GALLERY DOCUMENTATION SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK NEEDED!
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justchil
Joined: 2003-02-07
Posts: 225 |
Posted: Thu, 2004-09-16 01:49
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I'm trying to get all the suggestions, feedback, comments, etc.. about the Gallery Documentation together. If you were confused or stuck at any step please let us know about it :D This will help us a great deal in the reconstruction of the Gallery Doc's. Below I'm going to start a list of things that should be included or considered for the next version of Gallery Doc's: - Screen Shots (of everything) |
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Posts: 13451
We also need better documentation for the various integrations. Geeklog, Mambo, the *Nukes, PHPBB2 and so on.
Also, the user guide could need a rewrite.
IIS documentation too.
Posts: 1301
justchil,
It's a lot of work - I wish you luck!
Gaile
Posts: 6
You guys have created some great software.
One of the biggest problems that I have run across when creating my family photo gallery, is explaining to other family members how to add photos and such. It isn't that difficult, but the "add photos" options don't reach out and slap you in the face, so I end up taking lots of time to explain things. It's not very intuative to the Grandma's and Great Uncles of the world. It's debatable whether this is a user interface design problem, or a documentation problem.
I was checking out the documentation and it seems that everything is focused on installation and to those who have somewhat of a technical knowledge about the project.
What I would like to see it a "Gallery for Dummies - End User Edition". Something for the not-so-computer-savvy people out there in the world. It would just contains the basics. Like creating an album, and uploading a photo. Just basic operations that non-administrators would do.
Keep up the great work!
Posts: 26
A suggestion where improved documentation might help: watermarks. I think this should start with a brief paragraph explaining exactly what a watermark is (an image, often semi-transparent, that is overlayed with an existing image.)
What happens to all three images (thumbnail, resized, original) when a watermark is applied.
A VERY quick explanation on how a watermark image might be created (or at least a link to someplace that describes it in the simplest of terms.)
BIG BOLD WARNINGS ABOUT WATERMARKS NOT BEING UNDOABLE...
Sizing suggestions on watermarks (ie: if my originals are 3000 x 2000 and my resized images are 800 on the longest side, what size watermark would be useful.. will gallery resize the watermark based on the image size its being applied to, etc.)
Thanks
Posts: 17
Documentation suggestion... When installing on a system with SELinux, add the steps listed in this post.
Posts: 13451
macemoneta, great! Would you mind adding that info as a user contributed note to the Linux installation docs? Thanks!
Posts: 17
OK, I submitted the contributed note to the Linux installation sections.
Posts: 13451
macemoneta, thanks! We'll try to incorporate it in next doc revision.
Posts: 4
Hi
First of all I'd like to thank you for sharing this gallery with us!
When I started my site I was chosing between this gallery and Coppermine. Gallery won, not because of the interface (because to be honest, Coppermine looks better), but because of the admin features.
I'm hosting a screencap site and at this moment the status is:
"5 top-level albums (326 total), 117669 images"
And this is where my problems start... I can't upload anymore. LOL
I was wondering where the problem is, but I figured it out. It's too big. I was already noticing that the gallery is getting really slow, but now it's too slow because it loads all information every time.
I've confirmed my idea by moving many albums to another dir by SSH for a moment and yeah, I could upload again then.
I think that the problem is that it isn't using MySQL. But that's also one of the good things about it.... I love the fact that I can easily find everything again in the albums... lol
So I guess it just needs some PHP script to make it faster, to not regain all information if it isn't needed and to be able to have it bigger. My gallery is over 2 gig at the moment, but the idea is to expand it even more... Will Gallery be able to do that? Or should I switch after all?
Posts: 13451
Rosely, kinda wrong thread to post in, but I'll answer anyway.
There is no builtin "limit" on the size of a Gallery install. My personal one is at about 4gb, and runs fine. Your imagecounts is huge though, much higher than mine.
Gallery 2 will adress these issues, and use a database backend.
Posts: 4
Hi h0bbel,
Thanks for answering me and sorry for wrong posting...
One little last question: when will Gallery 2 be released in stable version??
Thanks!
Posts: 13451
Rosely, G2 will be released "when it's ready (tm)." Expect a Beta release in a few weeks.
Posts: 2
The documented upgrade procedure for 1.x leaves a security hole: the file gallery-backup.tar.gz is left in a directory where it is very likely accessible via the web.
If someone were to download gallery-backup.tar.gz, they would have access to, among other things, the contents of the .users directory. While this wouldn't immediately lead to users' passwords (because of gallery's design), it would allow the passwords to be attacked by a tool similar to the crack program. (I must assume that such tools are easily available because writing one took me not much time at all)
The .users directory normally has an .htaccess file in it denying web access, and this is good. Upgrading gallery should not expose a copy of this directory to the web.
The upgrade procedure should mention the desireability of protecting the backup file, and should possibly include an appropriate chmod command. I haven't investigated the upgrade procedure of G2 thoroughly enough to know whether the .sql backup file left by that procedure is similarly accessible. (possibly not, because it seems that the directions would put the .sql file inside the gallery directory itself)
Posts: 2322
Our backup procedure (using backup_albums.php) is not a security hole.
A security issue ONLY exists if the user stores their tmp directory *inside* their webroot. If that's the case, then they're likely going to have security issues far beyond whether a user can locate their randomly generated backup file name.
If the tmp directory is not inside their web root, and they remove the backup script as we instruct, there's nothing for anyone to retrieve.
Posts: 2
That's nice to know. However, that's not what I was talking about - I was talking about the documented upgrade procedure for gallery 1.x which still recommends, despite what the release notes for the latest gallery 1.x say, that the user back up their gallery install like so:
tar -cz gallery > gallery-backup.tar.gzWhich almost certainly creates gallery-backup.tar.gz in a web-accessible location. (Most people upgrading gallery are unlikely to be upgrading to a -RC2 version. When the backup_albums.php script is officially released, and the standard documentation reflects that, fine. Until then...)
Also, the backup step recommended in the upgrade procedure for gallery 2.x makes no mention of using backup_albums.php. Instead, from what I can understand of the source, it suggests doing:
(Or a similar command for postgres)
You can make backup_albums.php as secure as you want, but unless users are told to use it in preference to methods that make backups available to the whole world, it doesn't matter. (Also, people should probably be warned if they have old gallery-backup.tar.gz files sitting around that they need to clean them out)
Posts: 1
I also highly reccomend including the docs for integrating with other programs like phpBB. That is the primary reason I want to use gallery, but there is no online doc for it.
Also, what script or program is used for the doocumentation, or can someone reccomend something similar that is not WIKI? I think it works well, will you be using the same script style.
JOhn
Posts: 15
i'd like to suggest that a glossary be put in. for example, i kept getting this error telling me to "chmod" something. i had to search for a definition and how to do it on google :/
Posts: 13451
pointy_kitty, while that is a valid complaint, it's very hard for us to maintain a "living library" of terms and howto's. I'll add this to the list of requests for the new documentation.
Posts: 65
I have a new userdoc that I am building and will be available in both .doc and .pdf. If you'd like a copy, I'll be glad to post it once it's complete.
-Patrick
Posts: 13451
pkarjala, please do. And PM me when you have, if it's as good as I hope it is we should post the contents of it on the new documentation site.
h0bbel - Gallery Team
If you found my help useful, please consider donating to Gallery
http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org
[img]http://www.sloganizer.net/en/image,gallery,white,black.png[/img]
Posts: 65
At this time the userdoc is finished, but I'm going through and removing the client-specific sections of the doc. It is also missing some content (polls, services) that the client wished to have disabled. Those will need to be filled in.
-Patrick
Posts: 13451
Excellent, if you hand it over do us, do you mind us working on it and publishing it on the documentation site? You will of course be given full credit for your work.
h0bbel - Gallery Team
If you found my help useful, please consider donating to Gallery
http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org
Posts: 65
Doc is complete, but too large to attach here; I'll put it on my personal hosting tomorrow.
-Patrick