Fiddling with all these little programs has been to get me back into the swing of programming for this.
The purpose of this mod is that I have about 30,000 images that need to be cataloged, organized, and searched, and then served up on multiple "thumbnail" sites. In addition, I'd like to finally merge in the photo stock agency and mange image rights, large-image downloads, and such as well.
What would people be looking for in this sort of program? Once I finish with the little things, this (and the various parts like the postcards script) will be the only programs I'm developing/maintaining. All the other stuff will be "as is" or passed on to other hands to maintain.
Planned:
1) targeted at larger sites, designed to handle upwards of 30,000 images. Setup will probably be more intensive than small sites will want to do (configuration options, etc), and defaults will only go so far. Right now there are almost 100 options, paths, and such that have to be set to your system, and permissions which have to be changed. This cannot be a "light weight" mod. Virtually everything is a parameter, and configurable.
2) import: it will hopefully be able to read a directory layout, and import the images, automatically thumbnail them, and where possible read in a files.bbs or similar file to add in descriptions.
3) export: it will hopefully maintain an on-disk image of the directories, so that in case of a big crash, or catastrophic failure, your image data is also stored in the directories (as a files.bbs) so that major corruption of the database will not lose all your work. -- Imagine if you will (Rod Serling impersonation), a situation where your database vaporizes. You have lost all data (since the images do not contain data such as copyright, descriptions, etc). If this information was also stored with the images, then the database could be reconstructed from the on-disk layout. I remember in the BBS days, an image CD was worthless without a files.bbs
4) Automatic thumbnails: you can set a location for thumbnails (right now it defaults to the image location /thumbnails) and thumbnails are automatically created. I can understand why you might want to put all the thumbnails on one machine, but the more flexibility in this area, the more overhead and problems that can occur. Borders, rotation, drop shadows can all be added, using the netpbm library of filters/tools
5) catalog/thumbnail pages -- this runs inside links, so once the image is imported into links (the URL is the image location) you have all the flexibility of links for customizations of layouts.
6) uploads:
-- users can upload images
-- file groups will allow grouping of images in "collections" (a link is a collection, not a file)
-- permissions allow users to add/modify files in a "collection"
-- limits on numbers, sizes and types can be imposed by the admin
-- users who are editors have additional features
-- uploads can be flagged to be approved individually by the admin/editors or once approved,
can be added to or modified by the user
7) access:
-- subscriptions of various kinds can be had, with *EXTREME* fine-tuning of the results.
There is a lot more, but I have to go through the old messages, and old code to work on a list of them.
Additional information can be found in the following old threads:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=120773
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=120446
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=147051
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=120997
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=147969
PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.
The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.
The purpose of this mod is that I have about 30,000 images that need to be cataloged, organized, and searched, and then served up on multiple "thumbnail" sites. In addition, I'd like to finally merge in the photo stock agency and mange image rights, large-image downloads, and such as well.
What would people be looking for in this sort of program? Once I finish with the little things, this (and the various parts like the postcards script) will be the only programs I'm developing/maintaining. All the other stuff will be "as is" or passed on to other hands to maintain.
Planned:
1) targeted at larger sites, designed to handle upwards of 30,000 images. Setup will probably be more intensive than small sites will want to do (configuration options, etc), and defaults will only go so far. Right now there are almost 100 options, paths, and such that have to be set to your system, and permissions which have to be changed. This cannot be a "light weight" mod. Virtually everything is a parameter, and configurable.
2) import: it will hopefully be able to read a directory layout, and import the images, automatically thumbnail them, and where possible read in a files.bbs or similar file to add in descriptions.
3) export: it will hopefully maintain an on-disk image of the directories, so that in case of a big crash, or catastrophic failure, your image data is also stored in the directories (as a files.bbs) so that major corruption of the database will not lose all your work. -- Imagine if you will (Rod Serling impersonation), a situation where your database vaporizes. You have lost all data (since the images do not contain data such as copyright, descriptions, etc). If this information was also stored with the images, then the database could be reconstructed from the on-disk layout. I remember in the BBS days, an image CD was worthless without a files.bbs
4) Automatic thumbnails: you can set a location for thumbnails (right now it defaults to the image location /thumbnails) and thumbnails are automatically created. I can understand why you might want to put all the thumbnails on one machine, but the more flexibility in this area, the more overhead and problems that can occur. Borders, rotation, drop shadows can all be added, using the netpbm library of filters/tools
5) catalog/thumbnail pages -- this runs inside links, so once the image is imported into links (the URL is the image location) you have all the flexibility of links for customizations of layouts.
6) uploads:
-- users can upload images
-- file groups will allow grouping of images in "collections" (a link is a collection, not a file)
-- permissions allow users to add/modify files in a "collection"
-- limits on numbers, sizes and types can be imposed by the admin
-- users who are editors have additional features
-- uploads can be flagged to be approved individually by the admin/editors or once approved,
can be added to or modified by the user
7) access:
-- subscriptions of various kinds can be had, with *EXTREME* fine-tuning of the results.
There is a lot more, but I have to go through the old messages, and old code to work on a list of them.
Additional information can be found in the following old threads:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=120773
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=120446
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=147051
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=120997
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=147969
PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.
The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.