Clarifications and comments

[cgc0202]

Hello,

I have no problems with the installation of Coppermine.  I would like to commend whoever wrote the "Read me" because it was very clear, conversational and might I add, a person with a sense of humor too.

I have to confess, I first tried Gallery2 because it has the capabiility to control multiple databases (although I have not tried that yet). It has a full-screen slide show feature also that I find useful.  I had no problem installing Gallery2 either but it looks I really have to do a lot of changes to create a nice skin for it.  I decided to  give Coppermine another look since it would have been my other choice.  I like its many features -- multimedia, skin selection, and the mods like random pics that can be ported outside of Coppermine.

Sometime, these questions might have been asked before but I have not found the answers yet.

(1) Is a single Coppermine program capable of controlling multiple databases?

(2) Right now, I am creating the "writable" directory that I had to create inside the Coppermine directory itself.  I want to create the writable directory for pics that I upload as admin outside of the Coppermine directory. Can this be done?  This is partly in anticipation of a positive response to #1.  If not an available feature now, perhaps sometime in the future.

(3) As a demo for myself, to explore the features of Coppermine, I prepared a family album and created nested directories for each member really slowed the appearance of each interactive window.  We are a very big clan, and after I have reach about a couple of dozen main categories with subcategories within -- following a appropriate geneaology tree -- it became very slow and confusing during the search of individual categories -- to create albums and sort the pics..

I have not tried the KDE (http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=29497.0) that Aditya announced and I think that will help  address the aforementioned issue.  However, in the discussion about optimizing  requests (http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=15653.0)  I got the impression that as there are more users and more photos, the speed will also slow down significantly???  This is partly the reason why I want to have multiple databases instead. 

Right now, if the multiple database control is not possible with Coppermine, then I plan to install multiple copies of the software.  But, that is not a good strategy in the long run, because of the repeated process that need to be done during upgrade, modification of skins and multiple login for users.

CGC

[Nibbler]

What do you mean by 'multiple databases' ?

Please try to keep to 1 question per thread.

[cgc0202]

Hi,

Separate databases for example for "plants", another for "animals", then another for "countries of the world", special separate databases for "arts", etc., etc.

Even the above, I may subdivide them, for example if the site has tens of  thousands of the United States, I may want to have separate database the US (categories would be states, and major cities)

Then somewhere at the top,, if I have a gazillion of multiple databases, I will have a general index "A-Z" for  major topic (i.e., albums and categories from all the different databases)  so that a visitor can go from one subject to another more easily.

Right now, I plan to do that by installing multiple copies of the Coppermine.  This is an exaggeration but let us say I have installed 1,000 programs.  then the programs will occupy 10GB of diskspace already.  More important, if registration is required then that will require 1,000 registrations for each individual.  I do not think anyone will do that.

cgc0202

[Stramm]

I think you mean (in coppermine terms) categories and subcategories but not databases?
Then yes, you can create a category 'US' and in it subcategories 'states' and  'major cities' or 'states' and in it another subcategory 'major cities'
In each category you can/ have to create your albums (eg. in 'states' you create the album 'Utah')

[Joachim Müller]

if you actually meant databases, then the method to adress this issue (for very large galleries) would be to use an array of mysql servers with load balancing and query caching/optimisation. But, judging from what you have posted, I guess that Stramm is right and that you were in fact refering to categories.

[cgc0202]

I think you mean (in coppermine terms) categories and subcategories but not databases?
Then yes, you can create a category 'US' and in it subcategories 'states' and  'major cities' or 'states' and in it another subcategory 'major cities'
In each category you can/ have to create your albums (eg. in 'states' you create the album 'Utah')

Thanks Stramm & Gaugau,

Stramm -- what you are suggesting, is what I have been doing  (for years now) all other sites.  I have been doing that too also for my  photo Galleries.

As I stated in another post: http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=30588.0  there are practical limitations to subcategories. To give one example, try applying that to the complete taxonomy of living things or a genealogy (family) website where there are already n-generations. 

One of my relatives said, she could not find her personal album in our Family website -- hers was burried in the third level of subcategories, with a number of primary categories.  We are a very huge clan, and I used our family album to test how people behave when search a photogallery using multiple layers of subcategories.  And, I have already tried it in several versions, the resulting CPG-base photogallery using a two-level category showing does not look very nice in my opinion -- that was why I posted

http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=30588.0

Many scientific studies have shown  that most people stop their searches after the "first page", not exactly the same as in photoalbums.

Anyway, what I do now is like this:

cpg001 -> photogallery 001 (e.g., US museums)

cpg002 -> photogallery 002 (e.g., ecosystems: general)

cpg003 to cpg006 (taxonomic classification of plants, animals, microorganisms)

cpg007 -> photogallery 003 (e.g., arts)

etc., etc.

where cpg refers to a complete Coppermine software.  If I do it  this way, visitors would have to register and login for each -- which is not practical, knowing how people usually behave.

I have not tried it yet, but programs, such as TikiWiki, are able to control multiple and independent databases -- simplifying the issue of registration and login, upgrade issues, etc.

GauGau -- I am not tech-savvy enough to administer what you suggested.  I use webhosting service right now for that reason.  It would be too costly to implement what you suggested using a webhosting service.

cgc0202

[Joachim Müller]

setting up different instances of coppermine just to accomplish a clean layout of the start page would be overkill, I wouldn't recommend that at all. Just create the category structure as you have them right now, with an overview page on the index that tells users where they need to go. You can use anycontent for that particular purpose, or you could use the MiniCMS plugin. Another option would be to display more of the nested categories on the index page (root) by modifying http://coppermine-gallery.net/demo/cpg14x/docs/index.htm#admin_album_category-levels