Beta Testers needed! If you run Gallery 1.3.1 in PHP-Nuke Pl

Hello all,

Well, you have probably read me talking about it before and now it is working and ready for beta testers...

What is it you ask? It is a modification to Gallery 1.3.1 to make use of a database to store the album, image, comment and permission information instead of using the album.dat file.

But your Gallery is already established you say? and you dont want to have to rebuild it? No problem, My modification (during beta testing) will attempt to read the album info form the database. But if it doesnt find it there, it will default back to reading the files. When it saves it will save everything (during beta testing) to both the database and to the file. So as you use the gallery it will automatically migrate your existing album.dat info for each album into the database. In fact all you have to do is replace the Album.php file in the classes directory and either import a sql dump to add the tables or run a short install script to setup the tables for you. Thats it, it will take care of the rest.

Since it maintains your files as well, removal is as easy as putting the original Album.php back in the classes directory and either dropping the tables or running a small script to drop the tables for you.

What is the advantage you ask? Well interally to Gallery there really is no advantage. But if you want to write an addon (or use an addon written to work with this modification), then it will be very useful for you. I will write a number of blocks and addons that will do things that were cumbersome with the dat files. For example, the first block will be a simple random image block. Unlike the existing one it will not use the fopen function (which is not supported in the newer versions of PHP-Nuke and can cause problems). Instead it will be able to check permissions and randomly select an image (based on your criteria if you wish to add some) for display using simple sql queries. It would also be very good for addons that require additional information be tied to photos such as classifieds. There are many possibilities. I hope that it is able to help fill the gap some (like me) have felt until G2 is released.

If you are willing and able to test this modification (or if you would like to help port it to Post-Nuke, Stand Alone or other system) Please let me know via email at richard at benfield dot ws .

Thanks,
Rich