Piwigo.org

mwerle · 2016-04-26 11:10:22

Piwigo version: 2.8

Hello,

I've just started evaluating Piwigo as a move away from the now-grandfathered Menalto Gallery. First impressions are great, however, I find the lack of multiple user support very odd.

I mean, Piwigo does support multiple users, but I can't really figure out what for. There doesn't seem to be any point as everybody must be an Admin to upload pictures, which means they can also delete/edit pictures from everybody else.

There's the Community plugin, but after a brief play around with that all it allows is a single group of users separate from the Admin user(s) to upload/edit pictures in a shared area. If the Community plugin allowed multiple separate areas and users, it would be exactly what's needed.

I've read (some) of the arguments pro/con, and I think it would not be difficult to have a solution. But I haven't looked in the code so I don't know how easy it would be to modify.

But basically, the core argument seems to be around "virtual" vs "folder" based albums.

I think Piwigo might be easy enough to extend to properly support multiple users by giving each user (or group) a "folder" as the root for all of their pictures, and then within that root you have all the pictures for the "virtual" or "folder" based albums for that user. The virtual albums for each user/group would simply be constrained by their root folder.

ie. on disk:
/piwigo/data
|- user1
|- UPLOAD
|- year/month/day based pictures for virtual albums
\- GALLERIES
\- folders for albums
|- user2
|- UPLOAD
|- year/month/day based pictures for virtual albums
\- GALLERIES
\- folders for albums

etc.

This seems to be a recurring question, so maybe it's worthwhile reconsidering?

Many thanks for reading,
- Micha.

plg · 2016-04-26 11:29:04

Hi mwerle,

In the Community plugin, give a try to the option "user albums".

mwerle · 2016-04-26 11:36:44

Hi Plg,

If you notice in my post, I did try Community Plugin.

Maybe I used it incorrectly, but with "Community" plugin, I could only create 1 area which is shared by all Users. There is not much documentation, so if I can have multiple separate areas, please tell me how?

Best regards,
- Micha.

plg · 2016-04-26 11:54:50

Of course I noticed you tried Community :-) But as you can have separate albums for users or groups, I think you missed a few features ;-)

1) you can create several permissions, for example you can allow user "John" to upload in album "Birthday Party" and allow user "Sarah" to upload in album "Thanksgiving".

2) you can activate option (see tab "configuration" of the Community plugin) "user albums", and then give the permission for "all users" to upload/create in their "user album only". This way you have automatically an album for each user.

mwerle · 2016-04-26 11:54:58

Hi,

Ok, so I missed the "Add Permission" link - it is possible to set up multiple permissions for multiple users/groups.

So part of my request is fulfilled, thanks.

Unfortunately quite a large part of the functionality is restricted to Admins. For example, a User cannot modify the picture (s)he uploaded to add description or title, or edit Album details. So this is still not so useful for me.

I realise Piwigo != Menalto Gallery, but it would be very nice to have "proper" multi-user support at some point in the future.

Many thanks,
- Micha.

EDIT: Oh! And didn't see the automatic album creation either! Thanks! (I had written my reply before I saw yours).

Last edited by mwerle (2016-04-26 12:01:04)

plg · 2016-04-26 12:01:41

mwerle wrote:
For example, a User cannot modify the picture (s)he uploaded to add description or title, or edit Album details.

Activate plugin Admin Tools. The user who uploaded the photo will be able to edit/delete it.

mwerle wrote:
I realise Piwigo != Menalto Gallery

That's perfectly right. The 2 projects have different designs (and I'm not talking about graphical design). Personnaly I didn't like the fact that in Menalto, the gallery was full of admin features. Of course, it's a very personal point of view :-)

mwerle · 2016-04-26 12:22:59

plg wrote:
Activate plugin Admin Tools. The user who uploaded the photo will be able to edit/delete it.

THANKS!

plg wrote:
mwerle wrote:
I realise Piwigo != Menalto Gallery
That's perfectly right. The 2 projects have different designs (and I'm not talking about graphical design). Personnaly I didn't like the fact that in Menalto, the gallery was full of admin features. Of course, it's a very personal point of view :-)

Yes. My use-case is that I'm running a small server at home, and I have given some friends/family space on it to upload and manage their own photos. With Menalto Gallery this worked very nicely; everybody could manage their own albums and specify their own look/feel, upload and manage their pictures and albums as they wanted. But it is now end-of-life.

And as you say, maybe it was a bit overly complicated.

As for "admin features everywhere", with Piwigo you -have- to be an Admin in order to do most things. This is not the Unix way.. most "normal" tasks should be done by Users and Admin is only used for special tasks. So in this respect I'm a bit confused about your design decision, but maybe it is explained somewhere on the forum - I have not read all of it! :)

For now I'm looking for a replacement for Menalto Gallery. Piwigo is -very- nice so far, the main feature that I think needs a little work for it to be perfect for me is the multiple-user support. I realise that this may not be the use-case you want to support, which is perfectly fine of course.

But it does seem to get asked for quite regularly. Perhaps more at the moment because a lot of Gallery users are looking for alternatives now.

Many thanks, especially for your VERY fast replies! I'll keep evaluating Piwigo for now :)

- Micha.

plg · 2016-04-26 12:50:54

Why not installing several Piwigo on your server? one for each of your friends!

mwerle · 2016-04-26 13:20:23

plg wrote:
Why not installing several Piwigo on your server? one for each of your friends!

That is IMHO not such a good solution:
* Multiple copies of Piwigo (and plugins), each of which must be kept updated; this is especially important if security vulnerabilities are found/fixed.
* Friends need to become "Admins" and know how to manage plugins etc.
* Each install requires its own URL and database

But yes, it is an option.

plg · 2016-04-26 14:10:29

OK, then you can play with the multisite feature, ie the ability to have several Piwigo (several databases) running with the same codebase http://piwigo.org/doc/doku.php?id=user_ … tiple_site

mwerle · 2016-04-26 14:29:33

Thanks, I'll take a look.

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#1 2016-04-26 11:10:22

Multiple user support?

#2 2016-04-26 11:29:04

Re: Multiple user support?

#3 2016-04-26 11:36:44

Re: Multiple user support?

#4 2016-04-26 11:54:50

Re: Multiple user support?

#5 2016-04-26 11:54:58

Re: Multiple user support?

#6 2016-04-26 12:01:41

Re: Multiple user support?

mwerle wrote:

mwerle wrote:

#7 2016-04-26 12:22:59

Re: Multiple user support?

plg wrote:

plg wrote:

mwerle wrote:

#8 2016-04-26 12:50:54

Re: Multiple user support?

#9 2016-04-26 13:20:23

Re: Multiple user support?

plg wrote:

#10 2016-04-26 14:10:29

Re: Multiple user support?

#11 2016-04-26 14:29:33

Re: Multiple user support?

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