Image galleries on the new website

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milk
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Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Mon Aug 17, 2009 6:36 am

Users who have content creation rights on the new site can now upload image galleries. Simply use the 'Create content' section to add a new gallery, click the add images icon and select multiple image files from your computer, click upload, wait till it's done uploading (ignore the error messages, they won't affect the uploads), click 'Next step', ignore the fact that it says nothing has uploaded, and voilà, go to the 'Visuals' then 'Image gallery' page and it should be there!

(i'm waiting to hear back for a solution for the errors, should be fixed shortly)
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milk
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Tue Aug 18, 2009 11:15 am

shots from the last Reggae Sunday are up

http://theforest.org.uk/images
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by ChaoticReality » Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:51 pm

Which links you here: http://theforest.org.uk/images/reggae-s ... ugust-2009

I can't see any images on that page, is it just me?
Mike

Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...

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Gandhi
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by Gandhi » Tue Aug 18, 2009 1:17 pm

no images loading up for me either but our Internet Explorer at work is years old!
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chombee
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by chombee » Tue Aug 18, 2009 2:21 pm

There's an easier way to do this, the forest already has a (free) photogroup on 23hq. Just add more photos to that. No need to host photos and maintain photo gallery software ourselves. Then paste a 23hq badge such as this one onto the front page of theforest.org.uk:

http://seanh.freeshell.org/23hqforestbadge.html

That is just a cut-and-paste of some javascript that 23hq generates for you: http://www.23hq.com/photogroup/forest/badge. The badge is configurable, including how many photos it shows, which photos, how big it shows them, you can even cook your own CSS for it. We can style the 23hq page proper ourselves as well if we really want to. http://www.23hq.com/photogroup/forest/
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by ChaoticReality » Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:05 pm

Doesn't 23HQ only let you upload 30 photos a month?

I imagine if we start pushing the new website as something people can contribute to, we will have way more than 30 pics a month.

We have oodles of diskspace left on our host and there's no real good reason why we shouldn't host ourselves.
Mike

Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...

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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by chombee » Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:21 pm

30 photos per month per person, or you pay 17 euros and get unlimited uploads for a year. The forest page is a photogroup, any number of people can join it and add photos, the group has no limits.
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
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chombee
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by chombee » Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:23 pm

I think we have a history of failing to maintain and look after a self-hosted image gallery, and also that only a few have ever had an account on our site and use it to add content including photos. I just think it's easier to let someone else do the work of hosting it.
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

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milk
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Thu Aug 20, 2009 3:02 am

there was a rights issue, sorted now.

23hq.com don't allow an OpenID login, and cripes, users having to pay for for more than 30 uploads a month is not good. i and others who bothered would reach that easily. one of the aims of the redesign is to make it as easy as possible for regular volunteers to upload shots, plus there are a number of things that can be scripted with drupal's views and other modules, such as an automatic mishmash. the interface will also be refined so as to best display a larger numbers of galleries. it'd also encourage those using it to think about posting news and events if anything requires it.
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Martin
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by Martin » Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:04 pm

I don't understand why 23hq is any better than flickr or anyone else you can give control of your photos to.

Photos don't all need to be hosted in one place in order to have them appear on the website.

I take some photos, I want them to go on the forest website. I can host them myself (I do, and you can use them straight from my server), I can pay someone else to host them (and have such hosting be interchangeable, because all I need is a URL direct to the image), or I can give them to Forest to host on its own server. All fine.

But why should Forest tell me I need to go and host them with 23hq?

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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by chombee » Thu Aug 20, 2009 2:18 pm

I admit self-hosting has its advantages, particularly that it won't cost people anything to add lots of photos because we already pay for the hosting.

Main reason I'm banging on about 23 is not necessarily that it's better than all the other photosharing sites out there, but just because 23 is one good option and we seem to be having implementation troubles with self-hosting and we've often had maintenance troubles in the past, a photo-sharing site would handle all that for us.

The thing about everyone hosting their photos on their own sites is that, say you self-host 50 photos and we make a gallery on the forest site with 50 links to them, then you move the photos or take them down, or your site goes offline, or you replace the photos with porn that has the same filenames, our gallery will be broken. If we have lots of different people self-hosting photos all over the place than it's probably gonna break often.

So I think there's something to be said for hosting at least a core, curated set of photos centrally, whether the forest self-hosts them or uses a 3rd party photo-sharing site.

But I was thinking that it would be ideal if we didn't have to push users towards one central place, whether it be our self-hosted gallery or 23hq or anything. Problem is, are there open network protocols for photosharing that would allow that? Actually I think maybe there are. I was against the forest self-hosting blogs for individuals because they can (and already do) go and get blog hosting elsewhere and the forest could setup an aggregator for lots of blogs of people we know, a sort of 'planet forest' like all those other planet sites out there. This works through RSS or ATOM feeds. I guess most photoblogs and photosharing accounts, self-hosted or otherwise, also have feeds.

SO I think we could have a core, curated gallery of the best forest photos we've taken or come across, host it ourselves or put it on 23 or whatever works, and then if we wanted we could also host an aggregator of lots of people's photos that they host themselves or on flickr or whatever via their feeds.

Incidentally reasons I like 23 are that they're a smaller, more independent outfit, the site is very well done and easy to use, their badge thing seems especially handy cause it's so configurable and stylable, they don't do vendor lock-in (you can click on a link to download a zip of all your photos), they use open standards for sharing, and I prefer to hand over a few quid a year than submit to advertising or having my personal details farmed or whatever, although I admit it's not really desirable for everyone who wants to post to the forest to have to sign up to that. Back when I looked they were the coolest photosharing site I could find.
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Martin
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by Martin » Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:58 pm

The thing about everyone hosting their photos on their own sites is that, say you self-host 50 photos and we make a gallery on the forest site with 50 links to them, then you move the photos or take them down, or your site goes offline, or you replace the photos with porn that has the same filenames, our gallery will be broken. If we have lots of different people self-hosting photos all over the place than it's probably gonna break often.
But this is true of photo hosting services too. Small providers come and go, terms of service change, things break, people remove things. I went looking for photos from the early Dorkbot meetings on flickr a while ago. They all used to be there, but people have deleted them to make space for other photos.

The only surefire way to keep all the photos is to host them ourselves and back them up.

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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by Martin » Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:05 pm

As to the rest; there isn't any protocol I'm aware of yet for photo sharing. This is something that's really lacking. It's easy enough to host the image files themselves, but some standard HTTP-based interface that let you get metadata, and versions of the image at different sizes, would be awesome.

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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:35 pm

last time i looked, the closest to a standard gallery format was the de facto gallery2 method but that was because it has a large developer community and other scripts had been written to access gallery2 galleries - more at the code level iirc though.

for image metadata, EXIF is horrible and the best of the bad bunch to replace it, XMP, only has minority support.

i think self-hosting with links to photo sharing services is the best solution. i'll remove the flickr button and place the link on the Visuals page, along with one to 23hq and other sites where forest imagery can be found.

also, i've uploaded a number more galleries and created an automated mish mash grid using Drupal's Views.

http://theforest.org.uk/images
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by neil » Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:37 pm

That's great - good work, Milk! The galleries look amazing and some of the photos are fantastic. But let's not be afraid to exert some quality control on the photos. We shouldn't use our server space to host rubbish pics that no-one will enjoy looking at.

I'm no master photographer - I'm useless with a camera. And I mean no disrespect to anyone. Every roll of film contains some duff photos... Look at the Lazer Ghost pics. The first 4 are great. Then follows 8 pictures of which maybe 2 are semi-decent. One is just a black nothingness! Further down there is even more dross. Why not just remove the rubbish photos? Then you're left with a handful of top quality images that are a pleasure to behold...

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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Mon Aug 24, 2009 5:18 am

sorry about the quality of some of the Lazer party pics that went up - i just did the whole folder, forgetting to exercise the same quality control check as when i'd popped them on facebook before hand. i've left some of the other 'questionable' ones up as i feel they at least give more of an idea of the atmosphere of the night, that and i like the idea of having a bit of a rough or amateur aesthetic to some of the collections of images that are up.
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by ChaoticReality » Mon Aug 24, 2009 6:16 am

There's a difference between amateur and awful, though.
Mike

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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Mon Aug 24, 2009 6:54 am

not denying that. are any of the still existing images awful enough to potentially remove? n.b. part of what i was trying to capture was the dark and ghostly elements of the night, thus the uv, projector light and similar shots.
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by ravanwin » Sat Oct 03, 2009 4:25 pm

hey any of these amazing pics on our site?

http://void.printf.net/~martin/photos/88888888/2.html

forgot how great these were martin!
r

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dan
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by dan » Sat Oct 03, 2009 5:17 pm

hey that's funny i was just cheking them too.yes defo great to have self hosting on site, and yes defo have pretty strict quality control i think on the main site. what we could do it link to an outside site where anyone can upload all the photos of forest stuff they want to and then keep the stuff on site pretty minimal but super good.

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milk
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:03 pm

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Martin
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by Martin » Tue Oct 06, 2009 12:29 am

Please do make sure all photos on the site are credited to the photographer. It helps encourage people to contribute.

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milk
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by milk » Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:41 am

good point. you want me to link to somewhere for yours?
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Martin
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Re: Image galleries on the new website

Post by Martin » Tue Oct 06, 2009 12:32 pm

Just by name as Martin Ling is fine for me, I'll add a link myself if I ever finish sorting my own galleries out properly.

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