An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

developr · 2012-04-11 11:55:07

Hello all,

After using Textpattern for my own site, i made a portfolio site for a new artist, Beat John. www.beat-john.ch (German), is online since end of february 2012. Design created by Martine Rhyner.

It makes heavy use of jQuery and the ColorBox (Lightbox) plugin. The gallery is rendered by a self-made Textpattern-plugin, wich also creates and handles the gallery urls.

It is made with Textpattern 4.4.1 and ten additional plugins. Some of them are well known:

rss_admin_db_manager (a really indispensable plugin)
soo_plugin_pref (used by my own plugins)
upm_image (used in section “ausstellungen”)
rah_metas
rah_sitemap

The rest are my own creations:

abl_robots (a really simple editor for robots.txt)
abl_flex_gallery (gallery frontend rendering)
abl_flex_image (gallery admin)
abl_flex_lib (common library for the gallery and image plugins)
abl_uploadify (multiple image uploader for the image plugin, based on Uploadify)

I wonder what others might think about…

jakob · 2012-04-11 15:16:00

Grüezi developr!

Interesting. Shades of Serra and Chillida in some of the metalwork pieces.

It sounds like you have a nice system setup there and your url scheme adds a bit more to txp’s own with the galleries.

Nice to see some new plugins too. Any chance you can elaborate on your abl_flex_image/gallery/uploadify plugins? Is there a chance you would you be releasing them? I have a project where they could potentially be useful :-)

developr · 2012-04-11 19:29:57

Hallo jakob,

Many thanks for the rewiew!
It is really a tiny setup. The complete installation uses only 20 MB out of 20 GB webspace… :)

Nice that you are interested in my plugins! I plan to release them, but it is still a work in progress. Originally, i wanted to publish it last november. Then, i have realized that there is a lot more work needed before it is ready for the public.

Here are some infos about it:

Images are stored in separate folders outside of the standard images-folder (it works side-by-side with all other plugins that uses the standard images-folder)
Multilingual (metadata is currently stored in text-files, not in the db)
Fully ajax driven user interface (jQuery/jQuery UI), including drag/drop upload of multiple files for new browsers. The Uploadify plugin can be used for older browsers.
Uses textpattern forms with special placeholders for the frontend rendering. This way it can produce the required markup for many different lightboxes, sliders and other jQuery gallery plugins.
Can render the gallery in a separate section, or as part of an article (as done in Beat John’s site)

Is that interesting for you?

els · 2012-04-11 19:41:17

developr wrote:

Is that interesting for you?

Not only for jakob! I’m looking forward to your plugins’ release. And I like the site, and the artist’s work :)

jakob · 2012-04-11 22:17:34

Thanks for the background infos. From what you write, it sounds like it’s specially for self-contained galleries that are separate from textpattern’s other organisational methods. That does sound interesting and I can think of situations where that could be quite useful. For the site I was thinking of, I am looking to integrate images and articles more tightly, which is probably the opposite concept.

If the images are stored in a different folder with their own structure – and you have a dropmark-style drag and drop to upload ui – I guess you have an own admin pane to manage them in. While the textpattern image pane is okay for managing pictures, I’ve always longed for a grid layout that could be sorted and grouped into albums etc. In the past I’ve used a separate gallery system (the sadly now nearly defunct photostack) and styled the admin areas to look similar. Maybe your solution offers a good half-way house. I’d be really interested to see what the admin-side looks like.

developr · 2012-04-12 11:08:55

Thanks Els! I am happy that others like the site. I like Beat’s work too, he has some interesting ideas. Some of the metal sculptures are changeable for example. Parts of it can be moved to give it another look.

I am working hard on the plugins, but they are quite complex. It needs some time…

jakob wrote:

it sounds like it’s specially for self-contained galleries that are separate from textpattern’s other organisational methods.

Yes. The plugins are based on a stand-alone implementation and use the same storage mechanism for the images and the metadata. However, the Textpattern gallery-plugin can be used in two ways. As a stand-alone tag for rendering a single gallery section or embedded into an article. On Beat’s site the tag is embedded in articles. This way, the gallery urls are appended to the base article url scheme. I am not shure if that is thight enough for your project.

I guess you have an own admin pane to manage them in.

The image-plugin is the admin pane. Until now it was a simple table display without paging. But i am working on a true grid integration right now. Before a few weeks, i found an interesting jQuery grid-plugin (datatables). This works well in my development environment and adds nice things like paging and dynamic column sorting.

Currently the admin pane has three views: The gallery-view shows a list of albums (folders) while the album-view shows a list of images along with its metdata. The third view are image profiles (thumbnail definitions). The grids are editable and there are also a number of jQuery-UI dialog popups, e.g. for adding descriptions and keywords. I don’t know anything about photostack, so i am not shure if it is comparable to that.

But the new drag-drop upload facility seems to be similar to dropmark. Basically, you can drop one or more images on an area an they will be uploded and thumbnailed immediatly. It is based on the DOM File API and works at least with Firefox and Chrome.

I’d be really interested to see what the admin-side looks like.

I can send you some screenshots if you like.

jakob · 2012-04-12 13:56:38

Thanks for the additional infos. I guessed from the URL structure, that you were inserting the gallery into an article.

I am not shure if that is thight enough for your project.

For my project, I can see it won’t fit because I need to have many more fields and sorting/categorisation options that are only available in articles, so I need to tie in adding images to articles very tightly. But that doesn’t matter, your setup is definitely a good idea. Sounds like it’s perfect for galleries that are self-contained entities and don’t need complex searching or filtering.

I don’t know anything about photostack…

Just for info a few screenshots of the admin area. Photostack also stores all its data in flat files but it’s an entirely separate setup.

i found an interesting jQuery grid-plugin (datatables).

Yes, I’ve used datatables before on this site. I’m not sure how well it scales to large numbers of entries because you have to load the entire dataset in the source but for smaller quantities it’s fine.

But the new drag-drop upload facility seems to be similar to dropmark. Basically, you can drop one or more images on an area an they will be uploded and thumbnailed immediatly. It is based on the DOM File API

Excellent, that makes uploading so easy.

developr · 2012-04-12 15:47:00

I think i see the point now. You need that images and articles are tied together in the admin ui. If that is the case, then it won’t fit. The admin side of the flex-image-plugin is a tab under content, like the original images tab. There is no real connection or relation on the admin side between articles and albums or images.

I never thought to relate articles and images on the admin side. But this is a very interesting idea. At the moment, i dont know how to do that, but it’s definitely worth thinking about.

Sounds like it’s perfect for galleries that are self-contained entities and don’t need complex searching or filtering.

Yes. Searching and filtering are currently not the strongest point in my plugins. Perhaps i enable this on the admin side, because it is possible with the datatables grid. According to the datatables website, it is also able to handle large datasets, but this requires using the server-side processing options. In my case, the amount of data is limited, so i use it like shown in the ajax source example.

Thanks for the Photostack screenshots. This seems to be a far more complex gallery software than my plugins. For example, there is no image editing and nested albums are currently not possible.

Excellent, that makes uploading so easy.

Definitely! It cannot be simpler… And it makes it possible to style the ugly file-input element as it should be: display: none; :)

totoff · 2012-04-19 10:51:42

hi developr,

may i ask witch version of rss_admin_db_manager you use? serveral members have reported problems with this plugin and 441.

developr · 2012-04-19 12:50:41

hi totoff

I use the version that was posted by colak: see here

This version (4.3) has a fix for the “Restricted Area” problem. But it seems that there is more than one version 4.3 around. So i must ask too: Does someone know where the “official” release can be found?

For using colak’s version on my localhost (WAMP) i have made two small fixes:

~ at line 203:

//  $mysql_hup = ' -h'.$DB->host.' -u'.$DB->user.' -p'.escapeshellcmd($DB->pass);
  $mysql_hup = ' -h'.$DB->host.' -u'.$DB->user.(($DB->pass)?' -p'.escapeshellcmd($DB->pass):'');

This is needed if your local MySQL-Server has no password. MySQL has a problem with -p if it is not directly followed by a password (prompt?). If this happens, MySQL may hang.

~ at Line 247:

      } elseif($error) {
        if (file_exists($backup_path)) unlink($backup_path);

I added “ if (file_exists($backup_path))” before the unlink.

After applying these these two fixes, it seems to work properly. But i have not tested all available functions.

Correction/Warning:
Now I have found a relly problematic issue: When the database manager is used to display the txp_plugin table, the PHP-Code will be evaluated…

Don’t use it for the txp_plugin table

Last edited by developr (2012-05-18 16:33:33)

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#1 2012-04-11 11:55:07

An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#2 2012-04-11 15:16:00

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#3 2012-04-11 19:29:57

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#4 2012-04-11 19:41:17

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#5 2012-04-11 22:17:34

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#6 2012-04-12 11:08:55

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#7 2012-04-12 13:56:38

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#8 2012-04-12 15:47:00

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#9 2012-04-19 10:51:42

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

#10 2012-04-19 12:50:41

Re: An Artists Portfolio Site - www.beat-john.ch

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