SlideShow

SlideShow turns your Links SQL database into a directory of photo galleries. When images are uploaded to specific links, they will be displayed as thumbnails to users browsing your directory, and can be cycled through like a slideshow.

The SlideShow Plugin Menu

SlideShow, like all Links SQL plugins, can be accessed and customized from the Plugin Manager. Clicking the "Edit" link beside SlideShow's record in the Plugin Manager brings up a menu of options allowing you to customize all aspects of your SlideShow plugin.


Figure 1: The SlideShow Plugin menu.

The following options can be configured from the Plugin Details menu:

Maximum width and height for thumbnail
This field controls the maximum width and height (in pixels) of the thumbnails that will be generated from uploaded images. Specify using the format widthxheight; 100x200, for example

Maximum width and height for medium sized images
This field controls the maximum width and height (in pixels) of the medium-sized images that will be generated from uploaded images, allowing extremely large images to be sized appropriately for web display. Specify using the format widthxheight; 1000x800, for example

Path to watermark file
This field allows you to configure a path to a watermark image file. If specified, this image will appear in the upper-left corner of all medium and full-sizes images in SlideShow. The image should be small, have a white or clear background, and be in either gif, png or jpeg format. Name of image columns
This field contains the names of the columns from which SlideShow will call and display images. Column names should be separated by commas. A sample list of column names in this field might be: "Image_01, Image_02, Image_03, Image_04". Remember to type the names of the columns exactly as they appear in the "Column Name" field.

SlideShow images
This field contains the names of the columns from which SlideShow will call and display images when a user is viewing images in a sequenced slideshow. Column names should be separated by commas. A sample list of column names in this field might be: "Image_01, Image_02, Image_03, Image_04". Remember to type the names of the columns exactly as they appear in the "Column Name" field.

Temporary image directory
This field contains the path to the directory where images will be temporarily stored while being uploaded.

Image upload directory
This field contains the path to the directory where uploaded images will be permanently stored.

Menu Options
These checkboxes allow you to choose which of the following options will be displayed in the "SlideShow" menu on the "Installed Plugins" sidebar: Help, Add Fields, and Edit. Plugin hooks
The add_link and modify_link checkboxes allow you to enable and disable the hooks to the SlideShow plugin in the add_link.html and modify_link.html templates. If disabled, images uploaded using SlideShow will still be saved and stored normally, but will not be visible to users viewing the directory. These hooks are enabled by default, and it is not recommended that you disable them unless you believe there may be a problem with SlideShow.

SlideShow and Your Links SQL Templates

To fully integrate SlideShow into your Links SQL database, you will have to make some changes to your templates.

To integrate uploaded images into your site, add the following line to your link.html, detailed.html, or pictureframe.html (click here for details on this new template) templates, depending on which pages you want to be able to display images on:

<%Plugins::SlideShow::generate_paths($ID)%>
To let users to be able to upload images of their own to your database, make the following changes in form.txt:

replace

<form method="POST" name="admin" action="add.cgi" >
with

<form method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data"  name="admin" 
action="add.cgi" >
To make the file upload fields available to users, add the following to form.txt, replacing "COLUMN_NAME" with the name of the columns you wish to add:

<input type="file" name="COLUMN_NAME">
So, if you had a series of columns called "Image1", "Image2", etc, you would add the following to form.txt:

<input type="file" name="Image1">
<input type="file" name="Image2">
<input type="file" name="Image3">
<input type="file" name="Image4">
<input type="file" name="Image5">
To actually display the uploaded images, add the following line (replacing "Image1" with the name of the desired columns) to your link.html, detailed.html, or pictureframe.html (click here for details on this new template) templates, depending on which pages you want to display images on. You will have to add the line once for each column, inserting the column name for each:

<img src="<%Image1_path%>">
To display thumbnails of the uploaded images, add the following line (replacing "Image1" with the name of the desired columns) to your link.html, detailed.html, or pictureframe.html (click here for details on this new template) templates, depending on which pages you want to display thumbnails on. You will have to add the line once for each column, inserting the column name for each:

<img src="<%Image1_thumbnail_path%>">
To create a link to the slideshow, allowing users to view images in their full size, enter the following (replacing Image1" with the name of the image column you want the slideshow to begin with):

<a href="<%db_cgi_url%>/showpicture.cgi?ID=<%ID%>&v=Image1">text of link</a>
You may wish alter this code in case the column called in the above string does not contain any data. The following code will create a link that will open the slideshow, search the image columns and display the first image found.

<%if first_img_col%>
<a href="<%db_cgi_url%>/showpicture.cgi?ID=<%ID%>&v=<%first_img_col%>">text of link</a>
<%endif%>
If, for example, no file was found in the Image1 column, but a file was contained in the Image2 column, the slideshow would automatically display the file in the Image2 column first.

Installing SlideShow automatically generates a new template called slideshow.html that builds the slideshow page in which users can browse through uploaded images. By modifying this template, you can alter the way in which users view images.