Private Client gallery ?

[RaptorUK]

Hi,  I'm currently using Coppermine 1.2.1 as a test Gallery and plan to upgrade my main Gallery to 1.3.3 soon and eventually 1.4 . . . . 

The reason for my post is to ask what is the best way to implement the following:

I want to have private Client galleries where a client can see the pictures I have taken for them and buy prints, each Client would have username and password access only to their spedcific gallery.  The "buy prints" bit I have already coded using Photobox & Printbutton,  the bit I am having difficulty with is making the Client gallery private.  So far I have used User galleries and this seems to work but I really want to hide the User galleries category so that users don't know how many User/Client galleries I have . . .  so a User would log on and would access their gallery via the "My Gallery" link instead of the "User gallery" category link.

Does this make sense so far ?   

Can this be done via configuration in versions 1.2.1 or version 1.3.3 ? If it can what have I missed ?   If not how would I change the code in version 1.3.3 to hide the User Gallery category ?

thanks in advance.

[RaptorUK]

OK,  no suggestion ?  I think I have one,  I have made some code changes (not nice or elegant changes BUT simple ones) that seem to work for me on version 1.2.2,  basically the change "hides" the "User galleries"  category,  done a little testing and it seems to work well.  I'm going to apply the same/similar mod to 1.3.3 and see if it still works,  if it does I'll post it to the mods/hack section in the hope that a kind person who knows PHP  (I certainly DO NOT)  can make my change a little more elegant . . . 

[Joachim Müller]

afaik there's no such thing as cpg1.2.2

As you'll be the one who uploads pics, I recommend not using "user galleries" at all, but "regular" categories and albums. Apply the built-in permission mechanisms of coppermine.

Joachim

P.S. This is not a hotline, read http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/faq.php#lamesupport

[RaptorUK]

Joachim

Thanks for your comments . . .

OK,  I made a typo in my 2nd post,  it should read 1.2.1 .

I was trying to feedback something that might be useful to others,  of course since upgrading to 1.3.3 I have found that it does exactly what I needed with "User galleries",  the hours I spent modiing 1.2.1 are not a complete wast of time,  at least I learnt a litttle PHP   

By using "regular" categories and albums I guess you mean creating new groups,  1 for each user and restrict access by group ? Using User Galleries means I just have to create the new user rather than a new user and group . . . or am I missing something about your suggestion ?


P.S. I know   

[Joachim Müller]

By using "regular" categories and albums I guess you mean creating new groups, 1 for each user and restrict access by group ?

Yes, this is what I was suggesting. "User galleries" are fine for most people running coppermine, but if you need more granular permissions or display options, you should use the "public categories" instead. There are drawbacks in the current concept of permissions and so on in coppermine, they are there for historical reasons. The dev team is discussing improvements for future versions (although this won't improve your current situation, sorry).

[RaptorUK]

Joachim

I took your good advice and have deleted the User Galleries and created a new category called "Client galleries".  This has a distinct advantage in that Users cannot delete images or albums from this category,  they could delete images and albums from their User gallery     also using User galleries made it a little messy for me to add albums and images . . .

Outside of Coppermine I have set file and folder permissions on the directory that holds the images for the new Client gallery,  it does mean that a user has to log on twice, once for Coppermine and once to get file acces,  but this is a small price to pay for added security.

thanks for your help