3DKiwi

One thing I'd REALLY like to stress...

A lot of us do NOT want a gallery system that is designed around the idea of it being a PHOTOGRAPHY website.  That's a big part of the problem I have with a lot of the various gallery systems out there.  My membership could not care LESS about f stops, exposures etc.  They want an EASY way to upload, share and reuse images of them and their projects that they can use in discussions on the forums, blogs etc.

They want to come to our site and be able to slice and dice the gallery to find examples of the kind of project they are looking to do so that they can see how different options LOOK.  Having categorized images that are searchable and WELL DESCRIBED on the page is crucial to them being able to find relevant images and also greatly impacts the visibility in the search engines.

James

Charles, on 09 May 2012 - 09:12 AM, said:

And there was much rejoicing... Seriously.

IP.G probably has the biggest bang for your buck atm in terms of how much better it could be/Dev hours invested.

IP.G has great potential as a synergistic part of the IPS platform esp if it's easier to use to make other content types BETTER by embedding (re)usable images/video etc.  [insert plug for embedded content opening in a lightbox/highslide instead of navigating away from the content that is actually being viewed]

Specific areas that need improvement IMO based on what I've had come up trying to work on the migration of our legacy gallery to IP.G:

1. Better ability to browse the front end is essential, the current mishmash is a total fail for those using browse style.
2. Planning for how images can be searched for is pretty essential.  ATM the search seems to NOT be designed for success as it only seems to look at comments?
3. An image uploader that resizes on the CLIENT end instead of the server would drastically improve the usability for members who either have a slower connection or have no clue how to resize images (a surprising large number of folks).
4. ADMIN control of gallery.  Members should in no way be able to delete content without mod involvement if an Admin has set options specifying that deletion of images/albums is NOT allowed.  Everyone understands that in the forums, I have no IDEA why members can bypass any admin set restrictions to delete ANYTHING they have uploaded into the gallery at any time. BAD.
5. Parent-Child relationship of Globals/sub globals should be inheritance based.  Permissions on set on a parent Global should be inherited by sub globals/member albums unless they are specifically changed.  
6. Managing albums needs to be be much improved.  We should be able to merge/split albums like we can merge/split forums.

James

Shigure, on 28 April 2012 - 11:31 PM, said:

Totally agree that it needs to be changed.  If someone uploads an inappropriate image (best case they put the wrong image in the wrong gallery and confuse new members regarding what that album is for, worst case it's a vile spammer that does something like upload child porn! ) in a global album I do not NOT NOT want that becoming the cover image for the global album!

James

To really get a feel for what the OP is asking here, I thought it would be good to offer some screenshots and comparison to help define what the OP might be suggesting.

In VB, the use of personal albums is totally different than in IPB.

• You manage & view your albums from your profile.
  
• Here you add an album and permissions for the album:
  
  Public - Album will be viewable by all visitors
  Private - Only visible to contacts and moderators
  Profile - Pictures used to modify your profile style (Awesome feature!)
  
• Here you view your albums:
  
  
• Here you view inside an album (notice the end user's menu of options as well):
  
  
• Here you edit an album:
  
  
• And here is the albums showcased in your profile:
  

Looking at it from an end user's point of view, VB is more end user friendly when it comes to personal albums. It keeps all the user's albums in their profile with good available permissions and the ability to manage their albums all right there. It's quite simple...even for my mother who is not tech-savvy. The only downside to VB's is the lack of notification on comments (seems like several platforms, including IPB, have things they can improve upon when it comes to notifications of comments).

Looking at it from a community perspective where the sharing of graphics/photos is a community effort, IP.Gallery is more viable. VB does not currently have a decent global gallery. Here is what I see when I click on the gallery in VB:

Not anyway near as viable as IP.Gallery for a community to globally share graphics/photos.

I would suggest that the handling of end user's personal albums be handled differently than global albums. Similar to that of VB's (it's not copying...it's just as similar to that of other platforms as well!). Personal albums should be utilized inside the profiles for their personal benefit and to showcase to their friends they've added. So maybe the member albums shouldn't be so prominant (admin option) in the gallery. I'd rather not have them showcased in the gallery at all, but rather only available inside the profiles. Others would disagree (admin option!).

Obviously, we can see gallery content in our profiles already. But, I don't think it's on the same level as what is being requested here.

I hope this will be a massive overhaul implementing most of the customer feedback, and implementing novel technology.

First, let me say that we've purchased over 50 IPB licenses over the years.  It's been great to see how the forum software has developed over the years since we started using it. . .from 2.1.7 to 3.3.1, IPB has proven time after time to be stable, reliable and rock solid.

Second, IPS support is top notch - there isn't another company out there that matches the quality of their work and service.

Thirdly, the community here that supports each other with technical help and the people that offer both paid and free hooks/applications are superb.

With that being said though, IP Gallery is what has stopped us from further purchasing more IPB licenses. In fact, we've moved some of our current sites away from IPB to competing software.

The gallery is such an important part of a community and IP Gallery simply does not live up to a publishers or a users expectations. I'm not going to rehash here what's wrong with IP Gallery because it's been discussed over and over again.

It's obviously not economically in our best interests to leave a license "idle", purchase "redundant" software AND change everything around, but IP Gallery just doesn't cut it.

We've waited and waited for an improved version of IP Gallery, but had to move on.

What Marcher said. Back to square one - please return proper admin controls to the Gallery.

Matt, on 01 November 2011 - 06:27 AM, said:

.... omg.
OK... here's the problem, and listen well.
We don't WANT the Cover image based on album sort order..... we want to be able to easily select it and it STAY.
same for "featured"... why is that random anything?

Honestly, if there was an alternative to the IP Gallery that was functional, I would drop IP Gallery in a minute.

I've come back to IP.Gallery 4.2.1 hoping that it would be much better organized and useable for niche sites that use the gallery as a categorized repository of images.  I don't think that's a terribly uncommon usage?

Unfortunately I found that even after all this time, and even with the Gallery set to "Browse" mode, it's nearly unusable if you try to categorize the images using Global Albums rather than via tags.  If for instance you have:

Global: Planning and Design that contains Globals for Kitchen, Bathroom, Home Office, Kid's Room, Living Room etc

Then you have individual member albums in those sub-globals as appropriate.

As soon as you open the parent Global (Plan and Design) you have a totally unusable mishmash of globals and member albums.  I mean it's completely non functional, and there's no way to even sort it to show the sub-globals first.

What's worse, if you try to upload new images it appears that you are UNABLE to upload them into a sub-global?!

::sigh::

I really REALLY hope that IP.G is getting a MAJOR update in the near future?

IP.C has made MAJOR strides forward, as has IP.Board.  IP.G?  It still feel like it's try to FORCE all IP.G customers to run flickr on their site. IMO Flickr works by using tags to codify and shape what's essentially a chaotic mass of images streams.  That's NOT the best approach for all sites, and I'm quite disappointed to see the lack of forward progress in providing options to IP.G customers that have fundamentally different needs.

I have great faith in the IPS team, and I'm sure that like the other apps, IP.G will continue to improve in the future.  So far though... Yech.  It's the biggest disappointment in the suite.

James

As much as your entitled to your own opinion, just because you like all those social garbage websites, doesn't mean others do. The less of that garbage i have with my IP.Board's, the happier i will be.

Although you have good ideas and i agree with you regarding your suggestions that if they were implemented, it would be better... Saying that this software will die in 5 years if it doesn't have these changes is just hilarous. This software is over ten years old and if you were using it for all those years, you would have never ever said that this software can at any point in time die.

This software has gone a long way since it first came out and it has introduced features and functionality that other content management systems could only dream of so if anything, this operating system is going to live long and prosper and possibly take over the internet because of its fantastic design and programming.

4joys, on 17 February 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

Clearly IPS should consult with each new customer and tailor a version of IP.Board specifically to their individual needs, with just the features they need and none of the extra stuff they don't want.  What do you say IPS?  You can pull that off, right?

Has the IPB team expressed any interest in revamping the gallery to actually make sense?

In the Facebook world of schizophrenic bursts of images an conversation that are in constant risk of falling off the page and disappearing.

As Owners and Admins of IPS products, we provide our Users with a stable, persistent, long lasting world that they can come back and refer to.

My forum is about what my Users want, and they want to navigate the Gallery the same way they navigate the forum.

example:
Go to the Gallery, browse the list of Album Categories, pick an Album, look at pictures or maybe go to a Sub-Album, see what their friends posted and have fun making comments.

Right now the experience is rather chaotic and unfriendly – it’s like going to a forum website and instead of seeing an organized list of forums, all you see is a smattering of posts that rearrange themselves every time you logon.

As someone that has participated in the design and writing of an image Gallery system for phpBB, I’m left scratching my head, disappointed and wondering what I’ve been spending my money on.

The gallery interface for creating new albums, is pretty confusing , no wonder members get confused I have 180 empty albums created in one category by members, who have clicked and created at random then bailed out..