Thoughts on Coppermine 1.5.6

[pols1337]

My gallery is located at: http://universeofmen.com/cpg15x_tm/index.php
(Please note that the gallery is semi-NSFW Not Safe for Work, and contains pictures of hot guys)

I wanted to tell the development team of Coppermine what an extraordinary job they did with the software.  I am not the most tech oriented person at all, so I was kind of hesitant installing Coppermine (I'm the guy who managed to 'break' my WordPress blog twice before getting it to install).  Coppermine installed beautifully, and it was up and running in no time.  I am proud to include "Powered by Coppermine" at the bottom of my gallery since I think everybody should know about this great piece of gallery software, and I plan on deploying it across my website for three more galleries. 

I love Coppermine so much, I'm taking the time to tell you what I like about it (and also some thoughts of what I think can be improved).  Please note that I have no idea about the technical requirements and amount of work that has gone into Coppermine, but I do truly appreciate the incredible commitment and dedication you all have to Coppermine.  I'm proud to be "powered by Coppermine."

What I Like:
- Wizard install - this was nice.  Very nice.  For non-technical people like me who just want a great gallery system and don't have the background to understand programming, it was nice to walk step by step through the installation process and have the Wizard walk me through it. 
-Documentation - your documentation is very robust and "Getting Started" is a must read.  Sometimes I think the documentation overall can be overwhelming for the new user like me, but it's definitely good and comprehensive and I plan on reading it in its entirety eventually.
- Drag and drop of albums - I think I read somewhere on the forums that this was a suggestion.  It was a good suggestion!  It's so easy to move around albums inside categories. 
- Batch upload - Thank goodness you have this functionality.  I need to upload hundreds of pics, and I would /wrist if I had to do it individually.  The entire batch upload interface is very nicely done, from the selection of folders to adding keywords. 

What I think can be improved:
- Themes and customization - to be honest, this was probably the biggest hesitation I had about using Coppermine.  To casual (non-programming) people like me, I don't really understand the difference behind Coppermine, or 4images, or Menalto Gallery, or Zen Photo.  They're all gallery software, but what I do understand is what themes are available, and which ones look good.  So if I can a constructive suggestion: the ability for people to add their own image or change text through the Admin panel.  In other words, please please please don't make me go to my CSS style sheet, or ask me to modify my Header / Footer file.  Because the first thing I'm going to do is open my WYSIWYG editor, and try to do it in there, and probably end up breaking Coppermine! 
- Keyword auto-fill - I have no idea if this is even possible, BUT it would be so cool and useful!  When you start typing a keyword for a category, album, or picture, it will try to auto-fill the rest of the word.  This provides a much easier way to ensure consistency of keywords than opening up the keyword dictionary and selecting it from there.  Once again, this is a wish, not a must-have.
- Pagination effect for scrolling albums - This is another wish, not a must-have, and very low on my wish list.  I don't know how to quite describe it, but let's say you have 40 albums in a category but your Home only shows 2 rows of 4 columns each = 8 albums.  Currently, when you want to view the next set of eight albums, you click on "2" to view the next set.  What would be nice is if the set of 8 albums "scrolled" smoothly to the left. 

As you can tell, my suggestions are superficial and visual in nature.  I think that's a testament to Coppermine - the "core" functionality is rock-solid and everything works behind the scenes.  I just wish there would be easier methods of customization directly available in the Admin / Config. 

Anyways, Coppermine is a beautiful piece of software and I love it.  Thanks for all of your hard work. 

-Joel / universeofmen.com 

[Αndré]

- Themes and customization - to be honest, this was probably the biggest hesitation I had about using Coppermine.  To casual (non-programming) people like me, I don't really understand the difference behind Coppermine, or 4images, or Menalto Gallery, or Zen Photo.  They're all gallery software, but what I do understand is what themes are available, and which ones look good.  So if I can a constructive suggestion: the ability for people to add their own image or change text through the Admin panel.  In other words, please please please don't make me go to my CSS style sheet, or ask me to modify my Header / Footer file.  Because the first thing I'm going to do is open my WYSIWYG editor, and try to do it in there, and probably end up breaking Coppermine! 

Maybe we can provide a customizable theme, where you can set these values. The advantage of this complicated theme engine is the flexibility. If you just can change the color, font face and size and maybe some other parameters, almost all galleries looks equal.

- Keyword auto-fill - I have no idea if this is even possible, BUT it would be so cool and useful!  When you start typing a keyword for a category, album, or picture, it will try to auto-fill the rest of the word.  This provides a much easier way to ensure consistency of keywords than opening up the keyword dictionary and selecting it from there.  Once again, this is a wish, not a must-have.

Should be quite easy with a simple Ajax request. But we already have the keyword list where you can select the keywords. Valid suggestion though.

- Pagination effect for scrolling albums - This is another wish, not a must-have, and very low on my wish list.  I don't know how to quite describe it, but let's say you have 40 albums in a category but your Home only shows 2 rows of 4 columns each = 8 albums.  Currently, when you want to view the next set of eight albums, you click on "2" to view the next set.  What would be nice is if the set of 8 albums "scrolled" smoothly to the left. 

Could also be achieved by using ajax. I think we'll focus on ajaxification for the next Coppermine release. But I cannot decide that on my own


Moving this thread to the feature requests board.

[pols1337]

Thanks for your reply and consideration.  It's much appreciated.

http://universeofmen.com/torvusmollis/index.php
(Gallery NSFW - contains pictures of hot guys)

Joel / pols1337