SPGM - Simple Picture Gallery Manager
======================================
Install.txt v1.4.7
- INSTALLATION GUIDE -
CONTENTS
=========
1 Requirements
2 SPGM set up procedure
3 Gallerie creation
4 Integration into websites
5 Layout configuration
6 How can I make my own theme ?
1 - Requirements
================
A website that is able to run PHP scripts (PHP4)... and a few pictures !
2 - Set up procedure
====================
That is a pretty easy step. Just uncompress the SPGM distribution you have
just downloaded and upload the spgm directory to your website, using your
favorite FTP client.
Your gallery will then be reachable through the following URL:
http:// your-website-url /spgm/index.php
SPGM can be run as a standalone application (as it is out of the box)
or as part of a template (your website, CGI wrappers, CMS like PHPNuke, etc.).
If displaying your pictures is just what you're looking for, don't change
anything, you've got the URL. You can edit the index.php file though, to change
your gallery title, update the HTML headers and so on...
If you want to integrate a picture gallery into your already-existing website
instead, refer to section "Integration into websites", below.
Important:
* Make sure each file is readable and each directory is readable/executable
by SPGM (644 and 755 permissions are often required)
* if the script keeps displaying the listing of the gal directory, whatever
you try to do, your PHP interpreter may not register the parameters passed
in the URL as global variables. You need to edit the spgm.php then, to
change the REGISTER_GLOBALS constant's value to false
* some servers used to require a .php3 extension... Renaming the php files is
then mandatory
3 - Gallery creation
====================
Galleries are merely directories which contain pictures and/or sub-galleries
(sub-directories). They are to be put in the gal directory and may be
captioned by inserting among their content a "gal-desc.txt" text file
containing whatever you want (even PHP code). They can also be previewed using
icons, pre-defined thumbnails, or even random thumbnails. Refer to the
"Gallery icon type" section in spgm.conf (gal/ directory) to see how to proceed.
Pictures are .jpg / .png / .gif files which must be associated to a thumbnail
(use your favorite tool for thumbnail edition), and possibly to a caption.
The thumbnail filename is the picture filename prefixed by "_thb_"
(e.g. pic01.jpg, _thb_pic01.jpg).
Captions for pictures from the same gallery are stored in a single
"pic-desc.txt" file (1 picture caption per line, continue on the next line(s)
with '>' as the first character if needed). This file can be used to set
captions for both pictures and thumbnails, and looks like this :
_thb_Tux.jpg | This is a caption for Tux's thumbnail.
Tux.jpg | This is a caption for Tux's picture.
>Still descripting Tux.jpg, and now :
> here is a link.
...
Moreover, pictures and galleries can be sorted using several options (creation
date, filenames, explicit sort using simple text files)...
Refer to spgm.conf for a complete description of those sort options.
Important:
* do not put picture/thumbnail comments on the first line of the pic-tesc.txt
file if you use the UTF-8 encoding.
* a gallery name (i.e. its directory name) must not include quotes/double
quotes, nor whitespaces (use the undescore character instead, which will
be rendered as a whitespace; ex: My_first_gallery).
For gallery names using special characters (accentuated characters,
apostrophes, symbols...), put the title on the first line of a
"gal-title.txt" text file, located within the gallery.
* remember that the pictures must be readable by everybody and the galleries
must be readable/executable by everybody
* don't put pictures directly in the gal directory, they won't be displayed
anyway
Tips:
* William Denniss wrote a very useful tool (Java JRE 1.4 required) that
automates thumbnail generation and caption assessment...
[http://tanksoftware.com/gallmage/]
* I use the nconvert program (which comes along with the excellent XnView
[www.xnview.com]) and a batch script ("tools" directory) to generate
thumnails under windows
* it is better to maintain the original picture's ratio when generating
thumbnails and to make all of them the same fixed height
4 - Integration into websites
=============================
If you want to integrate SPGM into you website, follow these instructions.
Let's say your want to call spgm from your main page, index.php and that SPGM
is installed in a directory named 'spgm-xxx' (index.php and spgm-xxx reside at
the same level).
Considering that index.php handles the general layout of your website and puts
many categories' content within it, as the following scheme:
URL param | param value | pointed page
--------------------------------------
id about information about the site
id bio your biography
id gallery your picture gallery
...then your URL looks like:
http://yourname.free.fr/index.php?id=about
To make SPGM work from within your website, you'll have to edit spgm.php with
a text editor and update the following constants (located at the beginning of
the file) :
- DIR_GAL must be 'spgm-xxx/gal' (relative path to the gal directory
from index.php)
- DIR_LANG must be 'spgm-xxx/lang' (relative path to the lang directory from
index.php)
- DIR_THEMES must be 'spgm-xxx/themes' (relative path to the themes directory
from index.php)
Now, just require("spgm-xxx/spgm.php") wherever you want in your code.
5 - Layout configuration
========================
Each gallery can be applied a specific layout configuration which is defined
in a spgm.conf file.
A default configuration file is provided in the SPGM distribution (located
in the gal directory). Every property set for a gallery is inherited in all
its sub-galleries, which means that the default configuration will be
inherited in all your galleries.
You can override any property by putting another configuration file in the
desired gallery...
Here is the default configuration file which contains an exhaustive list of
the properties you can set (check out the file itself for each property's
role):
SPGM does also make the use of flavors (a.k.a. themes) to make it match your
whises. It comes with a flavor which is set by default. To change it, just go
to the flavor page (http://spgm.sourceforge.net/?lg=us&id=themes) and download
the one you're interested in. Unzip the package and put the resulting directory
in the SPGM flavor directory (i.e. spgm-xxx/flavors).
Then :
- edit spgm-xxx/gal/spgm.conf and change $spgm_cfg['conf']['theme'] to the new
flavor directory name (refer to spgm.conf for more details).
- edit spgm-xxx/index.php, locate the call to the flavor stylesheet
() and change
it according to the location of the new flavor's stylesheet
6 - How can I make my own flavor ?
==================================
The SPGM distribution includes a "flavors" directory where you can put your
flavors in.
A flavor is basically a directory containing the following resource files:
the spgm.thm file (mandatory), which initializes variables to get SPGM to
know which resources to use for galleries rendering, image files (optional),
and a stylesheet (optional).
The spgm.thm for the "default" flavor - which comes within the distribution -
looks like this (check out the file itself for each property's role):
Above is an exhaustive list of the variables you can set.
Note that you are not required to set all of these. Omitting variables
identifying icons will only result in a textual representation of what they
are supposed to display, whereas omitting the stylesheet only makes your
gallery graphically deprived.
Important:
* don't forget to begin and end the spgm.conf file by the
markers
* the resource files the variables refer to must be located in your flavor
directory (i.e. the same directory where spgm.conf is located in)
* the value assigned to the variables (which are filenames) and your flavor's
directory name must not contain any whitespaces nor quotes/double quotes