ocPortal Tutorial: Advanced galleries
Written by Chris Graham, ocProducts
The ocPortal gallery system provides a number of advanced features, such as the ones included in this tutorial.Table of contents
Importing
The interface to import to a gallery |
Exporting
For members that have permission, gallery contents may be downloaded in a zip file archive, from a download link presented at the bottom of a gallery view page.These zip files contain only the actual image and video files, and not any meta content, such as descriptions.
Member Galleries - quick start
ocPortal supports members having their own galleries of images/videos.To enable this, make sure members have permission to submit midrange entries to the site:galleries module, and also permission to have personal categories. It is up to you to decide whether you want to provide these permissions on just the site:galleries module (the permission tree editor will help with this), or globally. Make sure members have access to the Content Management zone. Once you have permissions set, add/edit a gallery (the root gallery will do, if you want personal galleries to be created directly underneath this) to have the 'Member synchronised' option ticked. Make sure the gallery you added/edited also has image/video submission enabled (the properties of this gallery will be transferred to new personal galleries underneath it). When members submit a new image, they will get the choice to create their personal gallery in the process, and further submissions can then also go into their personal gallery. If you want to add a quick link that members may use to submit images, add cms:cms_galleries:ad to a menu.
Members may have multiple personal galleries if you set multiple galleries to be 'member synchronised'.
Member Galleries - complex explanation
Editing a gallery to be a member gallery container |
Making a personal gallery by adding an image |
The personal gallery system is very sophisticated, and integrated with the hierarchical nature of the gallery system. Members may have personal galleries underneath any gallery in the hierarchy that is marked as a personal gallery 'container'; this means that a member may have multiple personal galleries if there are multiple containers. Personal galleries have settings based upon defaults, and the settings of the container gallery; for example, if the container gallery does not allow videos, neither will personal galleries underneath it, unless they are edited after creation to do so. Personal galleries, like personal news categories, may be created on demand, simply by choosing a personal gallery for the adding member that "has the potential to exist" from the list of galleries to submit to: upon submitting, the gallery is automatically created. Personal galleries are given a codename corresponding to the owner, as shown in the screen-shot.
A personal gallery as displayed in the container gallery |
The naming scheme that identifies personal galleries |
An example of a complex gallery hierarchy is as follows:
(root)
Germany Holiday Photos 2004 (*)
Benjamin's Photos (+)
Harry's Photos (+)
School Photos
Secondary School (*)
Benjamin's Photos (+)
Harry's Photos (+)
Viewing an image in a member gallery |
Julie's Photos (+)
Primary School (*)
Benjamin's Photos (+)
Harry's Photos (+)
(*) denotes a personal gallery container
(+) denotes a personal gallery created upon adding by the owner
Limiting member galleries
There are permissions and configuration options relating to the gallery system that allow you to limit the number of entries that members may have in their own galleries.ocPortal provides this functionality using a three-tiered system:
- low limit on entries in member galleries
- high limit on entries in member galleries
- no limit on entries in member galleries
The tier that a member resides in is based on usergroup permissions with two specific permissions which may be set for usergroups:
- has high limit in member galleries
- has no limit in member galleries