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Some helpful things to know:
- You will require PHP to be installed on your server for this script to work. Most web servers have it installed. Free ones do not so the script won't work on them.
- The bulk of the code is written in PHP and PHP coded pages are saved with a php extension - not htm or html. Your server needs to have this language installed. Most servers do. Free accounts never do.
- In order for you to see how the page looks without having a server installed on your home computer (I have Apache Server installed so i can troubleshoot my websites without uploading to my web server), you must upload the page and images and type the address in.
- No need to use anything other than notepad that is on every windows computer, to open and edit the text. I prefer EditPad Lite for editing - it is FREE and very good for opening and editing many pages at once.
Steps Involved in the Setup:
- Download the OPG2006 script package onto your computer and unzip the contents
- Open index.txt file in Notepad or some other simple text editor, and make any changes to the Custom Variables at the top of the page and Save the script as "index.php"
- Create a folder on your web server with a name that will be unique to the client
- Upload the unzipped contents including the resaved "index.php" page, from your computer to your web server (FTP is the preferred way)
- Upload all thumbnail image files to the "tn" folder - and all larger images to the main folder where the "index.php" page resides.
- The Preview Website should now be available online by entering the full address in your browser. eg - www.onepagegallery.com/sample1/.
PORTA for sizing images for OPG:
- I know there are many who are already aware of this great little program that is freely available for generating web albums from your image files. If not, it is called Porta and it has replaced my custom scripts for resizing my Preview Images to fit in my OnePageGallery for presenting to clients on the web. I can reassure you that in this respect, Porta beats the Photoshop web option for resizing - hands down.
Porta does make some nice Framed web layouts and integrates with SimpleViewer - but I am not interested in these more complex and slow loading programs for the constant building of Preview Websites for my clients. My simple OPG script takes no effort on my part and only requires that I provide 2 sizes of images for uploading to the directory where the website will be stored and acessable to my clients. When you run Porta on a directory of images, it does create a bunch of pages and folders, but I just discard everything except the 2 folders called "medium" and "small" which contain the thumbnail and larger size images I require.
Here is my process - I open Porta and select the folder of images on my computer that I want resized - Click the Options Button to change settings - check "Add watermarks to main (and large) images" then click the Edit button right beside for adding any copyright information (my text says "Do Not Copy", centered in Arial Black size 36 with transparency set to "8") - I use the default sizes of 80 pixels for thumbnails and 552 pixels for the large images - make sure the check boxes for "Sharpened" are selected - click OK to generate the album. The "medium" folder contains all of the large images which becomes my main folder with my OPG and so I rename it to the clients name to be included in the URL for them to access their site - I upload this folder to my web server (via FTP or File Manager) and place the OPG gallery "index.php" script in this folder with the large images - I then rename the "small" folder that contains all of the thumbnails to "tn" so the folder can be recognized with my OPG script - I upload the "tn" folder into the same directory as all the large images and "index.php" are - - - everything then runs perfect - nothing more to do. This sounds like a lot of steps, but once you get the system going, it is so quick and easy.
Q ) Why not just use Porta or Simple Viewer instead of using your OnePageGallery?
A ) SPEED and SIMPLICITY
I personally am not a fan of the Simple Viewer (flash) layout and find it slightly annoying when I see in on so many websites I visit. Being it is flash, it loads slow - - - and many find it far harder to setup than they figured it would be.
The problem with many popular Gallery templates has to do with speed also - - - in that all of the thumbnails have to be loaded into the page for the site to work properly - - - this takes time and can be real problematic with hundreds or thousands of images in a Gallery. The other side is that both of these programs (as with all html galleries) require a page to be written to display each image. That means that if you have a few hundred images to display, there will be a few hundred html pages required to display them all. These must all be uploaded to your server and take up space on your server. OnePageGallery is ONE PAGE even if there are 10,000 images in the folder. Another thing is if you decide you want to add a few image files to the gallery, with Porta and PS you will need to remake the whole gallery to include the new images and the pages required to display them. With Simple Viewer you will have to register the new images in the configuration file - - - - with OnePageGallery, you simply upload the new images to the folder and they display properly. At least those are the things I find advantageous and why I wrote it the way I did. There are all kinds of more complex and complicated ways of making a gallery - but I have never found one yet that is simpler and quicker for viewers (especially those few left on dial up) to look at.
Q ) Will OPG work on a Mac? Does Porta?
A ) I believe Porta is Windows only. In that case you could use PS Gallery for resizing and then just use the image files and thumbnail files with the OPG. The only thing I don't like about the way PS does it, is that sharpening is not applied - so before Porta, I had custom actions that I made that resized and sharpened to my taste.
My OnePageGallery script is used on a web server so Mac isn't an issue. The only thing that is required is the PHP programming language - which almost all servers have installed. To cutomize the page, a simple text editor is all that is required so this can be done on Windows or Mac.
Q ) When I create a Gallery it's always www.yourwebsite.com/clientname/index.php...how do I make it just the client's name? Is it necessary to have the "index.php" part?
A ) There is no need to include "index.php" with the url you provide your clients. "www.yourwebsite.com/clientname" should suffice - just as "www.yourwebsite.com" takes you to the full url for your Home page (index.htm, index.php, etc). Another way that I handle the url, is to create a Subdomain so that an address of "clientname.yourwebsite.com" will take them directly to the folder and look more professional
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