Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

2/14/2011 8:45:13 AM

IanLogan

Total Posts 12

View Posts

Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

I need a good image album for my web site (long distance wilderness walk) as it needs to handle a lot of photos in various categories. One that is highlighted on the MS Web App Gallery is Gallery3 (http://gallery.menalto.com/). However it appears to be a php application and I am not sure how to integrate this with mojoPortal. Could somebody please let me know how to go about this.

However if you think there is a better alternative then please let me know.

Many thanks

Ian Logan

2/14/2011 11:35:01 AM

Jamie E

Total Posts 1203

View Posts

Help support mojoPortal!
Add-on modules

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

Well, that's a pretty open-ended question. The appropriate answers will depend on at least the following things:

Are you a developer, or a highly technical user?
Is your site going to run at a hosting company, or are you self-hosting?
Are you willing to pay for the gallery, or are you limiting your search to free/open source offerings?

I would recommend that you give first consideration to .NET-based photo galleries, since that will minimize the extra work you'd have to do in integrating it with your site. Speaking of integration, unless you are an advanced .NET developer with full access to the gallery source code, you will most likely end up with your galleries being stand-alone and separate from mojoPortal itself. In this case you will have the extra consideration of complimentary design that goes along with your mojoPortal skin.

Here's a pay .NET gallery application I found in a quick search. The Explorer layout in their demo pages looks pretty similar to the PHP one you posted.

Hope that helps,

Jamie

2/14/2011 1:56:17 PM

IanLogan

Total Posts 12

View Posts

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

Jamie

To answer your questions:

I am a software developer, mainly Win Forms with VB.NET, but I am slowly getting into web stuff.

The site is being hosted at arvixe.com.

As this is not work related then I am looking at free/open-source.

Having done a little more digging it looks like it will be a lot of work to integrate PHP into ASP and so I have looked at other possibilities. I found another possible ASP option which is Gallery Server Pro (www.galleryserverpro.com) which at first I thought I had to pay for (it was the Pro that indicated $$$!).

So I suppose the question now is: how best to integrate another ASP application into mojoPortal? Looking through the documentation I could not find a straight-forward crib-sheet that indicated the steps required. I may be wrong though!

I only have VS2008 at work and not at home but there is the 2010 Web Express version which may be adequate. However as you point out, there may be a problem with skinning and this really would be an issue as I would want the gallery to have the same look and feel. I am a little disappointed that mojoPortal does not have a good gallery/imaging as this can be quite important for many sites - and rather important for me.

So, Joe, knock-knock, are you listening???

Kind Regards

Ian

2/14/2011 2:05:58 PM

Joe Audette

Total Posts 18439

View Posts

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

I'm listening but I have no advice or magic sauce for you. Integrating different web apps is very difficult and requires deep knowledge of both apps, there is no easy magical solution that I know of. We have several image galleries included in mojoPortal, they are good enough for me though they may not be as nice as some stand alone solutions.

Good luck with your project though.

Best,

Joe

2/14/2011 2:18:45 PM

IanLogan

Total Posts 12

View Posts

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

Thanks Joe, I think perhaps the best solution at the moment is to use your image gallery. You said you had several but I thought you only had one? I'd be grateful to know more...

Kind Regards

Ian

2/14/2011 2:19:06 PM

Joe Audette

Total Posts 18439

View Posts

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

The only thing I can add is that it depends what you mean by "integration", if you mean integrated in terms of security and users and roles and skinning, that is all very difficult and problematic. If you mean you just want to install both of them, then you could install mojoportal as a root level site and then install some other .NET app like a gallery in a sub folder beneath the site and link to it from the main site. There can be conflicts between web.config files for a parent level root site and a child application but there are ways of mitigating those as mentioned in our developer FAQ.

So you could conceivably install a gallery along with mojoportal and try to style the gallery similar, but that is not really an integration per se.

Hope it helps,

Joe

2/14/2011 2:22:59 PM

Joe Audette

Total Posts 18439

View Posts

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

We have one called Image Gallery, one called Image Gallery (Simple Folder version), and we have a Flickr Gallery that pulls images from Flickr if you have an account there. They each work differently and have their pros and cons, best to try them out and see which you like the best.

Hope it helps,

Joe

2/15/2011 1:31:27 PM

Joe Audette

Total Posts 18439

View Posts

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

I made a little document with notes about the Folder Gallery:

http://www.mojoportal.com/using-the-folder-gallery.aspx

it links to an example gallery so you can see what it is like once it is all setup.

Best,

Joe

2/16/2011 5:55:12 AM

IanLogan

Total Posts 12

View Posts

Re: Integrating Gallery3 with mojoPortal

Joe

I've been playing around with the different gallery options in mojo and like the Flickr solution. It is really handy to see your photos appearing in mojo having just uploaded them to Flickr. However my problem is that I want to have multiple galleries on the site i.e. one per section of the walk, a total of 6 sections. The system gets a little confused if I create more than one Set in Flickr and so I think that I might need to create 6 accounts in Flickr to get an API key for each gallery. Does this sound right?

There is also the question of users being able to add their own photos but I think setting up a Flickr gallery might be trickier for them. So perhaps the Simple Folder option might do. I could not get batch upload to work though - I could only select one image at a time.

Kind Regards

Ian