Something missing? Post a comment and I will adjust list to include it.

• disqus comments (G3 code)
• Facebook comments (G3 code)
• Facebook like (G3 code)
• Album Tree (G3 code)

Other modules:

• Bitly (G3 Code)
• Fotomoto (G3 code, code 2)
• Panorama Viewer (G3 code)
• Basket Plus (G3 code)

The post Gallery 3 to Piwigo – plugins and features wish list appeared first on Dragonsoft Technology View.

You can download it from official repository here or using “add a new theme” option in PWG instance

Support is provided here. Please post your questions, suggestions or report issues and they would be looked at.

Enjoy

The post GreyDragon Theme is now officially released appeared first on Dragonsoft Technology View.

After testing and some development, I have officially switched to Piwigo photo gallery engine for my photo site

During migration main goal was to replicate GreyDragon Theme I have developed and was using with G3. As result there is now GreyDragon theme for Piwigo (still in beta, but is almost ready for initial release) and gdThumb plugin to allow Masonry style for thumbs.

There would be a need for other plugins as site evolves, but two pieces above allows me to move away from G3 and make it official.

G3 was fun to use and develop for but sunset of the project forced look for alternatives. Even if G3 will survive and someone to pickup the project, for me it was the time to switch.

Big thanks to Bharat and the team. I wish them all the best in their current and future endeavors.

The post Piwigo switch is now complete. Long live the King, i.e. Gallery 3 appeared first on Dragonsoft Technology View.

This is the first Alpha (download link).

To replicate look and feel of my test site you would need the following plugins from Piwigo site:

• Additional Pages – needed for root page support
• Extended Descriptions – allows embedding slideshows and building custom pages
• GThumb+ – nice thumbs layout

Plugins can be installed from within Piwigo admin area.

Theme would need to be manually unpacked and copied to themes folder.

It is barebones version with only one colorpack – slateblue

I do not plan to support embedded framepacks at this time but instead take approach of GThumb+ plugin – once installed, it customizes how thumbs are styled and constructed.

PS: for some reason GThumb+ does not support Thumbs in album view, so there is some opportunity there to expand, but I really like the feel of it.

I do plan to release several Thumb plugins to accommodate various designs, but it would be at later time.

Also there is a plan to either be able submit root page template into Additional Pages plugin or allow user manage it independently.

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The post Gallery 3 Project migration – progress 07/11 appeared first on Dragonsoft Technology View.

As you know by now Gallery 3 Photo engine is hibernating. I decided to explore alternatives. Please note that unless I comfortable, I will be keeping my main gallery live while building up pieces using my new engine of choice.

As a long time G2/G3 user and seasoned plugin and theme developer for Gallery for past many years, while have a sad feeling, I have wisdom of knowing how things work and what to expect.

In this series, I will be posting my short notes on my experience migrating my photo site to new engine.

Considerations

• Ideally 1:1 replacement – which means…
• Keep it private, private … Ability to host locally, i.e. gallery engine is not linked to any particular host or OS. LAMP or WAMP stack.
• Ability to create custom themes (everyone wants to be unique or at least have variety of choices how gallery looks like)
• Ability to create plugins. I would expect gallery engine to have number of plugins already available, but I do want to have ability to customize/extend it further nevertheless
• Ability to move my content with as little effort as possible (local import, self organizing of the files)
• Light resource requirement. Ability to import large photos.
• and ability to use shared hosing which
• Not as important for me, but should allow multilingual support
• Image and Video upload support
• User, User groups and permission setup

“Shared” Solutions

there are plenty of “shared” photo storages on the market and “public” storage is ok for you take a look at the following:

• http://www.shutterfly.com/
• https://www.flickr.com/
• http://www.snapfish.com/
• http://www.smugmug.com/
• off course, you can always use FB for the whole world to see and for FB to monetize
• Or Google flavored – Picasa

“Local” Choices

There are many around, but I would consider

• WordPress
• ZenPhoto
• Piwigo
• Coppermine

Making personal choice

In the end it all comes to personal choice, so take it with the grain of salt and evaluate if solution works for you…

WordPress

For few years now WP has Photo Gallery support. It is blog integrated and is very simple to use and customize. However if you have large number of photos to post this option may not work for you.
Being familiar with WP and using it as a blog engine but as  I am not planning to merge my blog and my photo gallery, I am going to skip on reviewing it here.

ZenPhoto

I was keeping eye on the project for some time and I do like it. Project is well established and have plenty of plugins and themes.

Install was  easy and I was able to import most of my photos… until large files were to be processed… and it failed… Turns out ImageMagic with my shared hosting just did not have enough juice to be able process images even on basic level to extract metadata.

Please note that it could be a that there are some tweaks required (I did some changes in G3 for it to work in the same scenario, but this is exactly what I am trying to avoid in my review process).

Bummer… so I would still recommend to take a look at ZenPhoto and consider it as a possible solution for you… but for me, I am moving on…

Coppermine

Well established, but too “old-looking”. This project is still going strong and active, but to my taste it is “legacy” solution. While it still have a lot of nice features, way it is organized is just not for me.

Piwigo

If you do not mind French here and there, take a close look at this little beauty.

Let’s look at my checklist above:

• It is not 1:1 replacement, but close enough
• I can host locally on the LAMP stack without changing hosting
• I can inherit or create custom themes. In fact, it is somewhat easier with Piwigo
• I can create plugins and there is plenty of existing one.
• Local import and self organizing of the files is supported
• Light resource requirement. Ability to import large photos.
• I can keep my shared hosting
• Multilingual support
• Image and Video upload support (additional plugins may be required)
• User, User groups and permission setup

Now the experience:

• Deployment was a breeze – you can do full code deployment or use “pull” method and all components would be downloaded for you, you just need to deploy one file and setup your database. Rest will be done during setup.
• I have uploaded my var folder from G3 and run Sync. All photos (2000+) was imported into gallery tree and appear in the gallery. No hiccups, no resource issues.
• There is G2 import plugin you can install and try. It may even take G3 photos, but I did not try it. If G3 is the issue, someone may try to adjust G2 version to take G3 content especially if you have a good amount of metadata you need to bring across. I opted out to import images only.
• Aside from few default themes installed by default, you can pull number of other themes from repository along with various plugins. There might be some things missing which I am used to with G3, but I do not consider it an issue as I can migrate missing parts myself.
• If you are looking for GreyDragon Theme – I started process of migrating it over Piwigo and will make it available in next month or so. If you’d like to help testing it, please let me know. Just do not expect full port immediately.
• If you are looking for any of my plugins which do not have equivalent at Piwigo already, please let me know and I will consider the port.

Extras:

• There is a code repository if you like to have access to raw stuff
• Along with bug tracking system
• Looking for ideas for your new gallery look, visit showcase section.

Americans beware, or not 

Piwigo is started by Pierrick Le Gall, French and you would find some number of posts or plugin’s descriptions in French.

Do not be discouraged by this people in Europe can speak 2-3 languages fluently and usually English is one of them. So have question or two, visit forum and ask.

PS/Edit: Read above with smile. How Pierrick highlighted in his comment below, Piwigo is international project and anyone will feel right at home regardless what language they speak.

Conclusion

I have moved my gallery to Piwigo.

You can follow visit this blog for more details as I will be posting updates and in some near future will be making GreyDragon available for testing and then official download.

Follow-ups

Subscribe for Twitter feed at @greydragon_th to be informed about Theme development.

• GreyDragon v.1.3.9 has been released
• GDThumb 1.0.25 has been released
• GreyDragon v.1.3.8 has been released
• Death of CentOS? NOT… Think “rebirth” instead
• GreyDragon v.1.3.5 has been released
• GreyDragon v.1.2.28 has been released
• GreyDragon v.1.2.26 has been released

The post Gallery 3 Project migration appeared first on Dragonsoft Technology View.

The Gallery team has decided to take a step back from actively maintaining this project. Truth be told, most of the core team got busy with their lives over the past few years and we haven’t had the time to really actively maintain the project in a long time. The forums have continued to be lively and helpful and there is still plenty of good conversation there – but no new code has been written in the past 6 months and that’s not likely to change.

Unless someone else steps in and picks it up hibernation may become a sudden death.

To be realistic project was on the slow go for some time already. When we compare it to other competitors there was not enough progress on the core level so it fell behind over time.

There is great development effort behind it, we have vibrant user base, a lot of plugins, themes and ideas.

Project has value, project has user base, it would be shame to loose it but it is reality of life, there is a time of move on.

I started to look at alternatives… to be continued…

The post Very unfortunate news – Gallery 3 is about to loose core dev team a.k.a going into hibernation ;( appeared first on Dragonsoft Technology View.

On the table right now:

• Theme’s mini mode – it is useful when embeded inside other web-site. Goal is to reduce header, footer and make some rearrangments to the layout.
  Comments, suggestions are welcomed.
• iPad frame pack – similar to book framepack, it would feature different thumbs for albums/photos.

Items are still in the list for consideration from last poll (please remind me, if I am missing anything):

• Sidebar visibility management based on page type – link

Note: This is not the place to post errors – please use gallery forum thread

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