EIGHT - Easy Image Gallery (Hidden Treasure edition)
http://eightproject.sourceforge.net/
Copyright (C) 2001 - 2002 Art Pacheco
Read the LICENSE file for License Agreement
Use of this program indicates you have read the License
and agree to it's terms.
What is EIGHT?
--------------
EIGHT is a simple image gallery script for the web. I wrote it when my son
was born so that I had an easy way of putting images up for the family to
see. I released it as an experiment in software writing. I've written a good
number of scripts, but never released anything into the public. So this is
the testing ground. The acronym EIGHT comes from my lazyness at not really
wanting to come up with a name for the script. Easy Image Gallery was good
enough, and everyone loves a Hidden Treasure (The HT will change from release
to release as a descriptive version ID).
Features of EIGHT
-----------------
Can have single or rotating spash images (on gallery list page).
Works with an unlimited amount of galleries and images.
Easily links thumbnails to their full-sized images for you.
Guestbook included and is configurable :
No guestbook
Guestbook at the gallery list page only
One guestbook shared between all galleries
One separate guestbook for each gallery
Can set up seperate color schemes for each gallery.
Can have separate captions for each image.
Comes with JavaScripted slide shows.
Includes Gallery statistics information.
Images and captions are searchable.
Install
-------
Copy the tarball to a directory that can run cgi files (usually cgi-bin).
Extract the files (usually "gunzip eight.tgz | tar -xvf eight.tar").
Set the file permissions:
The server needs to access the script, and the script needs to access
the files. On many servers, you can set this properly by:
In the main directory:
chmod 755 images (directory)
chmod 755 data (directory)
chmod 755 eight.cgi (script)
chmod 644 index.html (HTML file)
In the images directory:
chmod 755 gal??? (gallery directories)
chmod 644 splash.jpg (index splash image)
In the gallery directories:
chmod 644 *.jpg (all image files)
In the data directory:
chmod 755 captions (caption file directory)
chmod 755 guestbook (guestbook dat file directory)
chmod 755 tmplt (HTML template directory)
chmod 622 error.log (errors logged)
chmod 644 gal???.dat (gallery data files)
In the captions directory:
chmod 755 gal??? (gallery directories for captions)
In the captions gallery directories
chmod 644 *.txt (all caption files)
In the guestbook directory:
chmod 666 gal???_gb.dat
In the tmplt directory:
chmod 644 *.tmplt (all template files)
In case your server uses methods other than the chmod command, here's what
the numbers mean:
755 = full access for user, read/execute access for group and other
644 = read/write access for user, read access for group and other
666 = read/write access for everyone
622 = read/write access for user, write access for group and other
Usually the Server falls under the "other" category.
After that, you should be mostly set up. The last step is to change some of
the configuration variables in eight.cgi.
Edit the eight.cgi file (most servers have a text editor called pico if you
don't have anything else to use) and make changes to the items between the
Start user configuration and End user configuration. The script should now
run with the sample images.
In some cases, you will not be able to house your images and possibly data
files in the cgi-bin directory. If you are having problems with your
thumbnails and images not showing, but the script is picking them up, then
you may need to place the image (and possibly data) directories outside of
the cgi-bin directory. Normally you will place these directories in the same
area you place static html files, this is often a directory called
"public-html". Adjust the variables $img_base_dir, $img_base_url and
$data_dir accordingly. There is more info on this in comments in the script
itself.
WHAT NOW?
---------
Now you just delete the sample images from the image gallery directories and
upload your own files (using ftp). The image files must be named a certain
way for EIGHT to pick them up. The full sized images must have an extension
that is defined in the variable $img_types within the user configuration
section of the eight script and the filename can only consist of the letters
a through z, either upper or lower case and the numbers 0 through 9. The
only other character allowed is the underscore (_). The thumbnail must have
the exact same name as the fullsized image, but must start with th. The
caption also has the exact same name as the image, but ends in .txt and lives
in the caption dir. The gallery dat files are named by gallery id (gal001,
gal002, etc..) ending with .dat and they live in the data dir. The guestbook
dat files are named by gallery id, ending with _gb.dat and live in the
guestbook dir. EIGHT does not create the thumbnail for you, there are many
free thumbnailing programs out there for both unix and Windows based
operating systems.
So you should have:
_ImageName_._ext_ (_ImageName_ can be any name, _ext_ is the file
extension defined in the script)
th._ImageName_._ext_ (The thumbnail)
_ImageName_._ext_.txt (optional, the caption)
gal???.dat (optional, gallery data)
gal???_gb.dat (optional, gallery guestbook data)
Note: the guestbook dat file must exist before they can be written to. They
do not self create when a guestbook entry is written.
Make sure you upload the file and it's thumbnail, EIGHT needs both. The
images are sorted alphabetically by image name. You can also optionally
upload caption files for the images into the data/captions/gal???/
directories. After uploading, make sure the file permissions are correct
and enjoy the gallery.
Editing the Gallery .dat files
------------------------------
Ok, your gallery is up and running, but you want each gallery to have
specific information. The gallery .dat files (found in the data dir, named
like gal001.dat) are what you are looking for. The dat files are set up very
simple right now, with each line in the form of
TYPE:data
The types that can be used are :
NAME:.......The gallery name, and shows up in the title bar of the browser.
BLURB:......Small description of the gallery and shows up in the image
index list, it may contain HTML. Your blurb can be as long
as you like, but if there is a newline (i.e. you hit enter
on a line) then you will have to start out the next line with
a new BLURB: indication.
BODY_BG:....Body background color
BODY_TXT:...Document text color
BODY_LINK:..Color for links in the document
BODY_VLINK:.Color for links that have been visited
BODY_ALINK:.Color for links that are being clicked on
NAVBAR:.....Navigation bar background
IMG_CAP:....Image caption bar background
GB_HEADER:..Guestbook header background
GB_NAME_A:..Guestbook name background, alternating
GB_MSG_A:...Guestbook message background, alterating
GB_NAME_B:..Guestbook name background, alternating
GB_MSG_B:...Guestbook message background, alterating
Here is a sample .dat file (gal002.dat):
--
NAME:Space Images - color scheme
BLURB:
BLURB:
BLURB:
BLURB: Space Images
BLURB:
BLURB:
BLURB:Gallery Blurb Here.
BLURB:This gallery contains space imagery, some from the Hubble telescope. The images were obtained from the NASA website.
BLURB:
BLURB:
BODY_BG:#333366
BODY_TXT:#99ccff
BODY_LINK:#cccccc
BODY_VLINK:#cccccc
BODY_ALINK:#400000
NAVBAR:#666699
IMG_CAP:#330033
GB_HEADER:#005533
GB_NAME_A:#301400
GB_MSG_A:#333333
GB_NAME_B:#452200
GB_MSG_B:#444444
--
Editing the HTML template files
-------------------------------
Unfortunately, this sections needs a stern looking through. I do appologize
that there is not more information yet. I plan to move the documention to
the EIGHT project sourceforge site. Take a look there for updated
documentation. If you really want to get your hands dirty, you can take a
look at the Template.pm documentation in the HTML directory.
That's it!
Good luck, and I hope you enjoy the program.
Art
email: synapse0@users.sourceforge.net
--
If you have any feedback or confusion or any general thoughts on the script,
let me know. All info is good. Also, if you use EIGHT at your site and
would like me to link up to it, give me the site location and I'll put it
under one of the links sections on the EIGHT site.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Changelog:
$Log: README,v $
Revision 1.4 2002/05/31 02:21:42 synapse0
Updating documentation to reflect changes needed for the search function.
-SynZero
Revision 1.3 2002/04/07 20:41:02 synapse0
minor adjustments
Revision 1.2 2002/02/24 23:10:47 synapse0
Added a Features section.
Changed the Install instructions to reflect the known problem of some
servers not allowing cgi-bin to house images for display
Added the new .dat types for color schemes
-SynZero
Revision 1.1.1.1 2002/02/20 07:03:18 synapse0
Initial import of EIGHT files.
Revision 1.7 2001/06/27 17:38:16 tech
*** empty log message ***
Revision 1.6 2001/06/27 17:15:40 tech
Added instruction on editing the gallery .dat files
-tech
Revision 1.5 2001/06/27 06:27:04 tech
Updated README file to reflect changes made in EIGHT v.0.05
-tech
Revision 1.4 2001/04/11 01:54:19 tech
Changed error.log permission suggestion from 666 to 622, since it only needs
to be world writeable, not world readable.
Added blurb to end of document asking for feedback and sites using EIGHT.
-tech
Revision 1.3 2001/03/18 20:45:58 tech
Added explanation for file permission types.
-tech