LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Big Dog Joined: 18 Oct 2000 Posts: 4410

This post was created to show people how to manage their own personal image gallery. It's actually quite simple, but I want to make sure everyone who has this available has the knowledge they need to to implement it.

To start with, you need to have the ability to create your own image gallery. Not every member on the forums has this right. For now, during Phase ONE of the deployment, only Moderators of the forum have this right. It will be exanded to other people soon, but I need to take things kind slow at first to see how things go.

First and foremost, you need to be logged into the forums for this all to work. Once you're logged in, there are two modes you can be in - Admin Mode and User Mode. If you are in User Mode, you won't be able to manage your gallery. To determine which mode you are in, look to see if you have some new menu options available at the top of the page. If you see a menu set containing [Create / order my albums] [Modify my albums] [My profile] you are in Admin Mode. You can toggle back and forth between Admin Mode and User Mode by using the Navigation Menu at the top of the page.

Now that you know where the menu is, let me explain a few things about things are catagorized. At the top level you have the Members Gallery section. Under there is a section for each user, and under each user is listing of Albums that user has created. So if I create an Album called "For the FAQ" it would be found here: Home > Member Gallery > Fido > For the FAQ. Make sense?

Next start by clicking on the [Create / order my albums] link. The display will then show you a list of the Albums you have created, or none at all if you haven't created one. Click on the [New] button and then type the name of the Album you want to create. In this example we're going to create one called "For the FAQ".

Once the new Album is created you will be prompted to configure the Album. On this screen there are quite a few things that can be set. You have the option to set a description for the Album if you wish, you can decide who you want to be able to view the Album, will be people be allowed to comment on your images, and can people rate your images. If you want to change these settings later on you can do so by editing your Album.

Next thing is to upload a file to your new Album. This is the same as uploading files to other sections in the Gallery, just make sure you're uploading them to the correct Album - in our example we're using the new one I created called "For the FAQ".

The image is now uploaded and depeneding on how you configured the Album, people will immediately be able to view it in the Member Gallery section.

You can create as many Albums as you wish under your section, just don't go hog-wild and created hundreds of them. It will just clutter the place up.

In addition, please don't post any flat out pr0n in your Gallery - if you do you could lose the right to have your own section.

If you delete an image from your Gallery, it's gone forever. I can't get them back and will not restore them from my backups.

Finally, each member currently has a size limit for section set to 4MB. I want to increase this, but we need to see how well the server handles the load and how many people actually want use it.