Image galleries are collections of images. Users can create galleries and upload images to private or public galleries. You can select the number of thumbnails to appear in gallery rows/files as well as the thumbnail's size. Thumbnails are automatically created by Tiki; you don t have to upload them. Galleries can be used for albums, stories, showrooms, and many other applications.

If you have the right permission you will be able to create galleries and upload images to the galleries.

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This is the menu that is displayed when you expand the Image Galleries section in the main menu. There are three options in the menu: Galleries, Rankings and Upload Images (options may change depending on your permissions). We are going to examine each option in detail.

If you are following the manual your first visit to the Galleries screen will display no records.

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Creating a gallery


If you click in the create gallery link a screen with a form to create a new gallery will be displayed:

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The fields are explained in the following table:

Field Description
Name The gallery name
Description The gallery description
Gallery is visible to non-admin users If not set then the gallery will be visible only to users with the tiki_p_admin_galleries permission set.
Max Rows per page Maximum number of rows of thumbnails that will be displayed when someone visits the gallery.
Images per row Maximum number of thumbnails per row when visiting the gallery.
Thumbnails size X Width for Thumbnails
Thumbnails size Y Height for Thumbnails
Available scales Lists currently defined scale factors. If defined, Tikiwiki will display the images at the X x Y scales instead of the original size. An option to display the images at the original size will be shown in the gallery navigation.
Add scaled images size X x Y Defines new scale factor for image
Other users can upload images to this gallery If checked then other users can upload images to your gallery, they won t be able to delete images or change the gallery.


Create a gallery for testing if you want, we'll use it in the next sections.

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After creating a gallery you can see the options you have in the listing (again options may vary according to permissions). Options include:

  • Edit: edit the gallery information
  • Remove: remove the gallery
  • Upload: upload images to the gallery
  • Browse: browse the gallery (click on the gallery name)
  • List: gallery listing
  • Configure individual permissions for the gallery (if admin)

Edit

Edit will allow you to edit the gallery using the same form you used to create the gallery, you can change the gallery information here, size of thumbnails, etc. Note that changin the size of the thumbnails doesn t actually rebuild the thumbnails, you must use the rebuild thumbnails option when browsing the gallery to rebuild them.

Remove

Remove will remove the gallery and all the images in the galleries, this won't ask for confirmation. All the galleries and images will be gone so use it very carefully. Upload will take you to the upload image screen that is explained later.

Browse

The browse option (clicking on the gallery name) can be used to browse the gallery. When you browse a gallery you will see thumbnails for the gallery images. We'll show you an example of browsing a gallery after we explain how to upload images to the gallery.

List

List is a non-graphical representation of a gallery. Instead of thumbnails for each image you will see a listing with one row per image, if you want to delete images or take a quick-look at a gallery content without viewing the images you may want to use list instead of browse since listing is faster than browsing the gallery.

Upload Image

The Upload image screen let s you upload images to galleries.

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The fields are self-explanatory. Note that you have to select a gallery where the image will be uploaded. You can upload images to galleries you created or public galleries created by other users(!).

There are two ways to upload images: entering the image URL or uploading an image from your disk. The upload screen allows for methods but you should use only one method for each image. (If you enter a URL you shouldn't upload vice versa). If you use both, the result is unpredictable.

Optionally you can also upload a thumbnail for the image, if you don't upload a thumbnail, Tiki will auto-generate one using a reduced version of the uploaded image. If you don't like how Tiki generates thumbnails or if you want to provide your own thumbnails or if you want thumbnails different than the full image you should upload a thumbnail along with the image.

If everything goes fine the image will be uploaded and you will see the image and the thumbnail displayed.

For example:

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The image was uploaded and stored into the Tiki database!

You will see the image, the thumbnail and information about how to browse the image and how to include the image in an HTML page or a Wiki page. Keep these links in mind as you may want to upload some images to a gallery that can later be used in your Wiki pages or Blog posts. Uploading images to a gallery is a nice way to keep images stored in the Tiki system so they won t fail if a site that held them goes offline or removes the images.

If you see the thumbnail with the same size as the image then: if the image was a GIF file this is normal, don't worry, if the image is not a GIF, your PHP installation doesn't have the GD extension or the GD extension is too old, in such a case thumbnails will be generated resizing the original image.

Uploading multiple images


If you want to upload multiple images at once you can store images inside a ZIP archive. Put only plain images inside the ZIP file, no other file formats or directory structures. Then upload the ZIP file as an image on Upload Image page.

Note: See Tips & Tricks below for more on uploading large files.

Uploading Images reminder:


Note: You can upload images to:

  1. Galleries created by you
  2. Public galleries (galleries with the public option set)

The System Gallery

As you already know, if enabled from the admin screen, Tiki can capture images referenced from other sites/URLs storing them in the Tiki database. Those images will be stored in a special gallery called The system gallery if you are admin you can browse the system gallery and check what images are stored there, and if you want you can also remove images (if they are no longer referenced from user pages). A feature to automatically remove orphan images (images not being used in any page) is planned for a future Tiki version.

Browsing galleries

Once you have some images uploaded you may want to browse the gallery you created:

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The browse gallery screen displays the thumbnails, the gallery description and links to edit the gallery, rebuild the thumbnails and upload images (if you have the right permissions). The x link can be used to remove an image from the gallery if you want.

There are options to sort the images in the galleries by Name, Date, Hits, Size and User if you want a different order (clicking the link again will reverse the ordering)

For each image a thumbnail is displayed showing the image title, its size and the number of hits (a hit is computed each time the image is browsed). If you click on the image you will browse the image:

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In the browse image screen you will see the full image, the image information, an option to move the image to another gallery (if you have permission) and the information on how to link to browsing the image or how to display the image in an HTML page or a Wiki page, an article or a Blog.

You will also see links to the next/prev image in the gallery to browse all the gallery images if you want.

Individual permissions for image galleries


From the gallery listing screen if you have the right permissions you will see a link labeled perms this link can be used to set-up individual permissions for an image gallery:

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When you assign a individual permission for a gallery the individual permissions will override the global permissions system and only the users that have the permission for the individual gallery can view/edit/upload to the gallery. This feature can be used to configure private galleries, paid galleries or galleries where only a special group of users can upload images for example.

Tips & Tricks


You may need to adjust the settings on your server if you want to upload large files.
There are some helpful pointers for configuring php.ini and you might also want to check the syntax for the Apache LimitRequestBody directive. See the notes on the bottom of that 'helpful pointers' page for details.
There is also a hard-coded MAX_FILE_SIZE parameter in templates/tiki-image_upload.tpl that is set to 10000000.

Also, see the FileGallerySettings page for a more detailed explanation of the limits/benefits/considerations of storing files and images in the database vs. in a directory.

Known bugs and problems

Thumbnail generation does not work for GIF format (thumbnail is same size to original img)

  • Won't fix (patent issue)


Q: Is there a way to migrate already-exsiting images/files from database storage into directory storage, or vice-versa?
images/files from database storage into directory storage, or vice-versa?