I reckon that the SETUP / config in v 1.x absolutely stinks !
Imaging having to chmod 3 files every time you want to add / change something globally ! WORSE, whilst you are doing any mods, the gallery config is WIDE OPEN to anyone else that types in any existing Gallery URL ! Yeah, I know you can manually edit config.php, but then again why even have a HTML interface in the first place since this still requires FTP anyway ??
It is ***SO*** easy to chmod using script, and setup should at least have a PASSWORD on it so casual visitors can't get in while you are changing something ! It's a fairly trivial task to write a script that puts the gallery into "admin mode" then allows you (as super-admin) to log in and edit the Main Config via HTTP only... and when you log out it chmods everything back so it's secure ! Sheesh, you have to login as Admin to change albums etc, so the code to do it is already inside the core
Dunno why nobody's mentioned this recently... Sorry if it's an old and dead subject. But I hope like hell that v2.x has fixed this silly silly method of administering - I saw that some steps have been made to fix it, but dunno if these are finalised yet.
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Oh, and while I am complaining about the config - a **global** setting should affect ALL settings, not just any albums, thumbs added AFTER the change is made. Say I have a Gallery with a green background, then want to change the color to blue - I gotta change it in Main Config (for future albums) and then go into every single existing album and change it's color MANUALLY !
Basically what this means is that (as it is coded now) the heirachy of "reading" configs is backwards - the albums should contain config changes that are EXCEPTIONS to the global settings - and the script should read the GLOBAL settings first, then load the exceptions - and NOT the other way around ! There is absolutely no need to have a config file for each album, where the config is the same as the global setting (make sense?)
Sorry to be rude in the way I post these comments, but this really makes me angry setting up Gallery - I am constantly tweaking settings whilst I learn how it works and how best to make it fit into my site. These 2 issues are almost driving me to drink !
J