Hi Hendrik!

Been using v1.0 for two weeks now and really like it, really made my personal workflow around Piwigo more efficient.

One thing I noticed regarding thumbnail generation. Does using batch manager trigger the need for additional thumbnails? My workflow is sync in new photos, then go into batch manager to add tags/write metadata, etc. What I've noticed is that after using batch manager on new photos, if I run AlbumPilot again, it finds more thumbnails to generate:



So after editing the 6 new photos in batch manager, AlbumPilot determined there were 12 new thumbnails to generate. Looking at the log, the 12 files were the "thumb" and "medium" sizes for the 6 new photos. Looking back in the log during the initial sync, I see it generating "thumb", "square", and "medium" for the 6 new photos (so 18 total). What about editing the files batch manager caused AlbumPilot to think it needed to regenerate the "thumb" and "medium" thumbnail sizes again? Maybe it's the writing of metadata since that "changes" the underlying image file?

Last edited by windracer (2025-07-19 16:36:44)

You're right, after using "write metadata" if I go into batch manager and tell it to generate missing resizes, it finds work to do.

I have published version 1.1.1 to the Piwigo Extensions repository, and it is listed there as the latest revision. From what I can see, everything should be in place for the update to show up in the plugin manager.

Could you let me know if it’s now appearing on your side after forcing a check (via Tools → Maintenance → Check for updates)? If it still doesn’t show, I’ll follow up to see if there’s any hickup in the update propagation routine.

Thanks a lot for double-checking!

Hi everyone,

Just to follow up on my previous posts: I've finally found the cause of the missing update notifications for AlbumPilot.
The issue was that the plugin header didn't include a Plugin URI line - I was not aware that Piwigo relies on this entry to check for new versions on the extensions site.

I have fixed it and published AlbumPilot 1.2.1, which adds this line.

Users of earlier versions (< v1.2.1) need to install the update manually once, via Plugins, Add a new plugin, search "AlbumPilot", Add,
after which future updates should appear automatically.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks to windracer and the Piwigo team for helping track this down!

Best,
Hendrik

Hi everyone,

Just to clarify the update situation more explicitly (I suspect the earlier note was easy to miss):

The reason updates did not show up in Piwigo's plugin manager for older installations was a missing Plugin URI entry in the plugin header.

This was fixed in AlbumPilot v1.2.1.

BTW, today v1.3.0 was released.

Important: If you are still on any version older than v1.2.1, automatic updates will not work. You need to do a one-time manual install to get onto the fixed update mechanism:

Piwigo Admin -> Plugins

Add a new plugin

Search for AlbumPilot

Click Add (it will install over the existing version; settings/logs are preserved)

After you've done this once (and are on v1.2.1 or newer), future updates should appear normally in the plugin manager.

Sorry for the inconvenience - unfortunately there is no way around that one-time manual step for installations < v1.2.1.

Further details are in the README / GitHub documentation, see https://github.com/HendrikSchoettle/AlbumPilot

Regarding the thumbnail re-generation topic mentioned earlier in this thread: this is not an AlbumPilot-specific behavior, but Piwigo core logic. If you use Batch Manager / "Write Metadata", the underlying image file is actually modified (even if only in the metadata headers). After that, Piwigo may no longer consider existing derivatives fully valid and will queue "missing" sizes again (this was also confirmed by windracer when testing with the standard Piwigo Batch Manager).

In theory, one could try to distinguish metadata-only changes from real image-content changes, but that would require deviating from Piwigo's standard workflow and adding quite a bit of complexity. One of the main goals of AlbumPilot is to stay as close as possible to Piwigo core behavior and act as a stable wrapper that makes the existing workflow easier to run in a chunked, step-by-step way.

Practical workaround: after running "Write Metadata", just run the thumbnail scan/generation once more so everything is consistent again. Alternatively, you can disable thumbnail (re)generation if you are sure you do not need it - but then AlbumPilot will also not generate thumbnails for items where derivatives are truly missing.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I understand this can be annoying, but I would prefer keeping AlbumPilot aligned with the standard Piwigo logic in order to maintain consistency and maintainability.

Thank you for your understanding!