Question about Coppermine features before Choosing Solution/Installing.

[WoWAddict]

  Hello,

I run a website for a gaming guild.  I would like a gallery that allows users to upload screenshots from the game (jpg) up to the webserver and then hopefully at given intervals the screenshots would be converted to specific sizes and thumbnails and presented.  I know a lot of sites out there are doing this but I'm not sure if Coppermine is the right choice....so far from what I read it looks like the members can upload the images but it's up to the admin to kick off a process to build the updated gallery.

Is my plan possible with Coppermine?  OR do I have to manually kick off the batch conversion process?

Thanks Ahead of time.
Rob

[artistsinhawaii]

As the Administrator, you can upload by FTP in batches, restricted only by your website's bandwidth, timeout, and filesize restrictions. You can then "batch add" these files to appropriate albums.  In order to prevent bottlenecking if too many users try to upload files at the same time, your users are restricted to uploads by HTTP. You determine how many files they can upload at one time.  Users can create their own albums in the shared "users category" only.  You can set permissions for individual albums in other categories, that YOU have created, for users to upload into, as well.

If you set permissions in Coppermine for users to upload and create images without admin intervention, Coppermine will automatically resize the uploaded image and create the necessary thumbnails and intermediate views and place them into the album specified by the user and make them available for public viewing.

Dennis

[WoWAddict]

Thank you for the information.  That's great news.  I took the plunge and got it all working except the GD part.  Im using a Windows 2003 server with IIS6 and my PHPBB install didn't include the GD dlls needed.

Is it better for me to use Imagemagick or should I get the GD library?  From what I've read here Imagemagick is a more complicated method....however when I go to get GD from the author's site I see in their news that if you download 2.0.33 for use on an Windows server all your applications need to be recompiled?

If I choose to use GD do I need to recompile Coppermine???  I know you can choose GD 1.0 or 2.0 in the config panel...is that what they are talking about?

Thanks again.
Rob

[Stramm]

ImageMagick is easy to install on win systems.
But win php binaries usually have gd2 included. Check your php.ini if the module is enabled (has nothing to do with your phpbb, we're taking about php here)

[WoWAddict]

Oh duh.  I was looking in the wrong place.  I'm still real new at this just coming off of installing phpbb (was the first I ever even heard of php) I got focused on looking for the files in those directories instead of the underlying php installation.

If I have any issues I'll try Imagemagick!

[Joachim Müller]

go for GD, it's really easier to get it working. Take a look at our FAQ.

[WoWAddict]

I'm not having any luck finding GD.  Every time I find the download I don't see the dll that is referenced in the php.ini file.

;extension=php_exif.dll
;extension=php_fdf.dll
;extension=php_filepro.dll
extension=php_gd2.dll
;extension=php_gettext.dll
;extension=php_hyperwave.dll
;extension=php_iconv.dll
;extension=php_ifx.dll

Am I missing something?  On Boutells page it says:

WARNING: AS OF GD 2.0.24, THE WINDOWS DLL HAS BEEN CHANGED IN A WAY THAT REQUIRES RECOMPILING EXISTING APPLICATIONS. This does NOT affect your program if you are NOT on Windows or you are NOT using bgd.dll. It does NOT affect your program if you have already rebuilt it for gd 2.0.24 or higher.

Then for the download GD states on their site:
Version 2.0.33 (Stable) Support gd development!
Mugs, T-shirts and mousepads available!

Documentation
Supported out of the box in PHP 4.3.x and 5.x 
Windows DLL .zip (NOT CURRENTLY FOR PHP)
Download .tar.gz
Download .zip

So I'm totally stumped.  I can't seem to find any directions for setting up the GD library except go get GD and install it.

So then I found an installer for GD and non of those dlls look like the one in the php.ini above.

[artistsinhawaii]

You may want to simply download and reinstall the latest stable version of PHP.  GD2 should already come bundled in the latests version.

http://www.php.net/install.windows

Dennis

[WoWAddict]

  Wow was this a pain to get working.

In the process of upgrading PHP4.x to PHP5.x I broke my PHPBB2 system.  After some hours of digging I found a workaround to fix my bbs system & phpgallery works now too.  Some of the docs are not very clear where to copy the dll extension files so eventually after a lot of experimentation where they get placed etc.  I got everything to work.

Thanks for the help.