Hi rvonder,

rvonder wrote:

1- Users should have no access to anything until they register and login.  I would also like to have admin approval over new registrations before they are activated and given access.
2- Once registered and logged in, all users should be able to view all photos in all albums (ie, no albums are private).

First step, you should set all your albums as private (admin panel > Albums > Properties).
Then you create 2 groups of users. example : "access" and "no access". Set "no access" as the default group. New users will be set automatically in this group (admin panel > users > groups).
Set permission to access private albums to "access" group only.

By default, Piwigo can only notify you when a new user register the gallery (admin panel > Configuration > Options > In main tab, "Email admins when a new user registers"). When your receive a regsitration notification, you can move the new user from "no access" group to "access" group (admin panel > users > manage). So he will be able to browse all albums you allowed for this group.

rvonder wrote:

3- Any registered and logged-in user should be able to create new albums (or sub-albums?) and should have full control over them (e.g., upload images to them; delete images from them; even delete an entire album if they created it).  Users should NOT be able to upload to, or make any other changes other than comments, to any sub-albums they did not personally create.

See [extension by plg] Community to allow pictures uploading and permissions.

Eric wrote:

See [extension by plg] Community to allow pictures uploading and permissions.

Yeah but it doesn't seem to fulfill all the things that rvonder wants.

rvonder wrote:

Users should NOT be able to upload to, or make any other changes other than comments, to any sub-albums they did not personally create.

While the plugin is partly what he and me want (User uploads), it doesn't seem to disallow users from making changes/uploads to albums they did not create.

I made some test users and set up the few permissions that "Community" allowed me to, but the users were able to upload pictures into each others albums, which isn't really what I'm looking for.

I definitely have way more than a "few users".  My scenario:  I run a very active automobile-related Mailman email discussion list with about 1000 subscribers.  For spam and security reasons, we allow only plain-text posts with no attachments.  However, many members have wanted a way to post photos of their cars, "how-to" photos illustrating a certain type of do-it-yourself repair job, and even related documents (mostly MS Office and PDF files, but also videos or ZIP files on occasion).  They can mention or provide a direct link in their mailing list posts, so interested members can go view this supporting info.

I've looked at all of of the gallery products offered by my ISP (DreamHost), including Gallery2, ZenPhoto, and Piwigo.  It looks like Gallery2 or ZenPhoto can do what I need, but both seem way more complicated -- not only to set up, but for use by non-technical users.  Simplicity and ease-of-user are what I found attractive about Piwigo.

But it seems as if Piwigo was designed more as a system for a single user (ie, the admin) who will create all albums, post all photos (and videos, using the plugin), and likely set up additional users and define their privileges to view various albums.  This is exactly what a photographic business would want, for example, to be able to post photos taken for various clients, allow that client to view only their own photos, and even to purchase downloads right from the site.

But many of us, I think, want to use Piwigo as a "community" hosting site - which is why I was so excited to find the Community plug-in.  Seems like a couple things are missing that a 'community' would need:

a) Albums should be created and maintained by any community user, and viewed by others.  (In my case, I want any album to be viewable by everyone in the community, but I'm sure others would want the default for a new user-created album to be 'private' until the user (ie, owner) grants read-only or read/write permissions to other users, groups, or the whole community.  Most importantly, the abiliity to write/update to another user's albums should never be the default (and would probably very seldom be granted by the owner).

b) In default Piwigo, there seems to be no concept of an "album owner" (by default, the userid/name who created the album).  That's really essential to make (a) workable.  Perhaps userid and name could be maintained in a couple of site-specific fields, which Piwigo already appears to support?

c) It appears there are plug-ins to enable upload of non-image content (music, videos, documents, files, etc.), but again only by the administrator.  Community users snould also be able to upload these non-image files, as long as the admin configures the Community plug-in to allow it (I don't think this needs to be done on a per-user basis).

@plg, you mentioned the idea of having Piwigo/Community automatically create a new default album whenever a new user is registered (e.g., "Rob's Photos").  As long as it also automatically adds permissions for the new user to create new sub-albums ONLY under that default album and no others, I think it would be quite workable (i.e., the pull-down to select where to create the new album shows only "Rob's Photos" for me).  I'm assuming all of these default user "spaces" would be sub-albums under 'Community'?  The only other important thing that would be needed is to display under 'Albums' ONLY those users who have actually added one or more photos (i.e., "hide" all the empty ones), because a majority of registered users would only be browsing others' photos vs. adding any of their own.  The last thing you'd want is a list of 1000 sub-albums under 'Community' with 80% of them being empty!  (It's also a privacy concern, because you're effectively creating a "member's list" if all of them are displayed.)

Again, I'm just a neophyte here - but it seems to me that if these additional capabilities could be added to the existing Community plug-in, it would be able to handle a much broader set of use cases for 'community' (including ones as I've been describing that would be very typical).

I'm certainly not denigrating the current Community features; just hoping there's a possibility to enhance the plug-in to do what I think many users would need.  Does this make sense?

Thanks,
     Rob (aka rvonder)