Export albums to HTML for CD distribution

[Mich Buchanan]

I have a suggestion, it would be nice to add an option to export albums/galeries/categories to an HTML album (or maybe XML or something else) for CD/DVD distribution.

And thanks for your great gallery script!!!

[Joachim Müller]

Good point, I have added this to my ever-increasing todo-list.

GauGau

[Tarique Sani]

I have had this on my list as well for long....  The problem I have is how will the work and program flow will be....

1) Will it work only for albums, what if I want multiple albums?

2) How detailed will be the HTML (is HTML needed at all?)

3)  Where will the script be linked from?

4) Since this is going to be an export - I presume that it will be downloaded as a zip - creating large zips in memory like I currently do for downloading favs will surely kill the server for large albums

Comments welcome....

[Joachim Müller]

since this should be an admin option only imo, I guess it'd be enough to have a folder created within coppermine where all necessary html (with relative links to the pics inside the album folder) is created, leaving the pics at their place. Once the creation of the html code is finished, the admin is told to download the newly created folder and the albums dir by ftp and burn it to a CD (maybe plus one index.htm page that he has to put into the root of the CD).
I'll take a look on a website copier software like HTTrack and see how it will handle a large coppermine install, what the html it creates will look like.

GauGau

[Tarique Sani]

In that case the answer could be simpler - Have a theme which does not have the menu and / or admin menu / anyother blocks and no Home in breadcrumb

I know that wget -r -nc -np http://yourgallery.com/thumbnails.php?album=2 works great!! I am sure any website slurper will work great!!

So in case you want to allow slurping you upload that theme

On the other hand I don't get how we can just create/copy HTML and not copy the image thumbnails and it would still work....

Also soon users will want to be able to download their own albums...

I have been thinking how about modifying the download as Zip to include the directory hierarchy based on the category and albums...

For example if picture tarique.jpg is in album Family which is in the category People then the zip will have (and thus create) folders and files like

/People/Family/tarique.jpg

Similarly if  later I download a picture called gaugau.jpg which is in the Album CPG Devs in the category People the zip will have folders like

/People/CPG Devs/gaugau.jpg

I think if you have such a structure on you local hard disk creating an offline album using any of the available freeware / commercial gallery creators will be simple...

More comments welcome....

[Joachim Müller]

On the other hand I don't get how we can just create/copy HTML and not copy the image thumbnails and it would still work....

err yes, I didn't bear this in mind: people would have to download the contents of the albums folder as well to get the thumbs and intermediates :oops:

IMO there are two different reasons for people wanting to have an offline gallery on a CD:
• some just want the pics, no matter in what layout, to be able to give away slideshows to people who don't have acces to the internet or are on a slow connection.
• some (especially companies/professionals) will want to have the look and feel of their website their pics are embedded in as well[/list:u]maybe there will have to be different approaches for both of these groups.
  
  GauGau