Gallery 3: client-only albums. What's the best way to achieve this?

Hello all.

I've recently upgraded from Gallery 2.3 to Gallery 3. This happened because for some reason my Gallery 2 install broke -- when uploading new images, it would not create thumbnails (and sometimes not resizes), but instead just showed the "broken image" icon. I am not tech savvy enough to figure out why this happened or how to fix it; my wild-ass guess is that since 2.3 hasn't been upgraded in years, it just aged-out and is no longer compatible with my web host's servers. (All this to say, "Go back to Gallery2" is not an option.)

Anyway, I'm getting v3 set up, and would like to create an album or set of albums for client proofs, so clients can view proofs and select which ones they want retouches of. In v2 I was able to to this by hiding and password-protecting the albums -- the albums were not visible unless you had a direct link and the password, nor did the photos show up in the Random Image block or anywhere else.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach this with v3. Apparently the Hide module is not compatible with the Clean Canvas theme (I'm using a modified version of that); nor do I see how it's really different from just setting the album permissions to a group. AlbumPassword seems to still pull the password "protected" images into the Random Images block. Is there another, similar plug-in that will do what I want? Or will I need to create a new User, Group, and Album for each client? I don't usually deal in high-volume, but I can see how needing a separate Group for each client User could easily get out of hand.

To sum up, the ideal would be to be able to keep an album hidden and truly inaccessible unless someone has the direct link and the password for the album. I don't want hidden albums to show up in Random Image, search results, or tags.

Thanks.

Well, there was none last time I looked for an upgrade well over a year ago. I presumed that was the end since there wasn't one and G3 was out. My old install indicated it was "2.3" so I had no idea that there was a new 2.3. I don't know if you can say it's being actively maintained when updates come three years apart. I'm not really in the mood to just throw away over 20 hours of installation and set-up time and start all over again, either. I've already done the import from G2 and the redirect, and given the problems I had getting the redirect to work in the first place, I don't know that I'll be able to reverse it, either. I'm a photographer, not an IT tech/programmer, and I don't have anyone to set this up for me.

That said, are there G3 modules that mimic the Hidden and Password Protect modules from G2? (Or, hey, does someone want to make one?) Or is creating logins/groups the best solution?

I HAVE ALREADY UPDATED. I've spent over 20 hours updating. Let's move on, shall we?

I've seen the module pages. Given that some of them are named non-intuitively ("Emboss" instead of some version of "Watermark") I was asking if someone could point me to a module that they have tried and liked, rather than spending the next month flipping through them one by one. Or, more generally, advice on how others have achieved client-only albums. For all I know there's a simple method already a part of the core install. What's the best way to go about this? Thank you.

Thanks... that's kinda what I thought. Perhaps in an update somewhere down the line, someone can figure out how to streamline that, especially for photographers who end up with lots of simultaneous client proof galleries. Having to create a new User AND Group to go with each new album is a bit much. It would be nice to just be able to assign an individual user to an album.

You missed the part where I said I'm not a programmer, huh?

Why the snark, dude? I don't see any reason to be rude, here. Are you really that surprised that photographers use a piece photography gallery software? Who hires a programmer for freeware?

The solution is to check online for an answer, and if there isn't one, to request the feature from the developer community on the forums. Are you new to this whole community thing?

It is posts like that that make me think twice about continuining to be a member of the community.

Dave
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