Better image gallery now!

[studiomigo]

This is a call for BC users and BC management.

BC image gallery module most be updated to allow for more customization! Most of my clients are not e-commerce clients. for them images and galleries are fundamental and I can't sell them BC because the lack of a great gallery module.

The only thing I can do is to develop a WebApp but why should a client pay for a full blown e-commerce platform just so I have the WebApp functionality?

I call BC to make image galleries a priority as the web is all about imagery! and/ or add the WebApp as a function to the Basic+ or Marketing packages.

What do you think? Where can I push this so I don't need to go back developing WordPress sites?

Cheers

Micha

[Liam Dilley]

Hey Micha,

Will nip this in the bud for you, you can wait for an official BC response but trust me on the below.

You wont see a new built gallery module this year. You may feel this is a priority feature of BC but in the big scale of things it isnt, it is way down there. eCommerce, System, Marketing, Build features, Fixes and bugs... A lot more have more prority then this.

Some tweaks and fixes to the existing ones you may get this year here but that is about it.

People like myself take the gallery xml and build our own galleries, modify the gallery to do as we please etc so there is means to change and make it as you want already yourself and one of the reasons it is low prirotiy.

[studiomigo]

Thanks Liam,

BC is aiming to the wrong direction in my opinion. There are far better, more advance and easier to use E-commerce platform for lower cost then BC. Marketing sites are all about images and media. Clients don't have a clue about XML and don't want to pay for additional development for something that is a basic feature on any free CMS out there. I just get nervous each time I choose BC for a project since the unknown is larger then the known.

Thanks to forum members like you I get to know the unknown parts of BC which cost me a lot of time and losses. Yesterday I was looking for a solution to resize a Poplet tag. No documentation! Thanks to someone else asking about it and your answer I was able to provide my client a solution to his request for a larger poplet image (with CSS it all goes blurry). If not for you or this forum I would loose hours figuring out how to create larger Poplet images and maybe end up just insert image gallery modules into the description field which means hell for me and my client.

So, I think BC needs to rethink it's priorities. Add/ change image modules (any of them), If they can't at least make the WebApp part of the Marketing plan. and finally fix the KB documentation.

Cheers

Micha

[Liam Dilley]

I would disagree with you with you re-eCommerce. Since building a BC framework for that and reviewing most of them there are hidden costs to extra features, build cost features, integration issues and other problems of their own in all eCommerce systems. Most are just that - eCommerce only and marketing, web pages, custom features for your site or small things like the ability to do internal design. Many do not have that.

If you think Marketing sites are all about images and media you need to learn more about Marketing online businesses, a lot more!

In terms of the xml, it is not for them it is for you. They just put images into folders and galleries render on pages as you designed and how they want them, just as you can do if you know how to with the current gallery module.

I think especially with your last bit there about being nervous, I think a lot of it is lack of knowledge of BC and that will come as you learn it. Just as with anything.

Poplets, we got custom lightbox with large product image, side poplets next to it and other funky things like change colour of attribute, main image changes all through knowing the system and coding and done wll all lightning fast. Again it is just knowing.
is we need to have things not buggy, fixes and tweaks to do what we need to do to make sites which you can accomplish very nicely with knowledge of BC and better knowledge on the key aspects of the trade such as pragramming client side, CSS, HTML, web standards etc.

BC will be worse off if you think the priorities change to suit what your thinking. Sorry but I and many others including BC will agree with that. I think upcoming stuff from BC and announcments as well with the direction of the system etc wont be to your liking.

If things were on track with the ecommerce updates, liquid and things like and when they do come they clearly wont be for yourself but the majority to support better site implemenations, to hit bigger corparate business etc is the way to go.

If I can get 50k site buidls in BC with the money filtering back to Adobe, Selling things related to BC to people, scalability of the system, the infustructure to support bigger sites and more sites and bigger features, more integration with the big adobe services to offer more things to our clients..

Allowing more buttons to make the gallery render better out the box is a small fish in a big pond.

[Lynda-S]

While this may not be a solution you were looking for, I am like you and do not like BC Photo Gallery Module. I use a tool called jAlbum. It is an external program that I have easily incorporated into my BC websites. It uploads the photos via FTP and is dead simple to use and can create some pretty amazing galleries (IMO). There is a fully functional free version (with some simple ads) but there are paid version which are not that expensive and well worth the cost (and remove the ads)! I recommend checking it out as an alternative to the BC Photo Module. Here is an example of a gallery that takes me only a few minutes to update and upload with great looking results.

As for BC's direction, I must agree with Liam. While the photo gallery module  could use some work I would rather BC focus on other areas of the system. When it comes to choosing a CMS I hands down choose BC everytime. It truly is a great system.

[studiomigo]

Thanks guys.

I guess you are looking at the bigger picture. maybe I need to learn how XML works or how to implement a third party module into BC. Or maybe I just have to employ someone young with patience to learn and adopt to the ever changing world of the web. I have been in the web industry since the mid 90, starting in NYC, so almost 20 years of adjusting to new methods and techniques, but at the end of the day everyone wants easier platforms and better features to do just the same thing. Show Content!

It's beer time. Have a great weekend.

Micha

[Jackson_Palmer]

Setting up a gallery widget to pull off the built-in BC photo gallery isn't too difficult to setup, and doesn't require a deep understanding of XML or JS. Check out these articles

• http://kb.worldsecuresystems.com/874/cpsid_87433.html
• http://www.wilhelser.com/2010/08/custom-photo-gallery-business-catalyst/

Hope that helps!

[studiomigo]

Thanks Jackson.

I have just tried inserting an XML jQuery gallery and getting this error message in Chrome

XMLHttpRequest cannot load http://www.vetsnyc.com/staff/riverside-animal-hospital/PhotoGallery.xml. Origin http://vetsnyc.businesscatalyst.com is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origin.

Nothing works. Who knows maybe also this is a redundand KB.

link to page:

http://vetsnyc.businesscatalyst.com/001-image-gallery

[Dazzling_discoverer1549]

Hi studioamigo,

The Javascript that you have in the page loads the xml using www.vetsnyc.com as base URL.

But you're loading the page using the http://vetsnyc.businesscatalyst.com URL.

That's why Chrome throws that error - because of cross domain.

If you request the gallery page over the same URL it will work: http://www.vetsnyc.com/001-image-gallery

Have a good day!

Florin

[studiomigo]

Thanks, so now it's showing the photos but no jquery effects. is this the way it should look like?

http://www.vetsnyc.com/001-image-gallery

Cheers

[Liam Dilley]

It is only sample code, it shows you how to fetch the data and you should see and be able to follow the code that it only forms the output in an li format with a tags.

If you have a jquery lightbox plugin and it runs on a required class etc then you need to add it in or modify the code to offer a lightbox. You also just rendering the large image to link to the large image. I know thats an example but you will need to adjust that too. How you want to now present that data once you fetched it is up to you really. Down to what you would like it to look like.

[Liam Dilley]

Thanks Jackson, that was my next point of call to show similar.

[studiomigo]

But it's not working. see the error in the previous post.

[Lesley Quesada]

I agree – my client sells packaged toys that include MANY pieces, and want to show all pieces in their poplets. However, BC limits it to 10 poplet images... I wonder if an options to add more poplets is being considered?? I hope!

[Guest]

for the requirement of more poplets you could insert photo gallery module code into a custom field I have done it on this site 100p just so managing the images is a little easier literally the code in the custom field 2 is {module_photogallery,30621,10,,12,60,60,,fill_proportional}