Any ideas or suggestions?

[cgc0202]

Hi,

I have installed previous versions of CPG before but I am slowly changing them new installs of CPG1.4.8 with the corresponding latest Stramm plug-in.  The stuff I summarized below, I observed in a number of the versions (although the tests and observations have not been systematic).

After trying to place many pictures in so many albums found in so many categories, plus activating the "key word" to place a single photo in multiple albums, I found the following:

• The appearance of a category page becomes very slow and reordering the categories get confusing.
• It is cumbersome for people to locate specific albums once the number of categories and albums exceed a hundred and there are albums with almost identical names. [Well, at least I get confused as the list gets very long.  To think that I prepared it, so it will be more confusing for others.
• For some reason, when I activate the "key word" to allow a photo to be included in multiple albums, there is a number of photos, about a few hundred when the speed of page appearance becomes noticeably slower.  A recent album for example only had a few hundred but it was slower than one with about 900 photos (where the "key word" was not activated in the latter).
• There are other that escape my mind right now, but I notice them when I am playing with the various websites.  I will share them in later posts in this thread.

For the above reasons, I have decided to install multiple CPG copies to subdivide the tens of thousands of photos I intend to include in my websites (subdomains/domains).  As a result also, I have decided to create a "pics" folder outside of each CPG, to have a common repository of pictures. The latter becomes all accessible to any of the CPGs created and the process works.  I am unsure though if this also affects the speed of page appearance.  I wonder if anyone else has extensive experience using this strategy.

Normally, I place the entire (downloaded CPG) into the main public album directory, and then rename the folder, e.g., "gallery1".  Since the public album has about 500 files and folders right now, I plan on creating a "gallery" folder in the public directory, so that the path of multiple galleries would be:

/.../gallery/gallery1/
/.../gallery/gallery2/
etc.

to avoid further cluttering the main public album with multiple CPGs.  I am curious if anyone has ever done this.  I wonder how it can potentially affect the speed of a "page appearance".  I will be trying this after I have posted this topic, but it may take several multiple CPGs before I really know how this will impact the photogallery.  I do not know how this would affect Vuud's Fetch module, since I will be using that a lot to create more specific presentation of photos, that I could not do with the CPG format itself.

Any comments or suggestions will be appreciated.  Thanks.

cgc0202

Recent Update:

I get an "error message"  during the installation when I use this format:
/.../gallery/gallery1/
/.../gallery/gallery2/
To paraphrase the error message: it states that I was trying to install the CPG in a Nuke portal???".  I do not have a Nuke software in the subdomain.  However, I proceeded as instructed, since the aforementioned message may appear (no explanation given), even if there is no Nuke. Everything with the installation proceeded as expected after that.

The aforement error message was not encountered before when the CPG was placed directly in the main public directory.

Second Update:

OK, installation worked, permissions were done accordingly, and an empty CPG website appeared correctly.  There were minor difficulties though in the "batch upload" and I will post it as a question in the support forum (and not here where I am soliciting suggestions and ideas).  The separate topic for the technical difficulty is found here:

http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=34575.0

[Joachim Müller]

Your posting probably goes ignored here, simply because it's so long and because you're asking people for advice on something coppermine-related on a board that isn't meant for support.
Could you reply with a short summary of your question?

[cgc0202]

Your posting probably goes ignored here, simply because it's so long and because you're asking people for advice on something coppermine-related on a board that isn't meant for support.
Could you reply with a short summary of your question?

Thanks GauGau. 

The bottom line, I found from my current experience with the software, instead of a single comprehensive CPG photogallery for each domain (that I have), it is more practical for a number of reasons to have multiple CPG photogalleries. For example, there are almost 200 different autonomous "states" in the world. Hypothetically, I may have to create one (1) CPG photogallery for each "state".

In terms of feasibility, I can do this by creating all the CPG photogalleries in the main public folder.  I have shown this to be possible already, when I create a few CPG photogalleries.  They can co-exist and work independently.  However, 100 CPG photogalleries would clutter the "public-html" directory.  It turned out there was a technical problem that resulted, if I place all the new CPG photogalleries inside one folder. i.e., ".../public-album/common/(CPG galleries)...".  I asked for technical help in another post (please see above).

In this no-support post, I just wonder if anyone has ever attempted to create multiple CPG photogalleries and what their experience and suggestions would be, if I attempt to do the same.  If no one has ever attempted it, then I have to find the solution myself, by trial-and-error, as usual.


cgc0202

[Joachim Müller]

200 sub-folders shouldn't be a problem imo, there are coppermine galleries that have more sub folders. Not sure what the question is.
After all, this is a matter of categorization: if you plan to have a folder for each country in the world and you can't have them all within one folder, then categorize, for example by continent: you'll then have five sub-folders for the continents and the country folders as sub-folder of your continents.

[cgc0202]

... After all, this is a matter of categorization: if you plan to have a folder for each country in the world and you can't have them all within one folder, then categorize, for example by continent: you'll then have five sub-folders for the continents and the country folders as sub-folder of your continents.

Thanks GauGau.  In fact, what you suggested is what I do right now, when I try to categorize the "albums" properly:
->continents: e.g.,  Europe
->->subregions: e.g., Western Europe
->->-> countries: e.g., Switzerland
->->->-> cantons (provinces or states): e.g., Bern
->->-> ->-> topics:  e.g., art museums
etc.
->->-> ->->-> (then finally albums)

The above is when I use one single CPG for the whole photogallery of countries of the world. The above approach is nice in theory.  In practice, it is very cumbersome and very slow.  I will not go deeper why I found that to be the case.  Thus, what I am  doing now is like this:
Layout A:
->public: (where public stuff, such as complete "programs" in their own directory, can be placed in the shared webhosting service I use)
>->photogalleries: CPG1, CPG2, CPG3, ... etc., CPGn (where CPGi is a complete Coppermine PhotoGallery program)

Layout A is the default format that is implied in the CPG Manual: mysite.com/public/CPG/(files and subdirectories of CPG), and the aforementioned layout works. However, Layout A has its own drawbacks. What I was trying to find out here with my original post in this thread was whether someone ever did multiple CPG photogalleries and tried this alternative layout:
Layout B:
->public:
->->PG: (where PG is a holding subdirectory for the photogalleries)
->->->photogalleries: CPG1, CPG2, CPG3, ... etc., CPGn

Anyway, what I stated in the "updates"  in the original post  is that after I posted it, I found out that Layout B: did not work and I have to retry it again some other time in the future, to find out why it did not work.  I will post a  separate "topic", to ask for technical help, in the appropriate section, once I know more why Layout B  did not work.

cgc0202

[Stramm]

Personally I wouldn't go the multi CPG route with an external site that's used as some sort of directory for that. Instead I'd use a single CPG with some logic in its category structure (as GauGau already suggested) and in addition to that I'd use my external homepage to link to certain points in that structure. In addition to that I'd use keywords and link to keywords as well.

To integrate Coppermine into the external page I'd use CPMFetch
http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?board=57.0

[cgc0202]

Sorry GauGau, Stramm for not responding so soon.

I have spent quite a bit of time trying to improve my  existing photogalleries, and have been away in the forums the past month. 

By the way, I am not placing my images in an external site.   Since I have several CPGs, I have just separated the photos in a separate directory from the individual CPGs.  There are a number of reasons for this, that I cannot discuss in detail here.  I am aware also of the drawbacks of multiple galleries.  For example, upgrading becomes an issue, if you have too many photogalleries.  But, considering the alternatives, I have no choice right now but follow this strategy.

I realize too that CPG is an open-software, and most projects are done on a voluntary basis. I must state that CPG is a good photogallery software, with many promising features.  That's why I decided to stick with CPG and try to find solutions to the issues I encountered.

To go back to the original idea, after working with the "latest" format of CPG, then 1.4.3 when I started (now 1.4.9), I realized the following, with the existing stable version of CPG:

• It is very time-consuming and very tedious to add more subcategories, once it gets more than a hundred.  Have you ever tried a thousand, or tens of thousands? Prof. Wilson of Harvard U, estimated that there are several billions of species of living organisms -- animals alone have more than 43,000 categories to classify them. The way it is structured right now, that will be a "mile-long" of categories to scroll in CPG, just to find the right main category.  If you make a mistake, and you are not using a default alphabetical category listing, try placing the misplaced new category into such list.


• I have observed carefully the random presentation of the images in CPG, with the albums I have created so far. I do not fully understand the logic.  Sometimes, there are multiple photos coming from the same album, but none from others.  It does not seem to be always dependent of the stastical weighting of the number of photos found in each album.


• There is also a case when weighted random presentation is not always desirable.  For example, for every one species of primates (which include man), there must be tens of thousands of insects, and millions of microorganisms.  Thus, if you plan to use CPG for taxonomic presentation of animals, the likelihood that you will see a primate will be very slim, in the random presentation.  The paliative solution I have for this right now, is to use Vuud's CPMFetch, for a more balanced but random presentation of main categories.  But CPMFetch is not a substitute for the possibilities in CPG.


• There are more that I have observed, but I can share those with you in private, if you are interested.

As pointed out by GauGau, in the thread of Vuud, there is a need to integrate   Vuud's CPMFetch into CPG not only for non-CPG pages, but within CPG itself.  One of the applications would be to adopt some of the features  CPMFetch as a alternative to simple random presentation, to address the issues I have raised above -- about more balanced but random presentation of the photos in different albums and categories -- especially of the photos in each of the albums or categories are not numerically the same.

As structured right now, CPG is optimal for "small scale" photogalleries, with minimal nested categories (perhaps  a hundred or so) and not a gazillion albums.  Basically, there are needs to make radical changes in the presentation and interactivity of the of CPG.  For example, categories and so with the albums, may benefit from "+"/"-", much like the way the "Config" has been created, but more complex, in order deal with very nested category applications.  There is a need for leap-frog rearrangements of categories, in a non-alphabetical presentation, instead of the current, one move at a time with the up and down arrows.

I presented many individual suggestions to solve these issues before -- in the "wish list" section of CPG.  I did not explain my ideas well enough then, so that most of my suggestions have been shot or considered to be existing features of CPG. 

[Joachim Müller]

A better category manager is being discussed/scheduled for future versions, as we're aware that it currently is not capable to handle huge galleries with hundreds (or even thousands) of galleries. However, no immediate solution available.

Joachim

P.S. I understand that you take your time to come up with your postings. However, they tend to be very long, making it hard to read them. Although I appreciate that you're trying to make your point absolutely clear, I'd ask you to use less words and go into less details in the future.

[cgc0202]

Thanks GauGau,

A better category manager is being discussed/scheduled for future versions, as we're aware that it currently is not capable to handle huge galleries with hundreds (or even thousands) of galleries. However, no immediate solution available.

Such advance would be very great GauGau.

P.S. I understand that you take your time to come up with your postings. However, they tend to be very long, making it hard to read them. Although I appreciate that you're trying to make your point absolutely clear, I'd ask you to use less words and go into less details in the future.

I am painfully aware of this GauGau.  Sorry. English is not my native tongue.  I even edit my stuff before I post them.

CGC