Stop Design Photo Gallery Plugin for Movable Type 4.1
Posted: February 14, 2008 Filed under: Blogging, Design, Movable Type, Personal Projects 28 CommentsIn today’s Movable Type hackathon I chose to focus on a Movable Type plugin of mine that has been neglected quite far too much since the release of MT4: the [Photo Gallery plugin](http://www.majordojo.com/2006/04/releasing-photo-gally-a-movable-type-plugin.php). I held off primarily because I knew that the [template set feature in Movable Type 4.1](http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/designer/template-sets.html) was going to make the user experience for the Photo Gallery plugin totally worth the wait.
What I have hacked together so far is far from perfect, but it serves as an excellent and fully functional preview of what is in store for this plugin in the coming weeks. Please, install it, use it and let me know what you think.
### Instructions
0. Make sure you have MTOS 4.1 or MT 4.1 installed.
1. Download PhotoGallery-2.0.zip
2. Follow the [installation instructions](http://www.majordojo.com/projects/photogallery/user_manual.php#inst).
3. Create a new blog and use the “Stop Design Photo Gallery (PHP)” template set.
4. From the Create menu select “Upload Photo.”
The rest should be, I hope, self explanatory. If it is not, then that is a bug.
### About Photo Gallery 2.0 (alpha)
*This is not an official release. It is a preview and chance for me to hear some feedback from users.*
In case you were wondering, here is an overview of some of the enhancements found in Photo Gallery 2.0:
* **easy to install photo gallery** – using MT’s template set system you can install a PHP version of Doug Bowman’s templates.
* **photo album nomenclature** – when you are in the administrative interface managing a photo gallery, the classic bloggish language of MT is replaced by more familiar photo related terminology, e.g. “Album” vs. “Category”.
* **faster publishing** – the templates have been completely refactored to be faster to publish and faster to process new uploads.
* **easy photo management UI** – using Movable Type’s built in asset management interface it is far simpler now to view all your photos from within the admin interface.
* **better upload dialog** – a better and simpler photo upload dialog has been provided to allow you to view the photo while you provide a title and caption for it.
* **no hacked custom fields** – data is now stored logically within an entry allowing users to realistically edit a photo even after it has been uploaded and saved.
But remember, I am not done yet. So expect the following soon…
* OpenID support for commenting
* a second plain HTML photo gallery option
majordojo on wordpress 
Is this a valid path on your system:
/home/googeeor/public_html/mt41/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery/meta/functions/all.php
I’m sure this is a silly question, but where do I go to choose the “Stop Design Photo Gallery (PHP)” template set? From your installation instructions, “Create Photo Gallery” should be under “Plugin Actions” but I don’t see anything like either of those terms when I’m running MT.
Also, I see that the plugins are all there when I look under “Plugins” on the “System Overview” menu, but those plugins don’t show up when I check the Plugins page on my individual blogs. Does this matter? I should note that I just installed Movable Type 4 and my server is GoDaddy, which has major issues so I had to do a workaround in order to get it to run at all. Could I still be missing a vital piece from my MT4 install and that might be causing these problems?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I’m not a programmer; I’m just trying to muddle my way through all of this so I can have a pretty photo gallery on my website.
The instructions you are referencing are out of date. In MT 4.1 the photo gallery templates are installed via a feature we call “template sets.”
To create a photo gallery, click the “Create Blog” link found in blog selector/pull down menu just below the Movable Type logo. MT will ask you to select a template set. Select “Stop Design Photo Gallery (PHP).
Does this answer your question?
helllo, firstly I apologize, I am new to all this and I am at the bottom of the learning curve!
I have installed and managed to create a photo blog, however when I go to view it it comes back with 500 server error, and in the abscence of instructions I don’t know where to turn next. Another thing is what is the build folder and where does it go and is it the answer to the 500 problem?
I am glad you started working on the Photo Gallery plugin for MT. I have run into a little problem and can’t seem to figure it out. I have everything installed and setup as it should be (so I think) but I keep getting this error message:
Warning: main(/home/ohsnncom/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery/meta/functions/all.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/ohsnncom/public_html/photogallery/index.php on line 10
Warning: main(/home/ohsnncom/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery/meta/functions/all.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/ohsnncom/public_html/photogallery/index.php on line 10
Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘/home/ohsnncom/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery/meta/functions/all.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/ohsnncom/public_html/photogallery/index.php on line 10
Fatal error: Unknown function: dochead() in /home/ohsnncom/public_html/photogallery/index.php on line 12
Now, the path is there but it just won’t work. I followed the folder structure and placed the “mt-static” folder into my mt-static/plugins folder – then I placed the “plugins” folder into my cgi-bin/mt/plugins folder. What did i do wrong? Help!!
Thanks
I figured out what the problem was… for some unknown reason I placed the folder into cgi-bin/mt/mt-static/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery. All is working now.
include(/home/furtivem/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery/meta/templates/modules/mod_footer.html) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/furtivem/public_html/the_photos/galleries/index.php on line 50
Reason? I presume its because this file (mod_footer.html) is in this directory:
\mt\plugins\PhotoGallery\templates\html
and NOT in the mt-static folder.
Mia, I had this problem as well. Not sure what hosting service you are using but I managed to fix it on my website. I found out that I couldn’t have the ‘mt-static’ folder within my cgi folder. Moving it to the root addressed my issue.
I also had the same ‘mod_footer.html’ error and noticed that for some reason my install didn’t create the required sub-folders within my blog’s folder for those files. Verify that the path stated within your error does exist within your blog’s folder.
Byrne, I just looked back at the PhotoGallery-2.0.zip file and your package does not include the ‘templates’ sub-folder within ‘PhotoGallery-2.0\mt-static\plugins\PhotoGallery\meta\”
I managed to create the folders and copy the file from your photos site and enter it into mine.
i have the latest MT 4.1 installed, installed the photo gallery plugin and chmod the gallery.cgi to 755, and still do not see the dropdown to select a template set when creating a new blog.
i can’t find an answer anywhere i look.. banging head against wall at this point. any help is appreciated.
@rob – does the gallery plugin show up in your list of installed plugins?
FYI – the gallery.cgi file is no longer needed for MT4. I will remove that from the next distro.
these are the photo gallery related plugins that show up on the system plugin settings screen but not on any of my blogs plugin settings screens..
PhotoGallery/MTCategoyOfArchive.pl
PhotoGallery/MTCollate.pl
PhotoGallery/MTGrid.pl
PhotoGallery/MTRelativeURL.pl
Photo Gallery 1.7
PhotoGallery/PreviousNextInCategory.pl
PhotoGallery/arithmetic.pl
PhotoGallery/category.pl
PhotoGallery/dirifyplus.pl
PhotoGallery/entry.pl
PhotoGallery/keyvalues.pl
should all of these show up or should it just be one for the entire Photo Gallery.
TIA / rob
Hi this is pretty stupid but do you have a step by step instruction readme file anywhere? I have to hack and slash my way through any install and the instructions you link to refer back to the install for the previous version and things have changed. Please help 🙂
Byrne,
Re: my earlier problem – Yes, that helped. Thank you.
My problem now is that whenever I upload a photo and publish it or try or try to change the design style, nothing shows up. It’s still a blank gallery with the same design as when I originally installed everything. Any ideas? I’m still wondering if I’m missing some huge piece of the MT 4 install that I maybe didn’t get right the first time. GoDaddy is really screwy and I can’t afford to move to another hosting service right now.
Byrne,
thank you for this juvenescence of Bowman’s templates.
unfortunately I encounterd a problem migrating from MT3.2 and Photo Gallery 1.04 to MT4.1 and Photo Gallery 2.0.
I am using the mt api to communicate to MT via a perl script which is uploading the Photos. Communications is well, but the Photos don’t show up, only the text (excerpt,keywords etc).
In the Old version the fields entry_text and entry_text_more where used to reference to the Photos. How is it done now, I cant’t figure out?
Greetings,
Thorsten
This method no longer functions with Photo Gallery 2.0 and this definitely needs to be better documented.
The new Photo Gallery format uses Movable Type assets to extract the photo out of the post and then to generate all the various sizes (thumbnails, etc) of the asset. MT currently uses a special syntax for serializing/encoding/marking up an asset in a post.
Insert an asset into a post normally and replicate it’s HTML.
Long story short, this is the new mapping:
* Title => Title (duh)
* Body => Caption
* Extended Body => Photo Asset
* Keywords => Keywords
There is no need to put the thumbnail and medium sized versions into different fields – just the one asset – a reference to the full size version – in the extended body field.
http://www.jinstonic.co.uk/phpphotoblog/
I have installed and everything works for uploading a photo – but the IMG tag in the templates never gets any information in it so no images show up in the gallery??
Any ideas.
Andreas,
Here is my directory structure;
/public_html/cgi-bin/mt/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery “Plugins”
/public_html/mt-static/plugins/PhotoGallery “mt-static”
for some reason this was very confusing for me, but I finally got it.
~tv
Hi Tony,
If swap the folders around, wouldn’t the templates break? For example no “Upload Photos” in the Create menu.
Yes I saw the strange include in the index.php. I did a switch around cgi-bin and mt-static folders to no success.
AL
I’m running MT 3.33 and I upgraded Plugin Manager from 1.02 to 1.05 and now when I click on Plugin Manager from MT Home screen I get “End tag mismatch (head != meta) [Ln: 35, Col: 6]” anyone have any ideas?
Question 2: I was wondering if there is a way to completely backup the photo galleries and everything in MT related to it? Or duplicate it under a new folder. I want to experiment with the MT4.1 and Photo Gallery 2.0 features without worrying about loosing or having to upload another 1132 one by one.
I have installed the Photo Gallery plugin for MT4. I need to put the mt-static folder in the cgi-bin to work. So far every works find. Except for mass import. That is totally broken.
@Scott if youll try to browse your Plugins directory, you will find that the meta folder is missing in v2.01.
Download the 2.0 version and upload it from there.
ohh, sorry my mistake i was looking at the wrong folder.
and now im getting 500 error on my mt4.2 installation
Thanks a million – this worked for me too. I agree it is a bit of a hassle, but I am so pleased.
Are you suggesting that we need to re-add the write permissions everytime we want to publish to the site?
I think that the problems may be more than just the permissions errors.
Even after I adjusted the permissions, I noticed some of the icons did not load. When I looked, the path where the page was looking for the icon did not even exist (“meta” – within the generated folder).
I don’t have the expertise to troubleshoot/debug this. I’ll just hope that a new version comes along that supports MT 4.2. I’ll look for some alternatives in the meantime.
Thanks for all of your help.
Not sure if anyone is still reading these but here goes anyway. Installed Photo Gallery 2.01 on MT4.21-en without a problem and created a new blog using the (PHP) option. Was able to create albums, upload files and view the pages.
Decided to try the (HTML) option to see what it offered so created a new blog but when trying to publish it got the following:
An error occurred publishing entry ‘2172111.jpg’: Publish error in template ‘Individual Photo’: Error in tag: Unknown tag found: Category
If I select the ‘Edit template’ option in the error window I get:
One or more errors were found in this template.
* at line 0 is unrecognized
* at line 15 is unrecognized.
* at line 15 is unrecognized.
* at line 15 is unrecognized.
* at line 55 is unrecognized.
* at line 55 is unrecognized.
* at line 55 is unrecognized.
* at line 55 is unrecognized.
* at line 55 is unrecognized.
* at line 1775 is unrecognized.
* at line 61904 is unrecognized.
* at line 32 is unrecognized.
* at line 4816201 is unrecognized.
* at line 48763926 is unrecognized.
* at line 48763930 is unrecognized.
* at line 48763936 is unrecognized.
* at line 828401719 is unrecognized.
* at line 18565492817 is unrecognized.
* at line 3362633074135 is unrecognized.
* at line 102787313520287 is unrecognized.
Can anybody shed light on what might be wrong.
You don’t need to update permissions every time. Just set in the mt-config.cgi:
HTMLPerms 0644
DirUmask 0022
This will set the right permissions (directory:755, file:644).
i am so sorry to hear that,my web building with Movable Type 4.1 must update now,thanks!bouvier des flandres