WordPress.org

How do I use DM Albums outside my blog?

You can do this by including dm-albums-external.php and making a call to dm_printalbum. For more full coverage on this, please see http://blog.dutchmonkey.com/product-release/dm-albums-external-demo/.

After Upgrading to v2.3, everything works except now my posts don't show the photo album but instead show the code: [album: http://mydomain.com/path/to/album/]

Some users have had trouble with displaying photo albums after upgrading; to remedy this, Log into the DM Albums Options panel and refresh your settings (click "Show Settings" and then "Update"). If that doesn't do the trick, anecdotal evidence suggests that setting the "Merge Directories" option to "No" and "Album Prefix" to "Photo Album" and then back to "Album". We have also pushed a soft update which has a "Reset Configuration" button under Advanced Settings which can be used to reset DM Albums to it's default setup. If you don't see these button, every option shows the default settings, and you can manually set them back to their defaults and click "update options".

When I try to create an album, all the photos upload normally, but then the album doesn't show up or isn't created.

Some users have mentioned that DM Albums are not being created when uploading: all photos seems to upload normally, but then the album doesn't show up in the list, and when you log in with FTP to check on them, the album is not here, either.

DutchMonkey Productions is working on a fix for this, but here is a workaround in the meantime:

First, check that the dm albums upload folder exists. (You can find the path to this folder in the DM Albums Admin Panel if you're not sure where to look.) By efault, the folder is called "dm-albums" and should be located just off the root of your blog.

If it exists, make sure the permissions are 0755 or 0777. If it doesn't exist, you'll have to create it, set the permissions to 0755 or 0777 and then you should be good to go.

I updated my plugin through automatically through wordpress, and now my pictures are missing!

DutchMonkey Productions does not recommend storing your pictures in the dm-albums plugin directory. WordPress's automatic upgrade service appears to delete the plugin and then downloads and installs a fresh copy. If your photos are in the plugin directory (.../wp-plugins/dm-albums/) that means all your pictures will also be deleted. So, it's best to store your pictures somewhere outside the plugin directory where they are safe from the upgrade service!

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.3.2

• Added php include for including DM Albums outside your WordPress installation. More information: http://blog.dutchmonkey.com/product-release/dm-albums-external-demo/
• Improved support for Safari

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.3.1

• Service release containing several minor enhancements
• Misc Bug fixes

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.3

• Album Detail Manager added to allow adding captions and deleting individual photos out of albums.
• Add support for external CSS style sheet for overriding default styles. Place this stylesheet outside the dm-albums plugin directory to ensure WordPress does not delete your stylesheet during automatic updates.
• Continued hardnening of upload/delete security. Thanks to safety of nDarkness.com for continuing to assist in tightening things up.
• Continued expansion of WPMU support and multi-user security. Continued thanks to Adam of nDarkness.com for his tireless testing, coding, and recommendations.
• Path mapping and upload permissions updates for more reliable file uploading and album management. If you are having difficulty uploading and seeing your albums, use the recommended default settings as found in the DM Albums Options (Admin) panel.
• PHP EXIF bug fix (for users without EXIF support on their systems. This most often manifests itself in showing a blank DM Albums Options (Admin) panel.
• Misc PHP Bug fixes
• Misc CSS Bug fixes

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.1.1

• Added support for WordPress Multi User (MU) Eidtion
• Misc bug fixes (php for caption editing, css for slideshow controls).

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.1.1

• Additional Security enhancements as outlined here: http://secunia.com/advisories/37119/
• Misc Bug fixes to support PNG and GIF photo albums.

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.1

• Security enhancements. Thanks to safety of nDarkness.com for alerting us to a vulnerability and recommending a solution.
• Feature Request: Allow users to separate user upload directories. Log into the DM Albums Admin Panel and set "Unique Author Upload Folders" to YES under "Advanced Settings". This is turned off by default for backward compatibility.
• Feature Request: Restrict "Advanced Settings" area to Administrators only.

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.0.1

• Emergency security path. All users on v.2.0 should upgrade. Thanks to safety of nDarkness.com for alerting us to a vulnerability and recommending a solution.

What's New in DM Albums™ v2.0

• Added support for IE 8
• Added Photo Upload/Album Management support (directly through the WordPress Editor)
• Added Support to automatically insert the [album: ] code syntax into post or page

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.10

• Fixed bug when EXIF extensions are not installed to allow DM Albums to run without them
• Added option to DM Albums Admin Panel to disable Loading Message
• Added option to DM Albums Admin Panel to disable Loading Message only during Slideshows

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.9.2

• Fix for issue introduced in 1.9.9.1 which was seen on some systems.

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.9.1

• Added a light sharpening algorithm that was somehow left out of today's earlier release. Appologies.

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.9

• Added "autoplay" for slideshow (off by default), global configuration setting can be found in DM Albums Admin Panel (by request)
• Slideshow controls is enabled as a URL parameter for specific albums: controls=false will hide slideshow controls; controls=true shows it
• Autoplay is enabled as a URL parameter for specific albums: autoplay=true will enable autoplay; autoplay=false will disable it
• Fixed bug where some plugins tamper with URLs and break DM Album's "slideshow" and "fullscreen" buttons
• Misc Bug Fixes

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.8

• Added slideshow controls to main display (shows by default) (by request)
• Misc Bug Fixes

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.7

• Admin panel setting to adjust photo quality in the main image.

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.6

• Edit caption bug fix.

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.5

• New Feature: Fade In/Out transision added to images. This feature was highly requested and has been added
• Additional security checks for more proactive detection of malicious use

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.4:

• Service Release: Minor bug fix in albums.php

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.3:

• Service Release: Patch to close security hole in albums.php

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.2:

• Service Release: Remove hotlinking of dm.css and made that file a local resource

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9.1:

• Bug Fix: Corrected javascript errors on left/right arrow keys for navigating images when keyboard focus is on thumbnails

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.9:

• Bug Fix: Corrected issue to allow automatic update of plugins

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.8:

• Improvements:
  • Auto-centering of thumbnails
  • Improved Keyboard Arrow Controls
• Misc Bug Fixes

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.7:

• Improvements:
  • Restructured files to improve ease of installation
• New Feature:
  • Add option to merge subdirectories into one photo album (improved album management)

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.6:

• Improvements:
  • Improved image output quality
  • Support of Firefox 3.0 Beta (and, hopefully, the production release of FF3)

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.5:

• Improvements:
  • Fixed memory leak (thanks to Phong Long mailto: phonglong@gmail.com http://www.phonglong.com/)
  • Improved memory management and error reporting
  • Hide browsing hints after 5 seconds of inactivity (to hide menu when mouse leaves screen)
• Misc Bug Fixes

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.4:

• Enhanced Browser Support:

• Full Support for Internet Explorer 6
• Full Support for Opera 9

Misc Bug Fixes

An update for DM Albums 1.3 can be downloaded directly from DutchMonkey Productions: dm-albums.1.4.update.zip

NOTE: This will only work for DM Albums version 1.3!

To upgrade from DM Albums 1.3 to 1.4, simply replace the files with the updated version in the zip file:

/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums.php
/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-adminoptions.php
/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/javascript/browser.js
/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/template/album.php

What's New in DM Albums™ v1.3:

• New Features:

• Context menu added with Next, Previous, and Slideshow options
• EXIF Information displayed via context menu > Properties
• Direct photo download option via context menu (this can be turned off in the DM Albums™ Admin Panel

Check for GD lib in DM Albums Admin panel

Check for memory_limit > 32M

iFrame sizing improved for Windows Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer 6 support improved

Misc Bug Fixes

How do I use the DM Albums&153 Album Management System in the WordPress Editor?

Creating Photo Albums: In order to create photo albums, simply choose an album name (type it into the "Album Name" field under "Update Existing or Add New Album", click "Browse" to browse your computer's hard drive to find the photos you'd like to put in your album. (You can choose multiple photos and upload them all at once.) To start the upload, click "Start Upload". Once the upload is complete, your album name will appear in the "Existing Albums" list. To insert an album into your post, click the "Insert" button next to the album name.

Updating Photo Albums: If you'd like to add photos to an existing photo album, simply click the existing album's name, and then follow the procedure above to upload more photos into the photo album. Please note that any photos with the same name will be overwritten by the uploaded photos.

Insert Album into Post: To insert an album into your post, click the "Insert" button next to the album name.

Deleting an Existing Album: To delete an album, click the red cross to the right of the album's Insert button. Please be aware this will permanently delete the album, all the photos, and all the captions.

The DM Albums™ Admin Panel Complains That There Is Not Enough Memory and My Images Don't Load

DM Albums takes high resolution images and scales (and caches) them for the viewing area. The issue with memory is base on the fact that JPEGs, PNGs, and other compressed image formate are quite large when you open them. Since they are uncompressed in memory, their size is a function of their dimension and color depth plus overhead.

The best solution is to increase the amount of memory a PHP script is allowed to consume; this can be done by updating the PHP.ini file's memory_limit value. (DM Albums™ attempts to do this automatically, but some server configurations ignore this.)

If you are on a shared host which doesn't allow changing PHP.ini settings or you don't want to update this value for other reasons, you can get around this limitation by loading smaller photos into DM Albums. (Finding a photo dimention that works on your server will be a trial-and-error process.

How can I change the look of DM Albums™?

The layout of DM Albums™ can be changed the DM Ablums Admin Panel, while the color scheme can be edited using CSS by editing the style sheet found in the dm-albums/ui directory (/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/ui/styles.css).

When I try to load DM Albums™ I get an error box saying "Error: Directory does not exist or can not be accessed."

DM Albums is most likely not configured correctly.

The error is due to the fact that the directory mapping for your Home Directory Setting and the album location specified in currdir don't resolve to an actual folder location. DM Albums™ takes in a parameter called "currdir" via the URL (in the case of the DM Ablums Admin Panel preview, dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/preview/). This lets you point dm-albums to any directory on your server. DM Albums then takes the currdir parameter and combines it with the Home Directory parameter set in the DM Ablums Admin Panel to find the absolute filesystem path to the photo album directory so that it can properly process the photos.

I get an error message: "Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Permission denied..."

In order to utilize it's state-of-the-art caching algorithm, DM Albums™ requires write-access to the directory containing your photo album. In most cases, this means the directory permissions for the directory containing the photo album needs to be set to 0755. You can accomplish this via a command line by typing chmod -R 755 directory. (0755 is prefectly safe premission to set on a web-accessible directory.)

In rare cases, 0755 is not enough, in those cases the folder's permissions may need to be set to 0777.

I get an error message: "Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Invalid argument in..."

There was a bug in all DM Albums versions up to 1.2 which caused this error when DM Albums was running on a PHP installation on a Windows Server. This bug has been fixed in release 1.2.

I installed the plugin, but I get the following error: Call to undefined function get_option()

The zip file for the plugin contains an extra folder. when properly installed, the folder/file structure of the folder at /wp-content/plugins/ should look like this:

[] dm-albums

    dm-albums.php

    screenshot-1.png

    screenshot-2.png

    readme.txt

Note: the folder dm-albums contains 5 folders: 'javascript', 'php', 'preview', 'template', 'ui' and four php files: 'config.php', 'dm-adminoptions.php', 'dm-albums.php', 'security.php'

To correct this problem, follow these instructions:

1. Log into the WordPress admin panel and deactivate DM Albums. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!
2. Move dm-albums.php, readme.txt, and the two screen shots from /wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/ to /wp-content/plugins/
3. Move everything in the folder /wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums to /wp-content/plugins/dm-albums (there should only be one dm-albums folder under the plugins directory) so that when you're done, the path /wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/ contains five folders (javascript, php, preview, template, ui) and 4 php files (config.php, dm-adminoptions.php, dm-albums.php, and security)
4. Log into the WordPress admin panel and active the DM Albums plugin
5. Configure DM Albums using the admin panel at Options > DM Albums

Where Can I Find Usage Examples?

Visit the DM Albums™ Online Demo for a full explaination of how to use the plugin: DM Albums™ Online Demo

If I have further questions, can I email the developer?

Always. Please email development@dutchmonkey.com with any questions or suggestions. We are always looking for ways to improve our plugin.