completed Images and Galleries - Don't understand the functionality

In the topmost screenshot, there are three ways to view images.

The first is to click on Images in the top nav. This displays images in reverse chron order based on either _created or _updated.

In the module ribbon Gallery takes you to the profile's Image Gallery.
In the Stats area, Images: XXX takes you to the profile's Image Gallery.

I think this is wrong - it should take the person to a list of images similar to the one displayed when clicking Images from the top nav. It's also confusing because Gallery and Images are conflated to mean the same thing when the word Images is already used on the page to mean something else.

So I click on either one and it takes me to the same page (second screen shot):
http://www.thechocolatelife.info/thechocolatelife/chocliferoot/gallery

Why are only two galleries displayed? As you can see from the next screen shot, there are LOTS of galleries! (Right, there is a config variable set somewhere at 2. But where is it?)

Looking more closely ...

Look at the order of the images in the second gallery in my profile page (the third screen shot). Now I look at the gallery (fourth screen shot). The ribbon of preview images on the gallery page is different from the images displayed on my profile page. ??

Finally - despite being shown two galleries on my profile page and probably 354 galleries (the number of images I have uploaded) on the photo edit page, it looks like 353 images (bottom screen shot) have been put into one gallery. Maybe.

At this point - for me and all of my members, I am happy just to delete all existing galleries and put every member's photos into a default gallery as long as I don't lose titles and captions (and comments if there are any).

That is, unless, there is a fix to get all of the images into the correct albums/galleries and assign all images not already explicitly assigned to galleries to a gallery named " Loose Images ".

Looking at my Ning site, I created 31 albums -- but not all images are in albums (defined as curated collections of two or more images). Across my entire membership, there are 391 albums comprised of over 9000 images.

updated by @claygordon: 02/07/15 09:03:02AM

Choc- I think we can only add one image attachment per post...subsequent attachments replace your earlier ones, so you need one post per attached screenshot.

Personally, I dislike that everyone's photos have been put into 'galleries'- I can't make sense of the whole image/gallery thing as it is now. I'd prefer to just have each member's all photos in ONE plain area for their personal photo section with NO galleries/albums at all...and let the member organize or create new albums (galleries?) from their photos later after joining if they like. I liked on ning where they had a rotating slideshow of ALL members' photos showing on the main page, that admin could set to show randomly. It generated lots of clicks and interest. Then there was the usual Photos Link in the top nav strip to go see all member photos also with sorting choices. ASnd of course the member profile page to immediately see a grid of all that member's photos at once, OR click on their albums.
I am having a hard time understanding the differences in meaning between galleries/images/albums/slideshows/lightboxes and how they are organized upon import in JR. I admit it's confusing to me. How is a gallery different from an album, for example?


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

@Strumelia -

If you click on the image you'll see that I composited all five screen shots into a single image. Difficult to read in the lightbox but the image can be downloaded.

Again, personally, if there's no easy way to preserve the Ning album structure I'd say to heck with it and put all the images into a " Loose Images " gallery and enable users to create galleries that make sense to them. I think gallery in jr == album in Ning.

Thanks, I agree- I'd rather have my members simply create new personal albums from their one overall photo pool rather than try and make sense of the odd 'galleries' I have now. I can just imagine all the confused queries I'm going to get from them about how their galleries work, as it is now.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

'album' is a term used by the audio module to refer to a group of audio files. Think "Music Album".

The comparative word used to describe groups of photos is 'gallery'. Meaning a group of photos in the same way an album is a group of songs.

Its possible to have a rotator of a list of images from all profiles, you would just need to choose the device to display them. Use the {jrCore_list ...} function to select the photos then some javascript code to display them. (Perhaps the image rotator from the jrElastic skin would work.)

(Noted that you want an image roataor widget, i'll look into it.)

If you wanted just one gallery with everything in it that would work. Call it 'Everything' or 'default' or 'general' and upload all the images into that profile.

@michael -

I see where you are going with your suggestion but it doesn't answer my original questions.

We have, on the home page and by clicking on the "Gallery" link, a display of images compiled from every member's profiles. If you want, a Member's Gallery that is updated dynamically.

However, on the member profile pages there is no way that I can see to view ** all of the images that member has uploaded**, irrespective of what gallery the Ning import utility thought to put them in. That's the display I want to see when I click on Images:### under Stats. I can click on Gallery in the profile module menu to see the galleries in that member's profile.

However, there is a discrepancy between what albums contained in Ning and what the galleries in JR contain. In particular, I think there needs to be, for each member, a gallery than contains all of the images that were not assigned to Ning albums and therefore should not be grouped into galleries in what seems to be a random fashion. I propose that this gallery be called " Loose Images ".

If that's not possible because of the garbage that Ning puts into the images json file(s) then I propose that the importer ignore the album associations and put EVERYTHING into each member's " Loose Images " gallery. If they images are ordered by _created date, then it should be easy/ier to put them back into albums should someone want to take the time. In the meantime, the flatter presentation of a single galery will make browsing a whole lot more understandable.

:: Clay

PS. I was not asking for a rotator widget but it's not a bad idea and I would like to see how one might be implemented inside one of the containers on the home page.

This would just require a new "view". I don't think it would be hard, and it seems like users coming from Ning would like to see it work this way by default, so we can check it out.


This would be part of the Ning Import module - I can open a ticket on this for Paul and we can check it out to make sure things are being imported correctly.

Hope this helps!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

I've got a Feature Request ticket open on this now:

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/tracker/1024/new-image-gallery-view-that-shows-all-images-for-a-profile


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

@Brian -

It helps a lot. As I've said in other posts, one of the best aspects of migrating to Jamroom is the responsiveness of support in this Forum and everyone at JR's willingness to seriously consider the habits of our Ning members. The new view for images on member profiles can't come too soon for me.

In the meantime, I am assuming that there is a variable that controls the number of displayed galleries (right now set to 2?) and that there should be a page turner if the number of galleries is greater than that number. Right? Where would those go?

Am curious that you talk about there being photo albums on Ning as in their archives there is no evidence of this. There is a photo title and description fields, and that is it. On Ning do you have another option to group photos into albums? If so, Ning have neglected to include this information in the archive so as such, there's not a lot that can be done on import. (this wouldn't be the first omission on their part either!!).

Just so you know, when I first developed the import module, I allocated Jamroom's 'gallery_title' to the profile name on import so that all profiles did have just one gallery. A few weeks ago some ex Ningsters said this was wrong and wanted the photo title to be the gallery title so I change the import module accordingly. As I said above, without the album info from Ning, there's not a lot else we can do on import.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Paul -

Yes, there are photo albums in Ning. Here's a screenshot of mine:

http://tinypic.com/r/n6c0oc/8

I have no idea why Ning is not including the album associations in the export JSON. My suspicion is that is is to maximize user and data lock-in by making the archive utility less useful.

Can I propose something that I **hope** will be simple? A flag on the import utility that will allow someone to choose between the two ways of uploading the images? I would gladly let you test it on my galleries! I would add a default gallery name " Loose Images " that everything was put into, to preserve the Gallery functionality on import.

For me, having 9000+ images wrongly associated in galleries reduces the utility of the whole images functionality. I don't know what it would take to do a re-import of just the image JSON data as I describe above - and overwrite what's there - but that's the best solution **for my community**.

I know this would require an update to the Ning Import module, but it seems to me to be a self-contained fix. Re-import and it should just work. Unless I am missing something completely.
updated by @claygordon: 01/06/15 09:10:29AM

I don't think this will be needed - I'm working on an update to the Image Gallery module that I think will make it work like you want it to work...


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

@Brian -

Whatever is easiest in the long run.

I have just pushed out version 1.4.0 of the Image Galleries module. After updating, go into your ACP -> Media -> Image Galleries -> Quota Config and UNCHECK the "Group by Gallery" option, and save (apply to all quotas if you want).

Now the profile "index" page for galleries will be all images, and not group by gallery.

Also - if you would rather your users NOT have to worry about a gallery, then you can "hide" the Gallery Title field in the form designer (make it not active, or make it admin only) and all images will go into a single gallery called "image gallery".

Let me know if that is closer to what you're looking for.

Hope this helps!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

Yes!! It is closer, but there's one more step.

This is the display I want when I click on Images:### under Stats. I want

When I click on Gallery, ** I want to be able to have Galleries** and I don't see how this can be done as I have two links with two different names that have the same URL and display the same thing.

For MY network, I want to put each member's images into a default gallery "Loose Images"

Take a look at the following screen shot - you can see the the image is still in a gallery of one image - as can be seen in the breadcrumb.

http://www.thechocolatelife.info/thechocolatelife/imagez/ScreenShot2015-01-06-a.png

What I think this means is that the underlying galley association is still there and it's still being displayed in this context. I still need galleries as I mention, just that I want to be able to put each member's photos into a single gallery to start with. If they have to re-create their albums then that's not a bad thing, as most members never revisit what they upload.
updated by @claygordon: 01/06/15 10:42:48AM

I think what you need to do is DISABLE the gallery title on create, but leave it ON in the update image form. Then, when a new image is uploaded it will go into the "image gallery" gallery, which can be RENAMED in the language tab of the Image Gallery module. Then you can call it "Loose Images" if you want (just note that that will be the gallery title).

The module is a gallery based module, so there's no getting away from every image belonging to a gallery - we're just going to do our best to "hide" that if needed.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

I think I understand what you are saying, but I am sure I don't know how to go about implementing it. I am happy to take a stab.

Bigger issue is how to update the contents of all the gallery name fields in all the images that are already uploaded. If everything can easily be renamed into the "Image gallery" gallery I can do the rename in the language tab (id=24 or id=25?).

Once this update is finalised I'll make the Ning photo import compatible with it.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

"I still need galleries as I mention, just that I want to be able to put each member's photos into a single gallery to start with. If they have to re-create their albums then that's not a bad thing, as most members never revisit what they upload."

-YES, please.

Like Clay, I'm not sure I can implement the other steps Brian suggested above either.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 01/06/15 11:47:43AM

@Paul -

So, reimport the images JSON file(s) using delete/create ... something like that?

P.S. the image SEARCH function is working nicely for me now- thanks guys!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Yeah - Wait until I have a new jrNingImport with the gallery options in the config released, then just re-import images using the delete/create option. Note that any comments, likes, ratings etc. made on gallery items since the original import will be lost.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

I'm really liking the changes so far ...after the Image update and the "uncheck group by gallery".
YAY! so much more simple and logical and elegant.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

@Paul -

I hate to put you on the spot but if I can get the images re-imported I can take TheChocolateLife.com live. Virtually all the rest of the issues I have found are formatting issues and I can live with them for at least a couple of days/weeks because I am not expecting that most of my members to claim their accounts right away.

Paul the photo albums where in the older version of Ning ( ver2 ) which @thechocolatelife has added a link to. The current version 3.0 does not have photo albums for a member anymore, all photos are just in one place and in categories if added. This is why you maybe did not see it in the archives.
updated by @john-bizley: 01/06/15 12:55:37PM

The album names are not included in the JSON data from a Ning 2.0 exported site, so I don't believe they have ever been there. Whether or not that is "on purpose" by Ning I don't know.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

John, remember there are no ning archives for 3.0 ning sites yet. All ning archives are currently for 2.0 sites.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

OK - Its late here now so I'll look at updating the import module tomorrow and let you know.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

So for the jrNingImport module I propose adding two options for photo to gallery imports -

1) Single Gallery - All images imported to a single gallery named the same as the profile name, and with the new gallery module field 'gallery_image_title' set to the title from the archive.

2) Multi Gallery - The Jamroom gallery named the same as the archive image title and the 'gallery_image_title' unset.

Would that cover all bases and work with the latest jrGallery module?


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

@Paul - I am looking at the timestamp on this. Wow.

1) If it's easiest to use the profile name by all means, though from a Language selection I would present "profile name's gallery".

With the ability to select between the two states that's already in the UI - these should be enough options.

With #1, I can import each member's images into a single gallery and my members can rearrange them as they like. Or not.

From a UI perspective, and this is not an immediate requirement but something that should probably be fixed at some point.

There is still the issues that Gallery and Stats/Images: ### display the same page. I would expect Stats/Images:### to display all of that member's images, irrespective of gallery association. This is orthogonal to what happens then a visitor clicks on Images in the top nav - because there is no single member context, images from all members are shown.

If you are using the new functionality in the Gallery module that shows ALL images instead of the individual galleries, I think the best solution is probably just to change the profile menu entry from "Gallery" to "Images" - they both then line up with what you get when you actually click on it...


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

I will have to look into that.

I was trying to fix the capitalization of " Youtube " to " YouTube " in that menu and I could not find where that was located - which .tpl file.

Same with " Latest Videos " to " Uploaded Videos "

It all should be in the language file. However, there is likely a:


CSS rules on the menu text, which is why you see the lower case "t".


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

That explains it then. The option is to go through all the language files and make those changes.

Which raises a question ... do the changes to a language file survive a skin update or core update?

Yep - those changes are stored in the DB and are not changed on an update (same for modules and skins).


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Good to know. I will look through the css for the transform and comment it out to see the effect it has.

Latest jrNingImport module with this option in the Marketplace


Chocolate - Get the latest module and do this, or let me know if you want me to do it for you.

Pa


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

@Paul -

Just for reference my name is Clay and you can call me that.

I would appreciate your doing the import because, while you're there ... have you been following along on the thread about my not being able to get a cloned skin to work properly?

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/forum/ning-to-jamroom/20644/ningja-skin-update


It looks like all my code is in the cloned skin (nsNewChocSkin) but some of the files are not being interpreted properly. Footer.tpl looks okay but index.tpl is not being rendered close to properly and there are issues in the desktop menu header template. Using Compare is also generating 404 errors for me.

TIA -
:: Clay
updated by @claygordon: 01/07/15 12:19:54PM

OK - I'll take a look


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist