WordPress.org

Usage

• write post
• upload photos to a directory with the same name as the post slug; subalbums are subdirectories of the main gallery with the same structure
• if you intend to use the default template, upload thumbnails to a subdirectory of the gallery called "thumbs"
• use <!--gallery--> in the post where you want the main gallery to appear,
• or <!--gallery[subname]--> for a subgallery

You can add captions to the images in several ways:

• using the admin page ajax-ish caption editor; it needs write access to your photos, as it stores the captions inside the images (JPEG only for now)

• using a text editor: create a file called "desc.txt" and write descriptions there; it is standard ini format, like this:

  #comment
  ;another comment
  [keyword]               ;comments can stay here, too
  variable=value
  

  Recognized section names:

  • meta: gallery-wide information, like gallery name, headline, etc; passed to header and footer templates
  • template: must contain values for header, footer, item; can contain other template metadata (recognized so far: groupcount, groupbefore, group_after)
  • image file name: image metadata
• using Google Picasa (the desktop application, not the web service); add captions to your images before uploading and don't forget to also upload Picasa.ini
• using Adobe Photoshop and any other desktop image processing software that supports either XMP or the older IPTC standard

a desc.txt file could look like this:

[meta]
name=This is a short description of the gallery

[image1.jpg]
caption=this is an alt text
...

The thumbnail dimensions are of your choice. The thumbnails can be easily generated using Photoshop's batch mode or ImageMagick's convert in a shell one-liner (bash example: for a in *.JPG; do convert --resize $a thumbs/thumb-$a)

Installing the sample gallery

• Copy the "sample" directory under the gallery root you chose
• create a post or a page called "sample", enter <!--gallery--> as the contents or press the "insert gallery" button and then OK without entering anything, publish, view post
• if you see a black cat, then you have everything working correctly :D

Inserting a gallery in a post

• in code edit mode:
  • enter <!--gallery--> where you want your main gallery to appear, or
  • enter <!--gallery[subfolder]--> if you want to insert a sub-gallery
• in visual editing mode, click the "insert gallery" button (it kind of looks like the "insert image" button), and enter subfolder in the input box for a 2nd level gallery, leave it blank or press cancel for the top gallery

Note that the top folder doesn't need to contain images, it can be just a place to store sub-galleries.

The gallery browser

• Is located under Manage → Galleries
• Uses a folder icon from the Etiquette icon theme
• Is tested in Firefox 2.0, Opera 9 and Internet Exploder 6, so far, both with the default theme and wp-admin-tiger; pixel-perfect in Firefox and Opera, some CSS problems make it unusable in MSIE (patches welcome, i.e. I won't fix it)
• Is designed for lazy people:
  • click a gallery, the first image is loaded
  • click the caption field, edit, press enter, it is saved
  • the next image is loaded and the caption field is already active
  • allows quick navigation among the images in the loaded gallery by using the left and right arrow keys or n and p when the caption editing field is not active
• Needs write access to the gallery folder and files to update the captions and will reset file ownership to the uid of the web server process; on shared hosts that run the web server process under the same uid as the one you use to connect via (s)ftp it is not an issue
• Is in the "works for me" phase, needs testing and may also kill your pet :P