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!

[Lionel]

I was rebooting

[the_sisko]

Great job JJR512,

I will use this for my forum and going to create a addon to let you add all the infos from CP tomorrow. When I finished it, I'll share it with everyone here. So stay tuned....

[the_sisko]

This is what I got so far...its working for me now, and now I have to test it a little bit. When it works fine I will release it....now I'm off to cinema.

[Arathorn]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by xware
ok,JJR512,here is your want .

I edited the main_pg.txt and main_photogallery.php
you can use pagenav in display.
I think you can do better.
wait....

[Andy R]

Lionel,

How did your imagemagik efforts go? I already have imagemagik installed on my server. I need a place for users of our vB Forum to post their images. But thumbnailing will be too much work. I would also like the ability to set the full size imagemaximum and if a user posts a file larger than allowedit will automatically reduce the image.

Think it can be done?

How is this hack working for everyone, looks like there was some quite time recently!


Thanks,

Andy

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 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]

Arathorn, you have to do more than just upload the files. You have to tell the database what files to to which member. There are instructions on how to do this in the hack file.

organic-hosting, I can't tell you how to do that because my hack does not include a way for users to upload their own photos. I specifically made it so that only I can upload photos, in order to specifically prevent the kind of problem that you are talking about. I want full control over what does and does not get displayed in the Gallery. Now if someone else made a modification to this hack that lets uses upload their own photos, you'll have to ask that person, as it's beyond the scope of what I've done, so I couldn't help you with it.

[alanvo]

is there a way we allow members to post comments?

[JJR512]

There is a comments field but I never made a way for someone to put in their own comments. You would have to fill in that field when you do the query to add someone to the photo gallery for the first time, or you can update it later.

[Massiel]

Does this hack work with 2.2.2??

[Fallout2man]

I don't mean to be demanding, this hack is great, but for someone who doesn't know SQL that well, and accidentally enters in a picture address wrong or whatnot, could someone please make an Admin CP script that allows you to modify the gallery from there, making it much easier for those of us not fluent in SQL.