[drupal-devel] My approach on photo albums, slide show, etc.

[Emiliano]

Hi!

I know there are several discussions on photo albums, image galleries, etc., 
and I'm very interested in this subject because I'm running a site which 
makes heavy use of image module and have lots of pictures.

I've read the description on shazam gallery and *really liked it*, but I 
wouldn't like to make each gallery/node become a term. I believe ber has a 
reason to do the module works that way (as I know ber is a much better 
programmer than I and knows Drupal much, much better than I do), but it 
wouldn't fit my needs:

1 - pictures are uploaded by image module and go to image galleries

2 - users must be able to create an album and insert (previously uploaded) 
images into it *or* the users create an album and then upload images to it

3 - this album can have a specific term (taxonomy)

4 - a slide show would be nice

5 - mass upload would be nice


So, what I did so far:

A module where...

1 - Users can create albums. Each album is a node and has its own category, 
etc. The form for creating albums has text boxes so that the author enters 
each image's nid. (Yes, this is pretty dirty, I know). :-)

2 - When one access the node, the appropriate thumbnails are shown (linked to 
the original image nodes). 

3 - I got a slideshow script (in javascript) from dynamicdrive.com and made a 
slideshow for the album. (if we decide to use this script, must ask 
permission first)

This way, each picture can be inserted into several albums, each album can 
have its own category and description.

The site I run is about NYC. I have pictures from some places (Empire State 
Building, Statue of Liberty, Central Park, etc) and create albums for 
different purposes, like:   downtown Manhattan, Buildings, Parks, places of 
'Sex and the City', etc. One picture can be used in different albums. Got 
it? :-)

So, I decided to write to drupal-devel because I'd like to know if anyone is 
interested in seeing this module. It's still pretty dirty, but works fine. 
I'm looking for advice. If the community says this approach is not 
interesting, no problem at all.

Please, don't get me wrong because this is the second or third time I offer 
something I do to others to review or improve. I'm quite new to PHP (I'm a 
ASP coder) and only started to learn php because of Drupal. :-)

I've named this album as 'simple album'. Please, see it here:

http://www.novayork.com/node/1346   and click on *view slideshow* in the links 
area.

Cheers,
Emiliano.