vBPicGaleries by Thread Type?

[baz_kingfish]

nippod,
I am very interested in your vBPicGallery, but I have a few questions. My primary goal is to create picture galleries similar to vbGarage, which I understand was part of your inspiration, but linked to specific forum/threads.

1. Would vBPicGallery be able to create multiple galleries on different specific threads/forums. In other words, a Car Gallery, Boat Gallery, Motorcycle Gallery, etc that woul be listed in separate gallery threads that then users could easily navigate to the type gallery of their interest?

2. How difficult would it be to then allow users to rate the gallery postings within the specific gallery (perhaps like the vb.org rating at the top of each thread, and show/sticky the top rated user's pics in each gallery? I am interested in perhaps running monthly contests on our forum for say "Car Install of the Month", "Boat Install of the Month", or "ATV/UTV/RV install of the Month". If you go to my forum you will see 3 different "Show mu Stuff" links. That is where I am interested in running the contests.

3. How difficult would it be to allow users to create their galleries say in a vBPicGallery area, and then simply "Submit" their gallery into the "Show mu Stuff" threads? That might be a better way to implement your hack, and accomplish my above goals at the same time.

4. Lastly, is this something that you could help me with, and if so do you have any idea of the costs? I have implemented quite a few plugins and products already, but this one I think might require a little extra help to get the various tools working together (vB.org rating system, vBPicGallery, Show mu Stuff submissions, etc.

Our forum is not very big right now, but I am hoping that though improving the user interface and offering product prizes we can grow our community.

Please advise if this is something that you and vBPicGallery can assist with.
Thanks,
KF
KF

[Greg]

Thanks for coming by KF.

The gallery is designed to fit into any topic you would like by using phrases. However, we have never used multiple phase groups to try and have the gallery be on topic for cars and flowers at the same time. Knowing when to pass a language ID could make for a lot of coding. So basically, the gallery is for on topic.

But, members each get a hall, in that hall they can have as many picture galleries as you specify each with up to as many photos as you specify. There's no law that say each user gallery has to be the same topic. So, if you made you pharse generic enough, any topic could do.

There is no rating system. It's on the to do list, but needs attention.

There is a mod included to have links to members gallery halls in postbit. Links to the hall or galleries in user profiles. Gallery can be linked to by url too, as with any webpage.

We can help with setup and charge a nominal fee.

Oh yeah, there is a way to feature a particular gallery on the gallery home page if that would help.

[baz_kingfish]

Thank you for your reply.

If I understand you correctly, then a user would NOT be able to enter the gallery through a Thread association that logically grouped similar galleries? In other words, if you look at our site, http://www.bazooka.com/forums/index.php I was hoping that when a user clicked into the "Show mu Stuff...on the water" Thread he would only see Galleries/Posts that related to Water craft. It sounds like your tool would require the user to enter the Generic vBPicGallery and then search for Water craft type galleries? if we can make it link logically through a thread, even if that requires the user to setup the gallery with specific phrase terminology, then I am very interested...I don't mind having a "Central" gallery link where all galleries exist, but I would like to have certain galleries only show up in those threads based on their "type". Is that possible There are several other options I am looking at, but figuring how to make them all work is the hard part. :confused:

Let me know your thoughts,
KF

[Greg]

We don't have a type field at this time. But if someone was handy, that could be added in and then a query added to forums to show a link to a or a list of related galleries.

That is an interesting concept.

[baz_kingfish]

You aren't handy? :D

I was just thinking the same thing based on my relational database experience...I just don't know anything about PHP, XML, etc nor time to learn it well enough to hack this...how hard could it be to add a "Category" field and query accordingly. Then once you add the Ratings system it is fully able to have "Gallery of the Month" type things happening on any given forum thread.

While you were at it, I would go ahead and add TWO fields: "Category" and "Type" unless it adds a tremendous amount more compexity. Having both would allow Admins to set Category = "Audio" and then Type = "Car", "Boat", "Home" Or Category = "Flowers" and then Type = "Tulips", "Roses", "Daiseys"...you get the picture.

How long would these improvements take and would you be interested in making them if I paid for them at a reasonable rate? My guess is that it would immensely improve the useage rate of your module. As far as I can tell, there is NOTHING this comprehensive available without alot of backend coding etc.

Thanks for your willingness to discuss it! ;)
KF

[Greg]

This is something that several people want IIRC. We just never discussed it this way and it seemed like a compromise.

Let me absorb it and see what I come up with. I can picture it pretty well.

[baz_kingfish]

Excellent! Please feel free to email or PM me if you want to bounce ideas. I have a great understanding/picture of how it could/should work, and would welcome the opportunity to give you my 2 cents. And as I said, if you need some reasonable $$ support, I will consider that as well.

Looking forward to your thoughts.
Regards,
KF

[baz_kingfish]

noppid,
I am considering going ahead and purchasing your vbPicGallery product to get the content we already have up on our forum. My assumption is that if/when you implement the above ideas, I will be able to get an upgrade at n/c? Also, we had a custom written showcase on the previous version of our forum wherein consumers submited details, descriptons, pictures etc of their cars, and I would like to import that data into your product once it is installed. Can you give me a data map of the tables and fields that we can populate and their respective dependencies? The user account information is the same and already imported into vB...so I now just need to be able to import their respective entries in the showcase. What is the most efficient way to accomplish that?
Please advise,
KF

[Greg]

When we add the features, we will have the upgrade/conversion process built in or included in a release.

Basically there is a table for each gallery and one for each picture with all details for each. I don't know exactly how to map it for your conversion, but it's just data and one could code a custom importer/converter given the time.

You do the mapping of course, then code a query to grab data as necessary from the old table and remap it to the new table. That's a simple explanation.

[baz_kingfish]

A table for each gallery or a record in a gallery table for each gallery? Same question for pics. I can't imagine every pic being stored in a separate table? Basically, I don't need you to map my data, I simply need to know in which tables and fields to put what data and their respective dependencies, if any. A relational table diagram for your system would be enough. My guys can do the import, but I need to tell them where to put what. My assumption is that they would need to create a record in a "Gallery" table, and then corresponding records in a Pictures table with the GalleryID from the galleries table...or something like that. Also, what about Halls? Are those in a separate table and does one hall have multiple galeries to which we would need to populate some sort of "Hall ID" in the Galleries table? Those are the types of questions that I need to have answered in a data map or relational diagram.

Is that something you can provide?

[Greg]

Yeah, I phrased that wrong, tables with records of course. hehe

Halls is a nice way of saying a list of the members galleries. No action necessary.

[baz_kingfish]

Sorry for all of the questions, but I don't want to have to do this twice! :)

Your release notes say 4 tables added. Please confirm if those tables are?
Halls, Galleries, Pics, Custom Fields?

Also, is there a limit to the number of Custom Fields, and are they by Hall, Gallery, or Pic? Just trying to figure out how to configure the product from the start without having to rip up future track. Our Showcase has Make, Model, Year, Title, Description, and then pics. My guess is that I would need to create "Custom Fields" in your app to have place holders into which to migrate my data. is that correct?

[Greg]

Forget about custom fields, all that does is help fill out the description. It's not "fields" in a record in a table. It's text in the description field for a gallery.

There is a gallery table and a picture table for pics. There is a comments table and a table to store the data for the custom description fields.

[baz_kingfish]

Understand about the Custom Fields...we'll analyze the fields in your table and do our best to find place holders for our info...perhaps in the next release you could provide a few "Admin" definable fields along with the category and Type fileds. :)

BTW, how/where do I change the name of the gallery to "Garage" rather than vBPicGallery?

[Greg]

The names are all phrased, use the ACP phrase manager.

I have not thought out how to use REAL custom fields. But people ask for it a lot.

[baz_kingfish]

The names are all phrased, use the ACP phrase manager.

I have not thought out how to use REAL custom fields. But people ask for it a lot.

That just went over my head...:confused:
Only been using vB AdminCP for about a week now...can you give me a little more direction on just how to do that....please? :D

I did say, please. lol
KF

[Greg]

The way things are said on a vbulletin forum are controlled by a phrase system. Where there would be text in a template, we put a variable.

So, for you that means, no page editing. You go to the vB ACP and select the phrase manager and do a search for the words you want to change. A list comes up, you select a phrase and what people see changes.