration with these photo-services and photo-wares?
Just my 2 bob.
Peace from Tasmania,
Thomas
It’s difficult, Thomas. Because if those services suddenly change their API - and yea, it happens - then EE’s integration doesn’t work and it adds this huge ??? to the feature. You know?
It’s really the perfect place to utilize EE’s extensibility and create a third-party plugin/module/extension/whatever is appropriate.
That said - I use Picasaweb (not exclusively, I do use the EE Gallery) because Picasa manages my images, and clicking “send to web” with 100 images highlighted is a form of instant gratification that gives me warm fuzzies. grins Their API is fairly new so I’m not surprised there isn’t some plugin yet.
Hello everyone, I know it has been some time and I was wondering if things have imporoved on EE side? Ideally I would love to be able to to set category (treated as album) to ‘private’ or ‘visible to member groupX’….again without having to make full blow new gallery and template to go along. Any solutions since the original post? Thanks for your time and follow up!