UBB.Developers Forums UBB.classic V6 MultiHack Mods [6.x] album.pl 6.0: Uploadable Photo Gallery for UBB

Cool, Thanks

Getting on with my version for my Files. This is for my Rollercoaster Site so people can upload Tracks for a Game.

http://rcpro.coaster-mania.com/cgi-bin/Exchange/album.pl

I would just like to ask if you have time to answer this, How would i make it so above each File there is a specified pic (track.gif). Thanks if you have time to answer this.

Album on the intro


Open public_forum_summary.pl in your templates dir.

Search for
sub PageBottom {

Under it place
$photopage = "http://www.yourdomain.com/your(cgi)dir/album.pl";

Search for
my $Bottom = qq~

Under it place

Whoa. Not sure what Variables is talking about there, but one way to do that would to add a custom thumbnail for each file.

So, for bigbob.td4, if you add thmb_bigbob.gif to the same directory, it should use that as a thumbnail.

If you have any problems, just let me know. Using binary files might make things work a little differently...

Cheers

Yeh ive tried that, but the thing is people are going to be uploading loads of files a day. Is there a way you can just make it display track.jpg for each file. I remember in the old version you could make it display a icon if there wasnt a thmb_ file but this doesnt apear to work in this version.

Thanks

If all you're looking for is a generic icon, then that is doable. One of the things I've added into 4.0 Beta 2 is a generic movie icon, which is what you need.

If you want it, let me know and I'll sent it to you.

Cheers

I Changed the tml files it works good only the Upload page is blank now, How can I change that.

There isn't currently a template for the upload page... I just took a look at your site, and the upload page seemed to work OK for me...

Can you fill me in a bit more?

Would be great if you could send me it, Thanks

[ July 17, 2001 01:36 PM: Message edited by: Hyabusa ]

Oh sorry Mike I ment That the background from the Upload page is white

Ah, that one's easy. You have your style sheet set to /photos/Photo_Album.css, but that file doesn't exist. You can either edit your config file or move the .css file to match, and then it will take effect.

Cheers

AHA Ofcourse , thanks Mike!

Some good news and some bad news. First, the auto thumbnail thing doesn't look like it's going to work. Every single method I've investigated requires some additional packages installed, which I don't want to require. I may still try to add it in as an option for those who want to install the prerequisites.

The good news is that 4.0 Beta 2 is out. (http://perl.cdnarmy.ca/album) Ironically, I've had less bug reports with the 4.0 beta than I did with most other releases!

New in Beta 2:

• Removed ubb_auth config item, and replaced it with upload_authentication_type config item. The new item allows you to set anonymous (0), flatfile (1) or UBB (2) authentication types, and also allows future types to be added.
• Added ``Stop Entering Descriptions'' checkbox
• Added thmb_movie.gif image and movie_icon and file_movie_icon config items. Movies now have their own generic icon.
• When photos or albums do not have a description defined, the entire path is no longer used as a default. (Just the photo file name or album directory name.) Makes things a little cleaner.

I haven't added the control panel stuff yet, as I haven't had enough contiguous time to tackle a big job like that. I plan on putting it in 4.0 final though.

Cheers

[ July 19, 2001 02:06 PM: Message edited by: Mike Bobbitt ]

Many visitors of a forum with the Photo album will put image(s) in the defined directories. Is it possible to make a sort of rating system as in "am i hot or not" ?


[ July 19, 2001 03:08 PM: Message edited by: Variables ]

Thx for the hack !!

Nokia: No problem!

Variables: Not sure what you mean. Do you mean allow users to rate photos? Or other users? Both of those are currently on the to do list (which is still frighteningly long...) Am I hot or not?

Cool Mike, way to go!

Nice hack

Anyone know of a photo thumb nail generator for us linux geeks.

I dont mind if you point me to the best one

Best I've seen is HTMLThumbnail, written by Benjamin Franz. See http://www.nihongo.org/snowhare/utilities/htmlthumbnail/ for more info.

I'm actually trying to adapt it for use in this script, but it has dependancies that I'm not fond of.

Still, for personal use, I think it's great.

Hello Mike

Thanks for pointing to that generator, I will have a look at it and see if I can get it to work for me.

I have one problem though...I guess.
The album is working fine, upload works and display pictures works ok to.
But I cant get this one to work, it just points me to the main album page;
http://www.webserver.com/cgi-bin/album.pl?configfile=/home/user/www/album.cfg

I use the format http://www.webserver.com/~username/ubb/album.pl?configfile=/home/username/www/ubb/album.cfg

What am I doing wrong here?

Any chance you can PM/email me with the album link?

Thanks

Sorry, I am working offline with the UBB until its ready for upload.

Could you tell me what bugtracking options I have, and what to do about them?

Discovered something strange.

When I(usernameA)(userdirowner) have entered the album descriptions and later want to edit them, the script does not make the changes.
I then view the permitions of the description.txt file in the ../photo directory, and se that the ownership of the file has changed to another user(usernameB).

As I see it, it has got the same owner as the name of the "WORKGROUP" in my LAN.

So the user /home/usernameA/www/photo are not allowed to edit the file.

When I go into the ../photo/subdirs the same has happened there. usernameB are set as owner of the files.

I dont understand this, becourse usernameB has NOT been involved, neither in setting up the album, or testing it.

Any idea?

The descriptions.txt file will take on the permissions that your web server runs as, not the permissions of the user viewing the pages...

As for debugging, there's a debug flag in album.pl you can set to anything from 0-4.

Cheers

I was not talking about the user viewing the pages, I was talking about the user who is running the ubb and the photo album (the owner), and in my case this is not the user running the webserver.

Ok, I guess I'm still not clear, but let me take a stab at it.

If you're manually editing the descriptions.txt file, it'll have permissions such that you (as a user) can read/write it.

When you use the album.pl?function=enter_desc feature, it runs under the web server. The server runs as a specifiic user on your system, and the descriptions.txt file will be created as that user, and readable/writable for that user. On UNIX/Linux, web servers often run as "nobody" and on NT/2000 they usually run as "iusr_hostname." This is done so that the web server data is protected, but more importantly so that the web server cannot access sensitive information on the OS.

Now there are circumstances where you (as a user) will not be able to read things created by the web server user, and vice versa.

Not sure if this is along the lines of what you're thinking... Does it make sense?

Yes it make sense

But I dont find it so good and practical, that webserver are put as owner for the files of the user.
That is OK if the webserver owner (nobody or other username) are the same as the /home/username, and I assume this is more fit to a homeuser, with his little pc, his webserver and his own username as the only user on the pc.

But as long as I can figure out how to edit the files from the function=enter_desc it doesnt bothers me.

More important for me if how to be able to access the http://www.webserver.com/cgi-bin/album.pl?configfile=/home/user/www/album.cfg

As you see a couple of messages above this, I show the exact format I use to get to this file, but the only thing happens is that it displays the main photo album page, and not any configuration page. (I guess its supposed to show up a config page, where one can edit some settings)

The permissions aren't something I control in the script, it's just the way the web server works. It can be hassle at times, but the server can be configured to make life easier.

As for the ?configfile= issue, I think I understand now.

When you use that syntax, it allows you to specify an alternate configuration file, so you can run multiple albums off the same script. There is currently no mechaism for editing the configuration online. So if you are using configfile=your primary config file, it'll look just like your primary album...

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Thanks..now I understand

Sorry for all those stupid messages. I just thought there must be some error since I could not get to the config screen...LOL

No problem. Glad we got it figured out. (And sorry there is no config screen!)

hmm...I am having a hard one with the style sheets.

All *.css files are in ../ubb/*.css (chmod 777)
In album.cfg I have style_sheet=/home/username/www/ubb/Photo_Album.css
Then I have edited Photo_Album.css to fit my site style, but none of the changes in this file are shown when I load the album.

The only changes shown are the ones I have made hardcoded in album.tml and photo.tml, where I have edited the background colour and the textcolor in the section.

I wonder what I am now doing wrong, as it will not use the style sheet file?

Must the apache server be enabeled specialy to run *.css files?

I also have the problem that the ../ubb/album.pl?function=upload site background colour is "white", and not in the colour I have set in the album.tml and photo.tml, that are #333333

[ July 21, 2001 02:05 AM: Message edited by: kaukagaul ]

Could this be an interesting "plugin" to integrate in the Photo Gallery?
visual poll/image voting system

I have found this thumbnail generator for us linux geeks.
Could this be something to work into the Photo Gallery?
GFXindex

kaukagaul,

Thanks for all the info. I've got a lot to check out!

As for your style sheet question, what you really want there is a web path, not a filesystem path. So it should be:

style_sheet=/ubb/Photo_Album.css

Cheers

Hello Mike

Thanks.

Just FYI
You said it should be
style_sheet=/ubb/Photo_Album.css

but I discovered it should be;
style_sheet=../ubb/Photo_Album.css

Just mention it to save some other frustrating souls for the bugtracking.
(Guess we are 95% cut&past people, and 5% coders her, so that little thing above here is not a problem to understand for the 5%...but for the rest of us... )

Anyway, it works now, and thanks

As for all my "information" in previous posts here...well, I know I am not realistic in the way I toss out my wishes her...but just have a look at my sig and you will understand and be over with me.

BTW, I have discovered another thumbnailgenerator for us linux geeks, that seems to be a fast, reliable and good one.
Also one that, like the above mentioned, do the thombnailgenerating automaticly "on the fly"
I am testing this one now, havent got it to work yet, but the docs says its made to easily be integrated in other scripts.....so you may want to have a look at this one too.
Have a look at PHPix Photo Album 2.0

My idea is to pick out the thumbnailgeneration thingy from this script and make it work with yours....but I am not able to do that myself.

Ok I know you have a TODO list as long as 7 bad years..just mention it though

Glad to hear it's working. The one danger in having a relative path for your CSS is that if you use sub-albums, the relative path will no longer be accurate, and you may have problems...

Don't worry about making suggestions, if I didn't have a long to do list, I'd be bored...

Cheers

Suggestion:

When you are browsing an album, then choose a picture you want to view in full size,....below that picture there could be a thumbnail on the left side for the previous pickture, and a thumbnail on the right for the next picture.
Like THIS

A good idea?

if anybody wants it, if you choose that your members get its own folder, you can limit the number of pics they can upload, i added this to the script.

next thing is to have a delete option.

Mike, see your PM

kaukagaul,

Good idea. I'm adding it in now, though it's proving to be a bit more work than expected...

Raimund,

Delete's on the list, I plan on getting around to it some day...

Cheers

Edit: Just finished next/previous thumbnails. Will be released with Beta 3.

[ July 22, 2001 09:20 PM: Message edited by: Mike Bobbitt ]