Steven Levin steven at tux dot appstate dot edu

First navigate to the administrative side of the Photo Album module. It can be found under the Site Content Tab of your Control Panel. The link that says Photo Albums and has an icon of a camera next to it. Click on the textual link or the icon to continue.

When you first enter the Photo Album you will see a listing of all the Photo Albums which are currently in the database. From this list you can go to view each individual album. In this album view you can see thumnail images of all the photos in the album. At the top of the page with this list are two links. The first link is for listing albums, it will to always bring you back to this list. The other link says New Album and will take you to the form you need to add a new photo album to the database.

When creating a new Photo Album there are five fields to fill out but only one of them is actually required. The name of the album is the first field and the only required one. The name represents this album in the listing of all the photo albums and throughout phpWebSite. The second field is a short; it allows you to add a short description of your album. This may be used in something like a search result. The next option is to choose whether or not you want the album to be viewable by the public. Selecting visable makes it viewable by your users and the public alike. Selecting hidden keeps it out of the view of the public and only administrators with access can see the album. Next you can select a category for the album to go in. This is very useful if you would like the album to show up as related data. If you do not understand categories and wish to find out more, please refer to the chapter about the FatCat Categorizer. Finally you can add an extended description of your photo album. This is shown when listing all your albums so visitors can read about them. A wysiwyg html editor is provided for adding very basic html tags to the description.

When you are viewing an album for the first time and the album has no photos associated with it, you have two links to add a new photo. The first is under the message: No photos were found for this album; and it says Add a Photo. The second is a the top of the page next to the List Albums link and it says New Photo. The New Photo link will always be present when you are viewing an album. Both of these links take you to the same form to add a new photo. Two things are required when adding a new photo to the database. You must upload an image file and also provide a short description for that image. The short description is needed to make the html valid. Upload your image by clicking the browse button and selecting the file you want off of your computer. After that you can choose whether or not the photo is publicly viewable which is much like the activity for the album. Finally you can add an extended description to the album which will be displayed when the individual photo is being viewed. A wysiwyg is provided here for your convenience.

Editing a photo allows you to update the information entered when adding that photo to the database. You can also remove the photo and add a new one if it better fits the album or description. You can get to editing a photo by clicking on the edit link under its thumbnail in the main album view or by clicking the edit link when viewing an individual photo. To upload a new image you must first remove the old one by checking the box Remove Image under the photo and then clicking Save Photo. Then click the browse button and select a new image off your computer. Click Save Photo and you are done. You can also edit any of the textual data by just modifying it in the form and then clicking the Save Photo buttom. You will get a message saying the photo was successfully saved.

The are two points in the photoalbum where you can delete photos. One is in the main album view under each thumbnail is a delete link. Also when viewing a specific photo there is a delete link at the top of the page. After clicking the delete link it will take you to a Yes/No confirmation to make sure you want to delete the photo entirely from the album. The photo will also display below for confirmation. Click Yes to remove the photo and No to cancel the deletion process.

The settings for an album are found under the main album view. Next to the List Albums and New Photo link is a settings link. These settings are the same information you filled out when creating a new album. It is helpful to be able to get to this so you can possibly update the description of your album or hide it from the public while you add new photos to it. Just click the Save Album submit button to save any changes you may have made.

Navigating albums is easy. The are two navigation toolbars at the top and bottom of a main album view. The main album view is split up into pages. The limits on this toolbar control how many thumbnails to show per page. There are arrows (<< and >>) provided for moving back and forth from page to page. Also page links are there to help jump around from page to page. In order to view a photo all you must do is click on the thumbnail image. This will take you to a big view of that one specific image. Located at the top and bottom of the image will be <<Prev and Next>> links to page through each individual photo. At any time you can get back to the main album view by clicking the Back to Album link at the top of the page.