Simple Galleries Plugin for bBlog 0.7.6
there are many different possibilities how to show photo-galleries:
1. you make HTML-entries and reference every image. this has the advantage, that you are free to design and make comments. but it is a lot of work.
2. you take images in given directories and show them. some pictures have prefixes and suffixes, which qualify them as thumbnail-previews. this is a very simple and dynamic solution. you can edit the pictures and thumbnails in batch-jobs with your favourite program, like ThumbsPlus, ACDSee, IrfanView and more in these programs you can also put IPTC-informations into the images, which can be read out later.
3. you make a database solution where you store some pictures and a lot of informations. this solution is very professional, quick in runtime and infinite scalable. the problem is, this is a very complex solution, which is fit for big platforms that host photographers work.
i took the 2. solution, because for me it is a simple way to store tons of photos and administrate them with my favourite batch-job-program. this is why this plugin is called "Simple Gallery Plugin"!
usually i upload my images with FTP, then later write a blog-entry for the new gallery. that does it for me.
this plugin provides 3 basic functions:
1. {simplegalleriesoverview} Shows a list of available galleries in a given directory and sorts them by name, size or last modification.
2. {simplegalleriesshow} Outputs an associative array containing all the images and related thumbnails in a given directory and gallery.
3. {simplegalleriesrandom} picks out a random gallery and a random image in the gallery and returns the information as an associative array.
and templates:
1. simplegalleriesoverview.html is the template that shows the overview over all available galleries.
2. simplegalleriesshow.html is the template that show the list of images.
3. simplegalleriesrandom_example.html is just a snippet showing the usage of the random image.
in the next lines i will show some example cases and give some useful hints.
lets say we have some directory containing subdirectories which include images and thumbnail-previews
/our_gallery_collection
/gallery1
/image001.jpg
/image002.jpg
/image003.jpg
.
.
.
/tn_image001.jpg
/tn_image002.jpg
/tn_image003.jpg
.
.
.
/gallery2
/image001.jpg
/image002.jpg
/image003.jpg
.
.
.
/tn_image001.jpg
/tn_image002.jpg
/tn_image003.jpg
.
.
.
/gallery3
.
.
.
this is a very common structure. the thumbnails are qualified by the prefix "tn_" and have no suffix. some other example for naming images:
image001.jpg
image002.jpg
image003.jpg
.
.
.
tn_image001_prev.jpg
tn_image002_prev.jpg
tn_image003_prev.jpg
.
.
.
prefix is "tn_", suffix is "_prev". so you can use a batch-program to easily create thumbnail-previews.
please be sure not to do something like this:
tn_image001.jpg
tn_tn_image001.jpg
or
image001_prev.jpg
image001_prev_prev.jpg
this will cause unwanted behaviour.
now lets see how to use the functions for our directory-structures:
{simplegalleriesoverview dir="bblog/our_gallery_collection/"}
will give you 10 results, sorted by last modification, separated by <br /> for the given directory.
{simplegalleriesoverview dir="bblog/our_gallery_collection/" num="-1"
sep="</li><li>" sort="name"}
will give you infinite results, sorted by name, separarted by </li><li> for the given directory.
{simplegalleriesshow assign="gallery" dir="bblog/our_gallery_collecti
on/"}
will assign all images and thumbnail-previews in the given directory and the choosen gallery passed by $_GET['galleryname'] to $gallery, using the prefix "tn_", no suffix and formatting the modification by strftime "%x %X".
{simplegalleriesshow assign="gallery" dir="bblog/our_gallery_collecti
on/" prefix="thumb_" suffix="_prev" strftime="%d.%m.%Y %H:%M"}
will assign all images and thumbnail-previews in the given directory and the choosen gallery passed by $_GET['galleryname'] to $gallery, using the prefix "thumb_", the suffix "_prev" and formatting the modification to a german date and time.
{simplegalleriesrandom assign="random_pic" dir="bblog/our_gallery_col
lection/"}
will assign the random image and thumbnail-preview in the given directory and a random gallery to $random_pic, using the prefix "tn_", no suffix and formatting the modification by strftime "%x %X".
{simplegalleriesrandom assign="random_pic" dir="bblog/our_gallery_col
lection/" prefix="thumb_" suffix="_prev" strftime="%d.%m.%Y %H:%M"}
will assign the random image and thumbnail-preview in the given directory and a random gallery to $random_pic, using the prefix "thumb_", the suffix "_prev" and formatting the modification to a german date and time.
more information on how to use these funtions to output useful content can be found in the templates.
one more thing to say: the system can make use of CLEANURLS.
http://www.foo.com/galleries.php?galleryname=bar_2006
will be
http://www.foo.com/galleries/bar_2006/
so please add the following to your .htaccess
RewriteRule ^galleries/([^/]+) http://www.foo.com/galleries.php?galler
yname=$1
