Member's Photo Gallery

I have written what I consider to be my first "big" hack...well, maybe it's only medium. It's certainly my most ambitious project to date.

Basically, what it is is a gallery of photos of your members. Obviously, the hack does not include these photos! You need to get your members to submit to you a photo of themselves. You then need to use an image editing app to create a smaller thumbnail image. Create a new directory and upload the photos to it (you don't absolutely need a unique directory for the photos, but it's good for organization). You can make this directory anywhere; I have mine as a first-level directory inside my www root folder, but you can stick it inside your forums root directory or anywhere else. For each member you include in the Photo Gallery, you specify the URL to both images anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

This hack involves adding a new table to your database. Please make a backup of your database first! You are solely responsible for protecting your message board.

At this time, adding a member to the Photo Gallery involves direct database manipulation, such as through phpMyAdmin or direct query. This is easy, and full instructions are provided. I hope to be able to come up with some way to do this through the Admin CP, but that will require some more learning on my part (or assistance from one of you! ).

I have tested this on my board, and do not have any problems. However, since this is my biggest project so far, and the first one I've written that includes sql syntax that I devised, it's possible that I have not written this hack in the most optimal or efficient way possible. I don't consider this to be beta, though, as it is fully operational; however, if someone has any pointers on writing better code, please let me know.

Demo: My own Photo Gallery
Note: The server my site is hosted on has been having a lot of problems lately, so if it doesn't load or you get MySql errors, please try again a little later. Sorry!

Plans for the Future
1. Add a simple way to add a member to the Photo Gallery through the Admin CP.
2. Making the thumbnail gallery multi-page capable so a user can specify the number of thumbnails seen per page. --DONE!
3. Adding a search function.
4. Integrating into a member's profile, to either show the thumbnail there as well, or else link to it.
5. Got other ideas? Let me hear them.

Everything you need should be in the attached .ZIP file. Have fun!

[Nemesis77]

Is there anyway to se this up so users can be added through the admin cp install of having to run a quary in phpmyadmin for each user?

[JJR512]

There isn't YET, but I am hoping to add that to it, or that someone else can write that part. I have no experience writing for the admin cp at all, so I'll have to figure it out as I do it.

[Nemesis77]

OK Thanks for the reply. Great Hack BTW

[smnoel]

This hack is great. I would like it where members can upload their own pics and have a small caption.

Hoping someone will implement these things.

Sara

[JJR512]

The caption idea is basically already there. Notice that in the new table, there is a field called "comments". Anything put in that field will show up as the last thing in the list of user's details (name, registration date, post count, etc.). If you want it to be more like a true caption, and have it under the photo, just edit the main_pgbit template.

[Lionel]

Wouldn't it be possible that if some is using the upload photo hack to simply add the insert statement to include it in the gallery?

This way, while the member is uploading his picture he is also populating the gallery.

And for the thumbnail we could add the same image but with the width="100". Or while doing the upload we use imagemagick...

Just a thought.

[JJR512]

You wouldn't want to use the full-size image for the thumbnail image, too...that would kind of defeat the purpose of having a thumbnail index in the first place, which is to present many small, quick-loading images on one page. Using HTML width and height tags to make an image display smaller doesn't actually make the file size smaller, of course, so you would have a bunch of big image files being loaded on one page, which would be a pain in the butt for dialup users.

I haven't looked at the photo upload hack, so I don't really know how it works, but if you can upload one file, I'm sure you can upload two.

This is part of the original reason why I never thought to include a way for users to add their own photos. Many of the users on my board do not have the knowledge or capability to make their own thumbnail images, so either I or one of my assistants has always done this for them. Many of my members are just casual computer users; they come to my board for the general chit-chat in a friendly atmosphere...it's kind of like going to a bar to talk to your friends, not because you're a hardcore drinker.

[JJR512]

Just for the record, though, if I get a chance to work on this, I will...but I'm not actively working on it right now. I have another hack (the any-forum news hack) that I'm working on, in between playing games and doing holiday-related stuff. It's hard for me to get motivated to work on this feature when I know I'm never going to use myself, know what I mean?

[Lionel]

I am going to try to play with imagemagick a little bit to generate the thumbnails.

Merry Xmas to you and thanks for hack.

BTW there are plenty any forums news hacks. I am using 3 of them on my site frontpage.

[JJR512]

Really? There are other hacks that let you post news items in any or all forums? I've never seen any, and when I posted mine, nobody else said it had already been done or that they already did it. I'm having trouble getting your page at http://www.haitiwebs.com/ to load, so I can't see them... can you give me links?