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List:       gallery-devel
Subject:    Re: [Gallery-devel] Gallery 2 Issues
From:       Kaleb Rutherford <kaleb () cv-games ! com>
Date:       2005-11-01 23:14:37
Message-ID: 0657775E-67B7-4F04-AA9E-764FE7545F8D () cv-games ! com
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On Oct 31, 2005, at 11:14 PM, Donald Webster wrote:

> First of all, posting this in the G2 forums would be much, much
> better.  It has a far wider viewer-ship.
Thanks for the suggestion. After a PM to Bharat, he suggested I add  
my thoughts and comments to this list.

>
> On 10/31/05, Kaleb Rutherford <kaleb@cv-games.com> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I have been running gallery for many years now and have a 150+  
>> Page Gallery
>> 1 Album with 5700+ pictures in it.  Recently, I upgraded my blog from
>> MovableType 2.66 to the latest version of Wordpress and tried to  
>> integrate
>> Gallery 2 with WPG2.  This proved to be rather unsuccessful.   
>> Before I go
>> on, you can see my Blog and Gallery site at http:// 
>> www.rutherfordfamily.net.
>
> Me too, almost exactly the same as you.  I moved from MT -> WP, then
> from G1 -> G2.  I used the Wordpress theme and customized it some,
> quite successfully I think.  You can see it at http://fryfrog.com/

Great work on your site. I really like how it looks.

>
>> I do not mean to criticize any of your work.  Gallery is the best  
>> software I
>> have ever seen to publish photos online.  I have used my knowledge  
>> and
>> experience with Gallery to help others setup their own Gallery  
>> sites.  They
>> too have been impressed with the software.  However, at this  
>> stage, I am not
>> as excited about Galley 2.  Allow me to explain.
>
> G2 is totally different from G1.  If you don't like G2, no one is
> going to be mad that you want to keep using G1.  In fact, G1 and G2
> will likely be around at the same time for years.

I agree with this statement. However, because I have a 5700+ photo  
album, I am beginning to worry about the issues Gallery 1 has been  
known to run into with this number of photos. I also understand the  
need for Gallery 1 to exist for those that do not have mySQL access.  
I just wish there was a theme available to make G2 look and feel like  
G1.

Unfortunately for me, I am not a big time coder, know just enough  
about customizing G1 to get the job done, and would be completely  
lost in making new themes for G2. While I would love to have the  
gifts to do things like that, write PHP code, etc, my gifts lie  
elsewhere.


>
>> The installation and setup of Gallery 2 is great and very easy.   
>> However, I
>> have yet to figure out how to resolve the issue of importing my  
>> Gallery 1
>> descriptions into Gallery 2 without the text being truncated.  Is  
>> this
>> something that could possibly be resolved in a later release?   
>> With over 150
>> albums, I really would not want to manually go in and add my  
>> descriptions in
>> again.  Without my descriptions--which are sometimes very long and
>> detailed--my photos would be missing something.  All searches for
>> resolutions to this issue did not lead to any helpful advice.
>
> What did you try to resolve it?  I think the simple solution is to
> make sure that your "captions" in G1 (is that what you mean by
> description?) goes into the G2 field that isn't truncated.  I don't
> recall off the top of my head which it is, but it should be easy to
> figure out.  This is a radio button option during the import.  If you
> are referring to something else in G1, please clarify (and post in the
> forums instead!)

I apologize for using the wrong term for the G1 descriptions. Yes, I  
am referring to the "captions." I did extensive research on the G2  
pages about this and read in there about changing the radio buttons  
during the import. However, this did not resolve the problem. My  
captions were never imported into the albums for any of the albums.

 From what I have read on the forums, there doesn't seem to be a way  
to resolve this. Perhaps I was reading the wrong posts?

>
>
>> The next issue I see with Gallery 2 is the lack of an included  
>> skin that
>> mirrors the look of Gallery 1.  I may be in the minority but I  
>> hate changing
>> the way something looks.  That doesn't mean I won't try out a new  
>> look--but
>> I still prefer the standard look of Gallery 1 over Gallery 2.   
>> There are a
>> few themes floating around that try and change the look of Gallery  
>> 2 to
>> mirror Gallery 1.  However, the vast majority of these themes seem  
>> to not
>> install correctly, give code errors, and do not allow WPG2 to work  
>> due to
>> serious errors.  I would love to see an official Gallery 1 and  
>> "Clean" theme
>> for Gallery 2 included in a future installation.
>
> That's a great idea, maybe even a theme you could work on.  The power
> of G2 is that it is very flexible and can be bent to the will of
> anyone, much easier than G1 (or probably any other gallery software
> around).  But that does take *people* doing it.  Wish into one hand
> and pee into the other, which one fills up faster?

I agree that this is a community effort and G2 should only get more  
amazing as time passes by. You can read my above comments on making  
themes.

>
>> The last major issue I had during my attempt to upgrade from  
>> Gallery 1 to
>> Gallery 2 was customizing it.  As you can see on my Gallery 1 page,
>> http://www.rutherfordfamily.net/gallery, I have customized
>> the HTML Headers and Footers.  I did not find it easy to do this  
>> type of
>> customizing in Gallery 2.  I am sure you have all worked hard at  
>> making this
>> process easy and user-friendly.  Despite my attempts and searching  
>> for
>> answers, I was left frustrated and giving up when I could not find  
>> a good
>> theme that would work well with WPG2.  My end result was finally  
>> customizing
>> Gallery 1 to match my new blog look.  I am assuming that due to  
>> the lack of
>> good documentation on the subject that the task of customizing  
>> Gallery 2 is
>> more difficult than it should be.  Is documentation for this  
>> planned in the
>> future?
>
> Docs are created by people with time, over time.  So if you find
> something lacking and have the time to document it, please do so.

Yes, you are right. I do not mean to "point the finger" at anyone  
about the lack of documentation. I am sure you guys will get to it  
when you can. If not, perhaps someone with more time will do it in  
the future. If I am able to grasp and understand the ins and outs of  
how to customize G2, I would be more than happy to try and begin  
working on documenting it by myself or with a group.

>
>> As I mentioned above, I am very impressed with the work the  
>> Gallery and
>> Gallery 2 Developers have done.  I am a huge fan of you.  It just  
>> seems that
>> for me to upgrade to Gallery 2 that I will have to take several steps
>> backwards from what I already have.  I look forward to hearing  
>> back from you
>> to see if any of these issues could be discussed.  I hope the end  
>> result
>> leads to a better Gallery 2 product so I can get fully behind this  
>> new
>> product.
>
> Don't forget to post in the forums.  Another thing to look at would be
> the sfvote feature that lets you vote for features you'd like included
> in G2.  We also look forward to any contributions you would like to
> make :)
>
>



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