FAQs
- Why would I use Web Photos Pro if I already use iPhoto, Picasa, etc.?
- Do I need to install Web Photos Pro Server Edition?
- I get a fatal error after installing Web Photos Pro Server Edition…
- Can I display my photo’s EXIF data?
- I can’t seem to reorder my photos or albums.
- Can I save an album to disk and have it use local paths?
- What files does Web Photos Pro create on my computer?
- How does Web Photos Pro handle foreign characters such as ümlaut or çedilla?
- Why can’t I type foreign characters such as ümlaut or çedilla?
- How do I make an album private?
- Why are the ftp settings so hard to get right?
- How do I get title and description information from iPhoto?
- Why don’t you use iPhoto’s thumbnails?
- How do I back up my Web Photos Pro files?
- When I start Web Photos Pro I get the error message “Can’t find prefs_8 data…quitting now due to error…contact tech support".
- Can I use Web Photos Pro to make my gallery on a hard drive and then burn it to a CD?
- Is there a Wordpress plug-in available?
- If I purchase Web Photos Pro Server Edition, do I still need to purchase a copy of Web Photos Pro?
- Sorry, I’m unable to find the iPhoto XML file “/AlbumData.xml”
- How do I use Web Photos Pro with LiveJournal (Live Journal)?
Answers
- Why would I use Web Photos Pro if I already use iPhoto, Picasa, etc.?
Web Photos Pro can work alongside your current photo organizer. Many of these photo organizers have a web feature, but it isn’t very powerful, or it’s not customizable, or it’s clumsy to use.
If you’re using iPhoto on Mac OS X, then Web Photos Pro is the perfect web companion because it reads iPhoto 4 and iPhoto 5 albums directly.
Most other photo organizers create individual folders on your computer, one for each album. Simply point Web Photos Pro at any of those album folders, and in minutes you can have those photos uploaded to the web.
- Do I need to install Web Photos Pro Server Edition?
No, you do not need to use or install Web Photos Pro Server Edition to use Web Photos Pro.
If you do not have Web Photos Pro Server Edition installed, then Web Photos Pro will create (and upload) a complete web-based photo album. This includes a gallery web page, an album web page and photo web pages, as well as the thumbnails and resized images for each photo.
If you have Web Photos Pro Server Edition installed, you get advanced features such as photo search, Flickr-like tagging, private albums, “latest photos” album, and EXIF data display.
- I get an error after installing Web Photos Pro Server Edition…
Error 1: “PHP has encountered an Access Violation at 015392D1″
You probably do not have the Zend Optimizer installed. See the next error, Error 2, for instructions on how to fix this.
Error 2: “We’re sorry, but there was an error running Web Photos Pro Server Edition on your web server.”
Web Photos Pro Server Edition is open source so that you can modify it for your own needs. But one file needs to be protected – the code we use to encrypt and decrypt your preferences and data files – and we use the Zend SafeGuard Suite for that purpose.
In order to run the code in this one encrypted file, you must install the free Zend Optimizer on your web server. The Zend Optimizer will not only let you run Web Photos Pro Server Edition, but will also speed up all PHP code on your web server. (And if you don’t know it already, Zend is the developer of PHP).
Error 3: “Web Photos Pro Server Edition error: old version of preference or data files in use.”
This error is caused because you’re running Web Photos Pro Server Edition against photos and albums uploaded using an older version of Web Photos Pro (prior to version 1.0b14). Older versions of the prefs and data files were missing some information needed by Web Photos Pro Server Edition, and the file format has been changed accordingly.
The way to fix this is to re-upload all of your albums. You do not need to upload the images, just the album data. You can do this individually, by clicking the “Upload” button, once for each album. Or, you can choose “Upload All Albums” from the Albums menu, and all of your album data and prefs files will be uploaded automatically.
Error 4: ” Warning: fopen(c:/inetpub/wwwroot/photos/PhotoGallery.data.cache.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in C:Inetpubweb_photos_pro_serverincludesphp_utils.php on line 412″
This is a permissions error. You need to give your web server write permission to all photo album (and photo gallery) directories, so that Web Photos Pro can create the data and tags cache files.
- Can I display my photo’s EXIF data?
Yes. If you have Web Photos Pro Server Edition installed, and you upload the original photos, a link “Taken with a Canon EOS 10D” will be displayed (with your camera type of course).
A future version of Web Photos Pro Server Edition will not require you to upload the original photos.
- I can’t seem to reorder my photos or albums.
To reorder photos in an album, open the album, and drag and drop the photos into the order you desire. I find the “Small Thumbnails” view useful for doing this when my album has more than about 10 photos in it.
To reorder albums in a gallery, you must first set the “Filter” at the bottom of the list of albums. Once the Filter is set, you can drag and drop the albums into the order you want (more here).
- Can I save an album to disk and have it use local paths?
Yes. Use the “Save Album To Disk” function, then choose “Local Links” at the first dialog.
- What files does Web Photos Pro create on my computer?
This FAQ has been superceded by FAQ #14.
- How does Web Photos Pro handle foreign characters such as ümlaut or çedilla?
A lot of work has gone in to making Web Photos Pro a good foreign citizen.
Web Photos Pro stores all data in ISO-8859-1 format. And when you publish your photos to the web it URL encodes all non-alpha-numeric characters, thereby supporting the full 255 character ascii set.
Web Photos Pro does not handle double-byte languages at this time.
- Why can’t I type foreign characters such as ümlaut or çedilla?
On Mac OS X: There’s a bug in Web Photos Pro 1.0.0 making it impossible to type foreign characters (such as ümlaut or çedilla) when you’re using the standard U.S. keyboard layout. If you want to type foreign characters, you can either copy and paste them from another program, or you can use a different keyboard. For example, both the US Extended and British keyboards support typing foreign characters.
Changing your keyboard is easy on Mac OS X. Open “System Preferences…” from the Apple menu, and choose the “International” icon (under Personal). Select the “Input Menu” tab, then check the “U.S.” and “U.S. Extended” keyboards, and also check the “Show input menu in menubar” checkbox (at the bottom of the panel). This will cause a keyboard menu to be displayed in the menu bar, allowing you to switch between the standard and extended US keyboards whenever you need to type foreign characters.
On Windows 2000/XP: Typing foreign characters in Windows with a standard US keyboard is a little bit harder than on Mac OS X. First you need to know the character code for each foreign character, and then you type it by holding down the <right-alt> key while you type the character code.
This web page http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html lists all the character codes for foreign characters, currency symbols, etc.
- How do I make an album private?
First, you must have Web Photos Pro Server Edition installed. Second, you must create a private access group. And third, you must select the “Private” button on the List of Albums window, and select the correct access group to protect the album.
- Why are the ftp settings so hard to get right?
Without a ftp browser, it can be difficult to get the FTP Path required by Web Photos Pro. Luckily we’ve created a FTP Tutorial which lists solutions for the most common ftp servers.
And if you’re having problems, don’t hestitate to ask in our online support forum.
- How do I get title and description information from iPhoto?
You don’t. Yet.
Version 1.1. of Web Photos Pro will read title and description information directly from iPhoto.
- Why don’t you use iPhoto’s thumbnails?
Good question. If we had to do it all over again, we might have done just that.
We’ll be looking at how we might reduce the number of thumbnails and resized image we store locally in a future version.
- How do I back up my Web Photos Pro files?
The location of your Web Photos Pro files depends on whether you’re running Mac OS X, or Windows XP/2000, so please read the following carefully for your platform.
There are three types of files created by Web Photos Pro – workspace files, photo album database files, and thumbnails and resized image files. The location of each type of file is described below.
- Workspace Files
Workspace files contain information about each of your workspaces (i.e. preferences), and the list of albums in the workspace.
We would recommend backing up these files.
On Mac OS X these files are located in ~user/Library/Application Support/WebPhotosPro/
On Windows XP/2000 these files are located in ~user/Local Settings/Application Data/WebPhotosPro/
Inside the WebPhotosPro directory is a file “WebPhotosPro.prefs” which points at the current photo workspace, along with files ending in “.ppro", one for each workspace. In addition, there is a “Backups” directory in which copies of the last 10 versions each workspace file is stored.
- Photo Album Database Files
Each photo album that you add to Web Photos Pro has its own photo album database file (storing the title, description, etc.). That file is stored inside the photo album directory along with your photos. Web Photos Pro creates a directory named “WebPhotosProFiles", inside of which it stores the database file “PhotoAlbum.data".
We would recommend backing up these files.
- Thumbnails and Resized Images
Early versions of Web Photos Pro created thumbnails and resized images inside your photo album folder. But after several user requests we decided not to store them there any longer, and instead store them next to the Workspace Files.
It is not as important that these files be backed up. If you were to lose or delete these files, the simple act of opening an album will cause Web Photos Pro to recreate all of the thumbnails and resized images it needs.
On Mac OS X these files are located in ~user/Library/Application Support/WebPhotosPro_Images/
On Windows XP/2000 these files are located in ~user/Local Settings/Application Data/WebPhotosPro_Images/
Inside the “WebPhotosPro_Images” folder, each photo album has a separate folder, inside of which are stored the various thumbnails and resized images, by size. For example the folder named “110″ contains 110x110 thumbnails, and the folder named “600″ contains images resized to a maximum of 600x600.
You will notice that the folders inside the “WebPhotosPro_Images” folder have names such as “538793220″ or “3900934″. This is a unique number used by Web Photos Pro to match a photo album to its thumbnails and resized images – we use this unique number because you could have several albums with the same name, and so couldn’t label these folder with the album name. If you need to know which album a particular numbered folder belongs to, look in the file “AlbumInfo.ppro” – this will tell you where the folder’s photo album is located.
- Workspace Files
- When I start Web Photos Pro I get the error message “Can’t find prefs_8 data…quitting now due to error…contact tech support".
The full text of the error message looks like this:
Web Photo Pro error:
Bad data in
/Users/~[your-user-name]/Library/Application Support/WebPhotosPro/My First Workspace.pproCan’t find prefs_8 data.
Quitting now due to error.
Contact tech support at support@webphotospro.com
Don’t panic, we’ve made backups of your album data. To fix this do the following:
- Quit Web Photos Pro. And don’t open it again until you have finished the following steps, as doing so will create new backups (overwriting good backups).
- Look inside /Application Support/WebPhotosPro/Backups/. Inside you’ll see backups of each of your workspace files, named by backup date.
- Starting with the most recent backup of the workspace you’re having problems with, do the following:
- Open the backup file with a text editor (bbedit, textedit, etc.) (NOTE: NEVER SAVE THE FILE with the text editor, just use it to look at the data in the file)
- Look at the data in the file, it will have a header section, followed by three dashes (- - -) followed by data for each album in the workspace (with - - - in between each album).
- If the most recent backup doesn’t have the albums you expect, then open the next most recent backup. And so on, until you find the albums you expect.
- Once you find a backup that has the data you expect, close the text editor, and copy the backup file up one level to the /WebPhotosPro/ folder.
- Now, return to the /Application Support/WebPhotosPro/ folder, and rename the bad workspace file to [workspace-name].ppro.bad (e.g. My First Workspace.ppro.bad).
- Rename the backup workspace file [workspace-name].ppro (e.g. My First Workspace.ppro).
- Start up Web Photos Pro, and you should see all your albums restored.
- Quit Web Photos Pro. And don’t open it again until you have finished the following steps, as doing so will create new backups (overwriting good backups).
- Can I use Web Photos Pro to make my gallery on a hard drive and then burn it to a CD?
Yes. You can use “Save Album To Disk” to save a single album, or “Save All Albums To Disk” to save a complete gallery, that can be burned to a CD.
Here’s how:
- Go to the “Photo Galleries” preferences panel. Click “New” and name the photo gallery whatever you want. For the purposes of this tutorial, let’s assume you name it “Burn To CD". Accept the default values for everything else.
- Return to the List of Albums window. Select a photo album that you want to burn to CD, then choose “Burn To CD” (or the name you’ve given your gallery) from the “Photo Gallery:” popup menu.
- Create a folder on your desktop. Name it “Save Album In Here” (the name is unimportant).
- Return to the List of Albums window. Select the photo album you’re burning to CD and choose “Save Album To Disk” from the “Albums” menu.
Choose “Local Links” from the first dialog.
Choose the “Save Album In Here” folder you created on your desktop as the location to save the album.
- After it’s done, Web Photos Pro will automatically open the folder in the Finder (Explorer on Windows).
Double-click on the index.html file to open the album in your web browser. Navigate around the site – all links are local to the top-level index.html file.
(Note: I just noticed there’s an error in the built-in Style 2 where the images don’t open correctly because of an incorrect javascript link – this will be fixed in the next rev of Web Photos Pro, v1.1.1.)
- If you want to create a CD with multiple albums, you will need to choose the “Burn To CD” photo gallery (or whatever you’ve named your photo gallery) from the “Photo Gallery:” popup for each album. When you’ve done that, choose “Save All Albums To Disk” from the “Albums” menu – this will tell Web Photos Pro to output all of the albums in the gallery.
- Before actually shipping these saved albums on a CD you’ll probably want to do the following:
- Rename the Photo Gallery.
If you’ve followed the instructions above to the letter, your web pages will have “Burn To CD” as the name of the photo gallery at the top of each page – this probably isn’t what you want. To fix this, return to the “Photo Galleries” preferences panel, and rename the gallery. After you changed the gallery name, you will need to select this new name from the “Photo Gallery:” popup menu on each album you’re saving to disk.
- Remove the RSS and PhotoRSS icons.
You probably don’t need or want the RSS and PhotoRSS icons on each page. To turn them off, go to the “PhotoRSS” preferences panel, and uncheck the “Gallery pages” and “Album pages” checkboxes (in the “On these pages:” area).
- Add a copyright to each page.
There are two ways to add copyright data to your pages. You can write your own, or you can choose a Creative Commons license.
To write your own, go to the “PhotoRSS” preferences panel, and enter your copyright information in the “Copyright” field. This field can contain HTML.
If you’d prefer a Creative Commons license, choose the one you want from the “HTML:Skin” preferences panel. (The downside to choosing a Creative Commons license is Web Photos Pro creates a link to the Creative Commons icon on their website, and if your CD users aren’t connected to the internet, there will be a missing image icon on all of your pages.)
- Remove the “Made With Web Photos Pro” logo.
The “Made With Web Photos Pro” logo links to an image on the Web Photos Pro website. If your CD users are not connected to the internet, there will be a missing image icon on all of your pages. To remove the Web Photos Pro logo from your pages, uncheck the “Show “Made With Web Photos Pro” logo” checkbox on the “HTML:Skin” preferences panel.
- Test.
Go to ever page. Try every link. Make sure it works correctly (and if it doesn’t let me know, and I’ll fix it right away).
- Rename the Photo Gallery.
- Go to the “Photo Galleries” preferences panel. Click “New” and name the photo gallery whatever you want. For the purposes of this tutorial, let’s assume you name it “Burn To CD". Accept the default values for everything else.
- Is there a Wordpress plug-in available?
Yes. You can find out more here.
- If I purchase Web Photos Pro Server Edition, do I still need to purchase a copy of Web Photos Pro for each person who is uploading photos?
The simple answer is yes.
The longer answer is that Web Photos Pro and Web Photos Pro Server Edition are two different products. Web Photos Pro is an image organization and upload tool that runs on your Mac or PC. When used without Web Photos Pro Server Edition, it allows you to produce static photos albums. When used in conjunction with Web Photos Pro Server Edition, it allows you to create dynamic albums with features such as search, tagging and private albums. The bottomline is that each person who will be uploading photos to your Web Photos Pro Server Edition web server(s), must purchase their own copy of Web Photos Pro. - Sorry, I’m unable to find the iPhoto XML file “/AlbumData.xml”
You’re on the iPhoto preferences panel, you’ve clicked “Get My iPhoto Albums", and this dialog appears:
The problem is that Web Photos Pro can’t find your default iPhoto library (most likely because it’s not set properly in iPhoto’s own preference file).
To fix this, you need to tell Web Photos Pro where your iPhoto library is. Here’s how:
- Go to the Web Photos Pro iPhoto Preference panel
- Hold down the OPTION and SHIFT keys, and click on the “Refresh My iPhotos Albums” button. An open file dialog will appear, asking you to select your iPhoto Library directory. Select the directory /User/[your user name]/Library/Pictures/[???] where [???] is the name of your iPhoto library.
- A debugging window will appear, and Web Photos Pro will read the library you selected.
- If there were any errors, please copy and paste the output in the debugging window in an email to me at support [at] webphotospro.com, otherwise you’re set to use Web Photos Pro.
- Go to the Web Photos Pro iPhoto Preference panel
- How do I use Web Photos Pro with LiveJournal (Live Journal)?
See this blog entry for details on how to use Web Photoso Pro 1.2.1 (or later) with LiveJournal.
