Is photoplog right for me?

[HBAndrew]

Hi all, thinking of getting Pro but have some questions.

I have a gaming website, with a review system being built from VBAdvanced Dynamics, and I wish to use PhotoPlog to store images used in the reviews and to have a kind of screenshots area to link to from each review (as well as a general area for people to upload images).

Tried all this using Lite with some image alignments from Borg's pack on VBorg, with and [imgr], seems to work ok but was incredibly limited for features, and hacking in a highslide did my head in and was buggy at best.

1.What I want is something like on gamespot.com when you view screenshots for a game, but with Pro you seem to get something [I]like that, as in you upload all the images together as a set and they all get listed under each image within the set which is nice, not sure if there's a limit to how many images that get placed underneath or if it would break fixed width forums or go to the next line and keep going down with every single image.

2.I also don't like how on the index, a category uses a thumb from another category that's say 5 deep. I first have Game Review Images, in there is say PC, in that will be every letter, and in each letter will be another category for every game reviewed (not exactly sure how the album thing works, as far as I could see it didn't serve a great purpose, unless maybe I could save on adding millions of categories and create an album for every game, no idea not looked into it too much), however an image from one of those games will be placed right on the index for the entire Game Review Images category, is there any way to turn off the thumbnail on a per category basis or set which one to use on each category? Or even turn off Thumb column only on the index but keep it on sub categories?

3.What I would also like to know is is it possible to create a stripped down copy of say index.php?n=xx, to show only the image and all other images from the set under it, but nothing else at all, no header, no comments, nothing at all, but have it totally separate as in clicking screen shots from within a review will take you there in a pop-up and be totally inaccessible from elsewhere, but still keep full functionality when browsing the album like normal from the index?

4.Finally (I think o_O) could someone please screen shot the Hacks & Modifications forum arranged by highest amount of posts or views at the top as I like to have the ability to mod and don't want to buy PhotoPlog just to find out that forum is full of nothing but people asking stupid questions and leave me stuck with barely any php knowledge and no way to do what I want, but actually has some decent mods that I could use? I think all forums should be available to everyone and just block unlicensed people from actually viewing the contents of the threads. Had a problem with another mod with this recently, hacks forum was full of many threads, I buy and find it's full of idiots not actually releasing mods and sell my license on.

Thanks for any info.

EDIT: One final thing, when setting display order of a category to 0 to not display it on the index etc, which is what I want to do for review images, the images still seem to be displayed in newest/random thumbs. I want all the images to be viewable by everyone, but have it so when in the actual gallery, no one can see or access them images/categories at all only being able to get in from links within reviews, being displayed on random/newest areas even after I choose to hide the actual category is no good for me, any way to fix this?

[Morgan]

1: Not familiar with gamespot.com but the number of images in a set is tied to how many images are uploaded at a time, and they should wrap if more than one line is necessary for display.

2: No extra query is necessary for the thumb that is displayed, as that information is already available from other information on the page. If you do not want the thumb column, you can remove it by editing a couple of PhotoPlog templates, perhaps making use of a template conditional to remove it from just the main page.

3: This again could be accomplished by editing a PhotoPlog template, and possibly editing a vB template, depending on what parts you want to remove.

4: Requests get moved out of the Hacks & Modifications forum, but the forum is closed, as modifications are not a part of the PhotoPlog Pro code, unless they've already been added to the code. That said, you'll probably need to make your own edits to accomplish what you want.

5: PhotoPlog Lite and PhotoPlog Pro are different in that, among other things, the pro version allows for more permissions. No more additions are being made to the lite code.

[HBAndrew]

Thank you for the reply.

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So images can't be added to a set later on? I would like to maybe have up to 30-40 images in a set and would rather not have to quickly up the amount of upload boxes each time I need to do this and get myself kicked off the hosting. There seems to be an FTP batch add, is there no limit to the image amount with this and can sets be made this way? Could strain the server though making thumbs for 30-40 images at once.

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Would still be nice to be able to set which image gets put in the Thumb column on a per category basis, so I could maybe have all box shots of all the games shown within each letter category, maybe some future idea to implement? Shouldn't be more than a simple category setting, then again I know nothing about php. It's about the only thing I loved in my old album.

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Thanks, this part is not really important it's great as it is, but a future idea to toy with.

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Hmm locked?? Not sure I like that, hacks area locked and stuck to coding my own mods will knowing me let everyone and their mother into where they shouldn't. That's kinda saying if you don't like something either learn php and do it yourself or get lost, but there is a How do I forum and always VBorg for help I guess considering PhotoPlog is so popular.

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So for this, I can set a category to 0 display order and specifically set permissions to allow users no restrictions whatsoever within the category, but still not display any thumbnails within that category anywhere else outside it?

Think I'm pretty much going to buy it, when I wake up though or I'll be here all night.

Thanks

[Morgan]

1: Images cannot be added to a set later, though there is at least one thread in the pro forums that gives a couple examples of queries, if you want to do it manually. You can set how many images at a time when using the FTP import, and sets can be made that way, but strain is going to depend on type of server, type of account, etcetera.

2: It is doubtful that something like that would be added, because it might require an added query for every category thumbnail on the page, though as I haven't done it, I cannot say for sure what would be needed. Sure, you could do it, but adding in things that will potentially bog down the gallery is not something that'll get much consideration.

4: Chances are good, from reading your posts, that you are not going to find a modification that does what you want, so if you want to change how PhotoPlog works, then yes, it'll be up to you. If you need to know what an option does, or where to find something, then that is a good how-to question, but questions such as 'I want to change functionality to yada yada' are customization requests, not a part of support. It's the same sort of principle that you'll find on vBcom, but it's not meant to make things difficult for you.

5: In pro you set usergroup permissions via the Usergroup Manager as in the lite version and, if you want to further limit permissions by category, you can do that via the PhotoPlog Pro ACP Category Permissions (http://www.photoplog.com/screens/index.php?do=5). Display order hides the category, but does not block access to the category, if a user knows the link, and does not remove thumbs from the newest/random strips. Using the Category Permissions feature can hide and block access to the category and remove the related thumbs from the newest/random strips.