At Web Photos Pro we’re serious about making tools that get your photos onto the web. Fast. And easy.
We hope you enjoy using our products. If you have any questions or comments about our products, please don’t hesitate to email us, or use our support forums. And please let us know if there’s something we can add or change that will make your photo life easier.
We’re also interested in helping to move the state of the art of photos on the web forward. Through our products, and through a companion web site called PhotoRSS.org, we are evangelizing the use of RSS and PhotoRSS feeds for photo albums and photo galleries. We will also be evangelizing a way to add photo specific information to the <img> tag so that search engines (such as Google) no longer have to guess what your photos are about, but will be able to know what they’re about.
Overview
Web Photos Pro Server Edition is PHP code that runs on most any web server. It provides enhanced capabilites for your photo albums, including search, private albums, “tagging”, “latest photos” albums, and RSS and PhotoRSS feeds.
The code is licensed as “open source", which means that you are free to modify it as much as you like in order to incorporate it into your website. You may not redistribute any of our code, including any derivatives thereof, without our written permission. But you are free to distribute your own code, for others to use on their Web Photos Pro Server Edition installations.
While the code is “open source", it is not free, and you are expected to abide by the license agreement that is included with the source distribution. There is an agreement for personal use, and another for commercial use. Please read them carefully.
Licensing
Web Photos Pro Server Edition is available under a commercial or a non-commercial license.
The commercial license comes in three flavors – single server - single domain, single server - unlimited domains, and unlimited servers - unlimited domains. Commercial use includes any commercial activity, including hosting. The commercial license agreement can be viewed here.
The non-commercial license comes in the same three flavors – single server - single domain, single server - unlimited domains, and unlimited servers - unlimited domains. It is for use by any non-commercial activity, including personal, non-profit and educational uses. The non-commercial license agreement can be viewed here.
Previous Installation
If you previously installed Web Photos Pro Server Edition, please follow these instructions, otherwise use the instructions in the next section.
The quick version of the following steps is that you want to replace the directory “web_photo_pro_server” from the prior release with the same named directory from the current release.
- Download the source code
Download the Web Photos Pro Server Edition source code.
- Unzip and locate the source code
Unzip the source code onto your server.
- Stop your server (this may not be necessary, it depends on your server)
- Rename the prior source directory.
Don’t delete the previous source directory, simply rename it by adding “.old” to the end of the directory (it will now be named “web_photos_pro_server.old").
- Replace the previous source directory with the new source directory.
Copy the new “web_photos_pro_server” source directory to the same place you placed the previous source directory.
- Restart your web server.
- Test
Go to your gallery and make sure everything is working – you will want to test that the Gallery web page, Album web page, Image web page, and Find web pages are all working.
If you have any problems, please send email to support@webphotospro.com, or use our online support forum.
New Installation
If you are installing Web Photos Pro Server Edition for the first time, please use the following instructions.
- Install the Zend Optimizer
Note: The Zend Optimizer is no longer required as of release 1.0b6.
You must install the
Zend Optimizer to run Web Photos Pro Server Edition. The Zend Optimizer is a free download, and is developed by Zend, the makers of PHP.
You should stop your web server, perform the installation, then restart your web server. After installation, make sure that everything appears to be working before continuing.
- Download the source code
Download the Web Photos Pro Server Edition source code.
- Unzip and locate the source code
Unzip the source code, and copy it onto your web server. You can copy it anywhere that is accessible and runnable by your web server.
If you have a single gallery, you could copy it into that gallery directory.
But it’s more likely that you will have multiple galleries, and since you probably don’t want multiple copies of the source floating around your server, you will want to put it somewhere that’s accessible to all of the galleries you will be uploading.
I run an IIS (Microsoft) web server, and I’ve put it at the top level of the /Inetpub directory – this makes it easily accessible from all of my web sites.
If you’re running Apache, you can put it anywhere that is executable by the Apache web server.
- Copy default.php to each web gallery directory
Inside the source code folder is a file “default.php". You will need to copy this file into the top level of each of your web galleries.
If your installation prefers “index.php” instead of “default.php", you can rename the file.
Next, edit the file, and change the line that says
require("C:\\Inetpub\\web_photos_pro_server\\render.php");
with the full path to the render.php file in the source code directory you created in the step above.
- Test
Now you’re ready to test your installation.
Go to the gallery directory, i.e. the directory where you copied the “default.php” file (example: http://www.webphotospro.com/weblog_images/). This will display the gallery web page.
It should look like this, with a search field at the top of the page.
- Potential problems
See the FAQS.
More to come…
Administration
The current release has a placeholder administrator panel, which will be completed for the final release.
You reach the admin page by going to /?func=admin.
As noted in the Usage instructions below, you will need to create an Admin access group in the Groups Preferences panel. Documentation can be found here.
Usage
If you’ve been using Web Photos Pro, then there’s just three things you need to do:
- Update Your Web Galleries
Go to the Web Galleries Preferences panel, and in the Web Server section, check the “Web Photos Pro Server Edition Installed” checkbox.
Then click the “Save” button.
Do this for every gallery that you will be upgrading to use Web Photos Pro Server Edition.
- Add an Admin access group
To use the admin pages you need to create an admin account and password. This is documented here.
- Re-upload One Album Per Gallery
You will now need to re-upload one album from each of your photo galleries. You do not need to upload the images again, and you do not need to re-upload all of your albums, just one per photo gallery.
If you have any questions or problems please send email to support@webphotospro.com, or use our online support forum.
Calling Directly (without using the templating engine)
Or: How To use Web Photos Pro Server Edition without templates
While most people will use the templating system built-in to Web Photos Pro Server Edition, there may be times when one needs to call the Web Photos Pro Server Edition engine directly, i.e. without invoking the templating engine. This document shows how you to do that.
When might you need to call into the Web Photos Pro Server Edition directly? The most common reason will be if you have an existing web site, and you want to integrate your Web Photos Pro-based photos into your website more tightly than is possible with the templating engine. For example, if you want to display photos to match tags in a story you’ve written, or display a set of random photos, or create a slideshow. Really any time you need access to your photos for your own purposes, outside of the galleries, albums and image pages that Web Photos Pro Server Edition is capable of displaying for you.
Here’s how you do it:
- Copy the file ‘default.php’ from the top level of the “web_photos_pro_server” source directory, into your codebase and rename it anything you want, e.g. ‘web_photos_pro.php’. Comment out the last line of the file which makes the call to WPP_RenderPage() – this will stop the rendering engine from running automatically.
- Follow the instructions in (this now renamed) ‘web_photos_pro.php’ and set the value of $renderFile to point to the file ‘render.php’ in the “web_photos_pro_server” source directory on your server. (This is the same value for $renderFile that you used in ‘default.php’ when you first installed Web Photos Pro Server Edition.)
- Before calling any of the direct access functions, you first need to call WPP_InitPhotoGalleryVariables().
This function is in ‘render.php’, and takes two parameters, $galleryDirectory, and $galleryURL.
$galleryDirectory is the full path to the photo gallery directory that you will be accessing, e.g. ‘C:Inetputmy-web-sitephotosgallery_1′ on Windows, or ‘/user/local/websites/my-web-site/photos/gallery_1/’ on Unix.
$galleryUrl is the partial path, up to and including the photo gallery directory, e.g. ‘/photos/gallery_1/’.
- Now you’re ready to make a call to one or more of the direct access functions, which can be found at the bottom of ‘render.php’. The functions are described below:
- WPP_GetGalleryArray();
Returns an array containing information about the gallery, such as name and description, as well as an array of the gallery’s albums.
- WPP_GetAlbumData($albumTitle)
Returns an array containing information about the album, such as name and description, as well as an array of the album’s photos.
- WPP_GetPhotoData($albumTitle, $photoNum)
Returns an array containing information about a particular photo, including the title, description and tags, as well as information about the album, and the gallery.
- WPP_FindImages($query, $searchField)
Returns an array containing information about found photos, including their titles, descriptions and tags.
- WPP_GetExifData($albumTitle, $photoNum)
Returns an array containing the EXIF information for a particular photo.
- If you have any questions, please use our online support forum.
The HTML preferences panel is where you format your gallery, album and image web pages. Each type of web page has its own formatting options, as described below.
A screen shot of this panel is shown at the bottom of this page.
Gallery HTML
A gallery web page displays the cover photo for every album in the gallery.
The formatting options are:
- Format:
This is a popup menu with two options, “Table” and “List".
The “Table” format displays the album cover photos in a table, where the number of columns in the table is defined by the “Num Columns” popup menu (see next item).
The “List” format displays the album cover photos in a vertical list. This is equivalent to choosing the “Table” format with “Num Columns” = 1.
- Num Columns:
This is a popup menu with ten items: 1..10.
The number you choose is the number of cover photos that will be displayed horizontally across the web page.
For example, if you have 24 albums, and you choose 4, then there will be 4-across by 6-rows of cover photos down the page.
This value is ignored if you have chosen the “List” format.
- Thumbnail Size:
This is a popup menu with four options: 50, 110, 150 and Custom.
The album cover photos will be displayed using this size.
- Show Album:
Here are four check boxes that let you choose which album attributes are to be displayed along with each cover photo – Title, Description, Date and Number of photos.
Check a checkbox to display an attribute. Uncheck the checkbox of attributes you don’t want displayed.
- Use my Gallery skin…
If you have created your own gallery web skin, you will check this checkbox. When you do, a “Select” button and a field will appear. Click the “Select” button to select your gallery skin file, and the skin file name will stored in the field.
Album HTML
An album web page displays the thumbnail for every photo in the album.
The formatting options are:
- Format:
This is a popup menu with two options, “Table” and “List".
The “Table” format displays the thumbnails in a table, where the number of columns in the table is defined by the “Num Columns” popup menu (see next item).
The “List” format displays the thumbnails in a vertical list. This is equivalent to choosing the “Table” format with “Num Columns” = 1.
- Num Columns:
This is a popup menu with ten options: 1..10.
The number you choose is the number of thumbnails that will be displayed horizontally across the web page.
For example, if you have 24 photos, and you choose 4, then there will be 4-across by 6-rows of thumbnails down the page.
This value is ignored if you have chosen the “List” format.
- Thumbnail Size:
This is a popup menu with four options: 50, 110, 150 and Custom.
The thumbnails will be displayed using this size.
- Show Image:
Here are ten check boxes that let you choose which image attributes are to be displayed along with each thumbnail – Title, Description, Date, etc.
Check a checkbox to display an attribute. Uncheck the checkbox of attributes you don’t want displayed.
- Use my Album skin…
If you have created your own album web skin, you will check this checkbox. When you do, a “Select” button and a field will appear. Click the “Select” button to select your album skin file, and the skin file name will stored in the field.
Image HTML
An image web page displays the photo and information about the photo, such as the Title, Description, Dimension, etc.
The formatting options are:
- Image Size:
This is a popup menu with five options: 600, 800, 1024, Original - compressed, and Original.
The photo will be displayed using this size.
If you have uploaded other photo sizes, and you check the “Available Image Sizes” checkbox, then a link to all of the photo sizes you have uploaded will appear, allowing users to view all of the different sizes.
- Show Image:
Here are twelve check boxes that let you choose which image attributes are to be displayed along with the photo – Title, Description, Date, etc.
Check a checkbox to display an attribute. Uncheck the checkbox of attributes you don’t want displayed.
- Use my Image skin…
If you have created your own image web skin, you will check this checkbox. When you do, a “Select” button and a field will appear. Click the “Select” button to select your image skin file, and the skin file name will stored in the field.
Other Options
Here are two miscellaneous options:
- Hide labels when data is missing or empty
If this checkbox is checked, then field labels (or descriptions) will not be displayed when data for that field is missing or empty.
If this checkbox is not checked, then field labels will be displayed, regardless of whether or not there is data for that field.
For example, let’s assume that you enter descriptions for some, but not all of your photos. If this checkbox is not checked, then the word “Description:” will appear on every photo, regardless of whether you entered a description or not. If this checkbox is checked, then the word “Description:” will only appear on photos that have a description.
- Copy Built-in Skins To Disk…
Click this button to copy the built-in web skins onto your computer.
Once you have done this, you can edit them as you like, and override them by clicking any of the “Use my Gallery/Album/Image skin…” checkboxes on this preferences panel (see above).
(Note: A Windows XP screen shot is also available.)
The iPhoto preferences panel is only available for users running Mac OS X.
The iPhoto tutorial can be found here.
