WHITEAlbum was born when I required a clean looking, lightweight
application to make my digital photos accessible to friends
and family. I also wanted the ability to caption images and
allow others to add comments. Those who are used to FTPing their
images somewhere and would like the rest to be done for them
should appreciate WHITEAlbum.
To run the application you will require a server running PHP
and have access to a My SQL database. I have assumed that those
who have access to this would be familiar with FTP. As a result,
the management of the album structure (ie categories or folders
of images) and all adding/deleting of images is done via FTP.
Once you are happy with the images on the server and the categories
that they reside in, you can fire up the ADMIN tool which will
update the database.
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| INSTALLATION |
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system requirements
- a web server running PHP. (APACHE htaccess is used to
authenticate admin system users by default but any server
that provides directory protection will do)
- access to a My SQL database on this server
file
setup
- unzip the install files with the directory structure intact.
- FTP all the files, with directory structure intact, to
your site (preferably a subdirectory somewhere for neatness)
- Create a folder called "images" into which you
will be putting all your image files. There should be another
folder called "admin" that was created when you
uploaded all the application files in step 2.
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| CONFIGURATION |
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Configuration changes are made by editing the
config.php file that should be in your album's root directory.
A standard text editor will be fine to make these changes.
- change the value of $cfg['dbaseName']
to whatever your database is called. The default is "album".
- change $cfg['dbuser'] and $cfg['dbpwd']
to your user name and password for accessing this database
- IMPORTANT - administration system authentication is done
through the script by default. If you prefer to protect
the directory that the admin system resides in by setting
it up on your server, you can disable $cfg['requireValid'].
Otherwise, you should set the username and password for
the Admin system with $cfg['adminuser']
and $cfg['adminpwd'], respectively.
- The album will attempt to auto generate thumbnails on
the fly by default. This requires the PHP GD Graphics library
which comes standard with PHP 4.3.0. If your thumbnails
are not appearing, chances are your version of PHP doesn't
have the library installed. setting $cfg['autoThumbnail']
to false disables the auto generate option but also means
that you must create the thumbnails yourself :-). See tree
structure below for details.
Other configurables
There are a number of settings that can be configured from
within the config.php file so if you are wondering whether
it is possible to change that way something works, check through
the config file - you might be surprised.
Configurable items include:
the colour scheme- table backgrounds etc from the config
file, styles are configured in the "albumstyle.css"
style sheet. you can specify a different style sheet but be
aware of the style definitions that the album requires.
choose to pop-up the full image in a separate window with
the $cfg['popupImages'] variable
table sizes
the title of the album
the number of thumbnails displayed per row
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| ADDING/REMOVING
IMAGES
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directory structure
Once you have the album up and running, you will be wanting
to populate it with images. This is a simple process that
will require you to FTP the image files to the "images"
directory that you created earlier. By default, this directory
is called "images" and sits in the directory that
your album is running from. You can set this to a different
directory by changing $cfg['imagePath'] (path
to the images directory from the album root) in the config
file.
The directory structure underneath your images folder must follow
this pattern:
i.e. each set of images that will register as a link from your
album's index page must be in its own directory under the main
images directory. The name of each of these folders is not crucial
as you can re-label them to something more descriptive in the
administration system.
file upload
- connect to your host via FTP and create a sub-directory
under your "images" directory for the new set
of images to go.
NOTE: directory names
may not contain SPACE, APOSTROPHE or other extended characters.
- upload all the images to the new directory
update database
- Point your browser at the administration tool. (http://yourdomain.com/album/admin)
- If you are running WHITEAlbum for the first time, select
"create database" from the menu and the required
tables will be created in the database.
- Select "scan directories" from the menu. You
should see feedback about which new folders and images were
found and added to the database.
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| MANAGING IMAGES/FOLDERS
IN YOUR ALBUM |
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Simply add or removed whatever files or folders you wish, using
your FTP program of choice. Once you have made all your changes
on the server, go to the Administration tool and "scan
directories". The changes will be detected and your database,
updated.
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| THUMBNAILS |
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WHITEAlbum uses PHP to 'auto-generate' thumbnails
by default. This requires the GD graphics library (standard
in PHP 4.3.0 and later).
If you can not use the auto generate thumbnails feature then
you will have de-active this in the config
file and create the thumbnails yourself. Upload the thumbnails
to a sub-directory (called "thumbnails") of the folder
in which all the full-sized images are saved.
Each set of images will have a "thumbnails" subdirectory
which contains all the carefully constructed thumbnails that
go with the images. As a reference, the longest side of the
thumbnails should be not much longer than 60 pixels. Adobe Photoshop
has a nice batch job feature that you can configure to create
thumbnails for you.
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| UPDATES |
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To update your version of WHITEAlbum, just replace
your files with the newer versions that you download. The Album
will continue functioning as normal. In most cases, you only
need to replace the 'albumapi.php' file. Check the version
history page which will specify which files need to be replaced.
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| LEGAL
STUFF |
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This software is provided free of charge under
the terms of the GNU
General Public License (GPL).
I do not guarantee that this software is free from defects.
It is provided “as is," and you use the software
at your own risk. I make no warranties as to performance,
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or any
other warranties whether expressed or implied.
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