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What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
I’m redesigning our website and migrating from MovableType to TXP at the same time.
In our blog posts/articles that we publish, there are usually between 2-10 images included. Plus, I need a thumbnail image and a “splash” image (for a featured article placement) for every article.
In MovableType, you can “dirify” the results of the article title tags, making them suitible for use in URL’s – “My Best Day!” would become“my_best_day”. I had MT Index templates set up to list the article excerpts, and the thumbnail was called by putting the “dirified” title in the url like so:
<code><img src=”/img/<MTEntryTitle dirify=“1”>/thumb.jpg” alt=”“ /></code>
Of course, I would put upload all of the images associated with that article to a folder named after the entry, but dirified. Once I got those templates done, it’d work like a charm. I just had to make sure that every entry had a thumb.jpg and a splash.jpg image in the folder. I just used HTML <code><img></code> tags to put the rest of the article’s images in their proper places.
Now I’m wondering what the best way to manage all of the images for an article in TXP is going to be? I’ve looked at a few plugins, such as the hak_article_image, but I’m not sure I can fanagle that to meet my needs. I’m mostly concerned with making putting images in an article even easier than using the HTML tags in the copy, because I’m going to be having several more content editors begin posting content instead of myself, and they don’t know any HTML at all. They should be able to use Textile, though.
Any suggestions?
Last edited by Morgon (2005-12-13 23:35:31)
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Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
Morgon,
To get you started, I would look at an interactive use of zem_article_image and upm_img_popper . I use these on artiswork.org which will hopefully have numerous authors when it gets moving. Using the image popper you can also add images to the post directly (it formats the html for you), and then have an “article image” link to a thumbnail in order to pull the post (ie: thumb = permlink)
I think that would do it,
Let me know what you think.
Matthew
- I am Squared Eye and I
am launchinghave launched Pattern Tap
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Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
Well, I looked through a bunch of plugins and techniques, such as zem_article_image, wet_article_thumb, aba_image_import, hak_article_image and upm_image_popper. I don’t think that any of these (or a combination) will give me the flexibility I need, but I might be wrong.
My requirements:
- all articles and entries need to have a splash image of 240×160, a thumbnail of 64×64, in addition to other images.
- Most articles have between 2-6 images per. All of these need a linkable thumbnail image to the larger version.
- For the most part, images follow the copy, so they need to be inline, not grouped together at the bottom. There are some exceptions.
- And it’d be really nice to be able to place images in a folder named after the article title (but “dirified”: “My Best Post!” becomes “my_best_post” or similar), we are talking about hundreds of images…
The best I can figure is that I’m going to have to leave off having Textpattern manage images, and use FTP to upload images to the “/img/my_current_post/” folder. I will then use Textile to write the inline image calls, and create two custom fields: “thumbnail_url”, and “splash_url”, to be filled out at time of posting. I can then use the following form to post the “Recently Posted Articles” excerpts:
<code>
<div class=“recentbody”><a href=”<txp:permlink />” title=“Read <txp:title />”>
<txp:if_custom_field name=“thumbnail_url”>
<a href=”<txp:permlink /> title=“Read <txp:title />”><txp:custom_field name=“thumbnail_url” /><img class=“articlethumb” src=”<txp:custom_field name=“manufacturer_url” />” alt=“Thumbnail image for <txp:title />” /></a>
</txp:if_custom_field>
<h4><a class=“recententrytitle” href=”<txp:permlink />” title=“Read <txp:title />”><txp:title /></a></h4>
<p class=“entrycategory”><txp:category link=“1” /></p>
<p><txp:kgr_safe_excerpt words=“30” countexerpt=“30” /></p>
</div>
</code>
The “splash_url” field will be used similarly for the Featured Article area.
Well, that’s what I’ve worked out thus far, if anybody’s got any better solutions, I’d be happy to hear them.
Remember, I’m totally new to Textpattern, and I love the way it handles articles and text far better than MovableType. But I was really hoping to use the backend to manage the images as well (visions of categorized site-wide image displays were bouncing ‘round my head), so that’s rather disappointing. :/ Ah well.
David
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Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
Hello.
Regarding the images control in textpattern, my needs are very similar to yours and I’m struggling to get some flexible image management capabilities.
To some extend, the option of creating a folder with the images of each article seems tempting to enhance the organization of files.
But on the other hand you would loose some already built-in capabilities that would streamline your work.
My article’s basic structure would require some (2 to 5) inline thumbnails that would popup to give the user a larger view of the image. I would also need a gallery feature that could handle great quantities of article-related images.
By now I managed to get the galleries working (after having tried a bunch of plugins…) using only two plugins: the simple nhn_image_import) and the highly capable rss_thumbpop.
The creation of thumbnails and optimization of the images is made offline trough some Photoshop automated behaviours that I’ve recorded. I then upload them trough ftp and use the nhn_image_import plugin to get them categorized automatically.
I’m now looking for a way of reusing those already uploaded pictures to get them inline with the text (and popping-up to show the real-size pictures)
Because I like simple things (I like textpattern…), I’ll maybe skip using another plugin and try hand-coding these inline thumbnails.
Last edited by patchwork (2006-01-31 23:36:50)
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Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
I wouldn’t necessarily mind hand-coding the links/images myself, if it was just myself posting content. But, alas, I’m not the content supervisor, just the code/design maintainer. So, I need to find a way to semi-automate the process. I like the idea of using the image import plugin, and then I’d like to use the image_popper plugin to insert images into the articles, so that the code-illiterate needn’t worry about coding.
But I need the front page and articles list pages to automatically insert the article thumbnail (if there is one), and the “Featured Entry” area to automatically insert a larger thumbnail (again, if there is one). Still working on this to try and figure out an elegant solution.
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Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
the only things i can think of is perhaps assigned a custom field, set one for the splash and one for the smaller thumbnail. With upm image popper you can append the image to the custom fields, and this may give you some flexibility. upm_image_popper at least allows you to view the images so this could help. then you would assign a div class and apply the css to it.
upm_image_popper has really helped me a lot with regards to images, as before that image management was practically redundant. txp could do with an overhaul in that area, and there are so many better ways it could be developed, but for now this is how i manage my own images.
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Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
sekhu, thanks a lot, I didn’t even think of using the upm_image_popper to populate custom fields. That sounds like a great idea!
What would be great is if you could tag images not only with a category, but with an entry title. That may not be useful for the majority of people, but we upload article-specific photos, sort of like a newspaper. So at the time of upload (mulitple image uploads!), you could tag them.
OR, I could just name the photos with a file name like: my-first-bungee-jump_thumb.jpg, my-first-bungee-jump_splash.jpg, my-first-bungee-jump_1.jpg “_2.jpg, etc. But only if there was a way to have TXP match ‘em up with the entries. Sigh.
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#8 2006-01-26 03:38:52
- nardo
- Member
- From: tuvalahiti
- Registered: 2004-04-22
- Posts: 743
Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
morgon, on one site, I use upm_img_popper with article images
- front page – post has title, first article thumbnail & excerpt, linking to individual article
- individual page – has a string of article images at the top, with captions underneath each
I think ‘article images’ are a great feature to be extended in txp – like you say, it allows for article-specific photos without having to create categories for each post, etc
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Re: What's the best way to manage multiple images and thumbs for articles?
there is a tag plugin i believe, though i think that is for articles. you could try using the keywords box for “tagging” of a sort. Tagging is quite an interesting idea, there may be a way around it or you could request a plugin, or ask hakjoon if he would be willing to implement a custom field for images, which you could then use to tag the images.
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