• Mar
  • 07

TTG XML Auto Index

Current version 1.51

TTG XML Auto Index automatically generates an album index, a table of contents, for your Lightroom web photo galleries. You add a gallery, the index adds an entry automatically. It's magic PHP.

TTG XML Auto Index 1.51

Download | Sample Gallery | Forum Thread | Installation

System Requirements

TTG XML Auto Index is written in Lua. It requires Lightroom 1.3 or higher, and a web server running PHP. Updates are automatic. Coding experience is not necessary.

TTG XML Album Index outputs valid XHTML and CSS.

Setting Up Your Album Index

Select a handful of images from the Lightroom Library module. Which images aren't important; ultimately, they won't be a part of your album index. You'll just be using them as visual representations while stylizing your gallery. With images chosen, move to the Web module and select the TTG XML Auto Index from the Galleries list.

Configure the album index's appearance to your liking and hit the Export button. Export the gallery to your desktop.

Open the exported gallery folder. Delete the index.html file and the thumbnails folder. You won't need them.

Upload the remaining contents to a folder on your web server using an FTP client.

Adding Galleries

TTG XML Auto Index will automatically detect supported gallery types residing in the album index's folder on your web server. To add a gallery to the index, simply upload a supported web gallery to the index's folder on your server using an FTP client, or export the gallery directly from the Web module to your server using Lightroom's inbuilt Upload feature.

The following galleries currently offer support for TTG XML Auto Indexing:
TTG Shadowbox Gallery
TTG HTML Gallery
TTG Slimbox Gallery
TTG Selection Gallery
TTG Client Response Gallery
TTG Panic Gallery
TTG LR Pages
TTG XML Auto Index
TTG XML Album Index

Support will soon be added to other TTG galleries.

Manually Adding Items

TTG XML Auto Index is not limited to indexing supported gallery types, however. Other galleries, or any other type of media, can be added to the album index manually.

The album index will create entries for any sub-folder containing an autoindex.xml file. The file can be empty, just so long as it exists. To make the most of the index, however, the XML file accepts the following information:


<album>
   <thumbnail>Path to thumbnail image</thumbnail>
   <title>Album Title</title>
   <description>Album Description</description>
   <url>Path to content</url>
</album>

To better understand how to use the XML file, see Index Behavior, below.

Index Behavior

To make the most of TTG XML Auto Index, advanced users may want to know exactly how it works.

The album index runs from the index.php file. When loaded into the browser, the page includes the head.html and header.html files. Page headers may be customized by editing the header.html file. Do not edit the index.php file, or you may forfeit its functionality.

On load, the album index searches through all of its sub-folders to a depth of one level. For each folder in which it finds an autoindex.xml file, it will create an album entry. The autoindex.xml file can be completely empty, or can be filled out as shown above, just so long as it exists. If the file is found, the album entry will be created according to the following guidelines:

1) If a thumbnail image is specified, that thumbnail will be displayed. If no thumbnail is specified, the album index will select an image at random from the thumbnails folder contained within that sub-folder. If no thumbnails exist, the album item will display the default thumbnail image.

The thumbnail path should be written relative to the gallery root, usually "thumbnails/filename.jpg".

2) If a title is specified, that title will be displayed. If no title is specified, the album item will display the text "No Title".

3) If a description is specified, that description will be displayed. If no description is specified, the album item will display the text "No Description".

4) If a relative or absolute URL is specified, the album entry will link to that URL. If no URL is specified, the album entry will default to the sub-directory. The browser will serve index.html or index.php by default. If no URL is specified, and no index file exists, the album entry will probably lead to a Page Not Found error.

Reversing Album Order

By default, albums will be listed in numeric-alpha order, normal behavior for files listed in a folder. This order can be reversed by opening the index.php folder and changing the boolean value on line 15.

Changelog

v1.51 (2008-06-27)
No longer displays "No Title" or "No Description". When those fields are left blank, the gallery will display nothing. (untested)
The archive now contains an alternate version of the index.php file, located in the Alternates folder, that might work on servers on which the standard version does not.
v1.5 (2008-05-05)
Bug fixes in index.html for IE6 compatibility, for those using the template in static state on non-PHP servers.
v1.4 (2008-03-22)
Added footer w/ options.
ID Plate alignment now selectable.
v1.3 (2008-03-17)
Bug fix.
v1.2 (2008-03-13)
Bug fix regarding Collection Description sliders.
v1.1 (2008-03-08)
A menu! Five customizable menu items + slideshow + contact.
TTG XML Auto Index now supports itself, and can be installed into sub-directories where it will be auto-detected by a parent installation of TTG XML Auto Index, allowing easy use as an index for separate categories.
Added a Collection Description.
v1.03 (2008-02-27)
Index order now reversible using a toggle in the PHP script, line 15.
Added some PHP error suppression to accomodate unusual server settings that might otherwise produce errors.
v1.02 (2008-02-19)
Initial release.

Acknowledgements

TTG XML Auto Index would not be possible without the excellent PHP written by my good friend Zach Bardon. In addition to his scripting prowess, Zach is also an excellent musician. Give him a listen.

Make a Donation

If you enjoy my work and would like to pay for it, I accept donations via PayPal. Donations are wholly unnecessary, but would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

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Comment »

Matt
24 February 08 / permalink / feed

Thanks for the this great gallery index. I am working out some things with it to tweak it. One question I have is how would I reverse the order of the galleries in the index without manually creating code every time. Right now I use the actual date of the events for the folder name. I would like for the latest even to be at the top of the gallery index instead of the event from the first date. An example of the folder names are as follows:

20080130

Since I might put up a new event every week or so people always want to see the latest rather than seeing the first event at the top all the time. Would there be a simple way to change the display for newest to oldest in the main index gallery file? I’m not an expert, but I can certainly open up the php index file and tweak the code in a type utility such as Wordpad if given some help as to what and where I would place the code. Thanks and hope you have a solution.

Best regards,

Matt

MatthewGeorgePhotography.com

Matthew
24 February 08 / permalink / feed

A good question, Matt. I’ll have to consult my friend, Zach, who did the PHP work on this. I’ll get back to you.

nate
26 February 08 / permalink / feed

Love the gallery but having trouble…
http://www.patrickhoelck.com/galleries/index.php
check it out
I get error notices and line 58 and 82

Matthew
26 February 08 / permalink / feed

Nate, will look into it.

Matthew
26 February 08 / permalink / feed

Matt, Nate,

Version 1.03 should accommodate both of your issues. Please give it a try and let me know how things go. To update, you need only replace the index.php file in your existing installation.

Cheers,
Matthew

Ram
29 February 08 / permalink / feed

whats the difference between:
“TTG XML Album Index”
and this “TTG XML Auto Index”

does it do the same work?

thanks again…

Matthew
29 February 08 / permalink / feed

The XML Album Index requires the user to manually update the XML file that feeds the index information. It’s a more general purpose index, and more flexible for indexing other types of content (links, movies, etc.), but less automated in that the user must manually create entries for each album.

The XML Auto Index automatically indexes supported galleries. The required XML file for each gallery is created automatically on gallery export, so there’s no XML editing required at all. It also fetches its own thumbnails automatically if none are specified.

nelson d'aires
29 February 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Mathtew,

great work you have here!
i’m wondering.. can you and Zach build this to integrate in wordpress templates? it would be great to the wordpress community embed export lightroom galleries in wordpress templates…

thanks!

nelson d'aires
29 February 08 / permalink / feed

…continue the comment above….

i would love to use export lightroom galleries in a wordpress website, and to begining the task i need to include wordpress (wp) header.php and wp footer.php templates to the exported galleries… i don’t know code, but i understand quite well lightroom and wordpress and i know how to read code (but not write) and i would love to help in making lightroom integration in wordpress.

thanks,
nelson

Matthew
1 March 08 / permalink / feed

Oi, I’m a Textpattern user and wouldn’t even know where to begin with Wordpress. And, I assure you, if I were going to start with CMS plugin development, Textpattern would be the first to get a plugin. ;) Sorry, mate.

Dave Taylor
1 March 08 / permalink / feed

Matthew;

I have a server problem …The index.php file will not run.

The Linux Apache server is running PHP 5.0.
I can run it on another server, but I cannot tell what is missing on my main server.

What are any other requirements necessary to load the index.php file?

Matthew
1 March 08 / permalink / feed

I’m sorry, but I’m not sure exactly. My server is running PHP 5.2.5 and it’s fine.

Christopher
3 March 08 / permalink / feed

Matthew,

Thanks for making these so readily available.

I am manually adding galleries because I am exporting the default lightroom flash gallery style. How / where do I specify a name and description?

Thanks.

Christopher
3 March 08 / permalink / feed

Matthew,

Pardon my last question, I see the answer lies in the xml sample code you provide on this page.

Thanks,
C.

Joan
5 March 08 / permalink / feed

I played with the Auto Index in combination with the totally awesome TTG Shadowbox Gallery 2.47. I freaked around to add extra links in the contact header until I discovered the update tot 2.47

Shadowbox and Auto Index are such a great combination.
Is it possible to add the same “Menu Items” feature to TTG XML Auto Index ? This would make my life complete :-)

Thanx for the really great work!

Joan

Matthew
5 March 08 / permalink / feed

Joan,

It’s coming. I just haven’t had the time yet. It’s been a busy week at work.

Joan
5 March 08 / permalink / feed

Great, thanks!

Joan

Jon
17 March 08 / permalink / feed

I love your work! Your galleries are fantastic.

Quick question about the index. Everything set up smoothly, but for some reason there is gallery showing up that says “No Thumbnail” “No Title” “No Description”. The only other folder in the index folder besides the gallery that I uploaded is the resources folder. Do you have any idea what could be going on?

www.jonhickey.com/photography

Thanks!

Matthew
17 March 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Jon,

It seems to be picking up a directory called _vti_cnf. You might want to look into this folder, see what’s there. Maybe delete it. It might be a hidden folder, so, if you can’t see it, try revealing hidden files.

I’m not sure why the index would be picking that up, though. If all else fails, you might want to switch to the XML Album Index, although you’d have to manually maintain the XML file.

Also, there’s a bar above your header. To get rid of this, set the Header Height (found under the Site Info pane) to any value greater than zero. This is a bug recently discovered, and one I’ll get rid up in the next version.

Jon
17 March 08 / permalink / feed

Ahh, I see. Yeah, the folder was hidden for some reason. Don’t know how it got there. I deleted it and it seems to work fine now.

Also, thanks for the heads-up on the bar being there. I’ll fix that later.

Thanks again for the quick response!

Jon

Ian Horne
20 March 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matt,

Really appreciate your hard work. This may be a dumb question but when I create the gallery index page similar to above within LR, I can’t see where I can input a description next to the photo. Due to a couple of typos in the links on the pages, here are working links:

www.ianhornephotography.co.uk
www.ianhornephotography.co.uk/gallery (this will be the gallery index page)
I have a couple of galleries at:
www.ianhornephotography.co.uk/thomas
www.ianhornephotography.co.uk/whirlwind/underwater

If I remove the index.html file created under /gallery I just get a page without the thumbnail.

Any ideas?

Many thanks,

Ian

Matthew
20 March 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Ian,

First, you need to put things into the appropriate locations.

Output from TTG LR Pages should go in your root, as now, located at www.ianhornephotography.co.uk. No problem there.

A good place for your TTG XML Auto Index is in the galleries folder, as now, located at www.ianhornephotography.co.uk/galleries/.

Regarding TTG XML Auto Index, be sure to delete the index.html file and thumbnails directory as instructed on the gallery info page, so that the URL will resolve automatically to index.php. I know it will look empty; it’s supposed to.

To populate the auto index, the galleries need to be in the correct location. Presently, your galleries are not positioned to be read by the auto index. The galleries should be located inside the auto index folder, like this: www.ianhornephotography.co.uk/galleries/thomas/.

With the galleries in the correct location, any gallery containing an autoindex.xml file will be read by and added to your auto index.

When creating your galleries, look for the TTG XML Auto Index section in the Site Info pane of the Web module. That’s where you’ll fill in the gallery title and description for each, and that information will be read by and included in the auto index.

That should do ya. If you have any other problems, let me know.

Cheers,
Matthew

Ian Horne
20 March 08 / permalink / feed

Thank you so much for your speedy response Matt! Have moved the files around and will update the galleries tonight as I want them but looking awesome! I can see how it all hangs together now.

Just to let you know though it all looks good in IE, but in firefox the top bar where the ID plate sits looks out of sync..

All the best,

Ian

Urs
22 March 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matthew,
Great work!
Unfortunately on my hosting server the ‘glob’ function is for security reason disabled. This results in ‘no albums shown’.
Here I have a workaround for this (I inserted a ‘// GEU’ around my suggestions):

// populate array of galleries
// GEU >>>
function safe_glob($pattern, $flags=0) { $split=explode(’/’,$pattern); $match=array_pop($split); $path=implode(’/’,$split); if (($dir=opendir($path))!==false) { $glob=array(); while(($file=readdir($dir))!==false) { if (fnmatch($match,$file)) { if ((is_dir(”$path/$file”))||(!($flags&GLOB_ONLYDIR))) { if ($flags&GLOB_MARK) $file.=’/’; $glob[]=$file; } } } closedir($dir); if (!($flags&GLOB_NOSORT)) sort($glob); return $glob; } else { return false; }
}
// <<< GEU
$albums = array();

// GEU >>>
// foreach (glob(”*”, GLOB_ONLYDIR) as $fn) {
foreach (safe_glob(”./*”, GLOB_ONLYDIR) as $fn) {
// <<< GEU if (is_dir($fn)) $thisal = gallery_from_dir($fn);

I hope this helps also somebody else.
Thanks, Urs

Matthew
22 March 08 / permalink / feed

I didn’t write the PHP (a friend helped out there), so I don’t know what any of that means, Urs, but if it’s working for you, I’m glad, and I thank you for sharing should anyone else need it.

Cheers,
Matt

Zach
29 March 08 / permalink / feed

@Urs: I think I saw that function on php.net, and considered using it in place of glob(), but simplicity won out. Also, I shouldn’t say this, but I have a soft spot in my heart for glob(). It’s such a cute little function. Anyway, thanks for posting the workaround for anyone else with an uptight server.

Deborah
3 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matt,

I am having trouble with the auto index. It doesn’t seem to be able to read my sub-directories. Both of them have the autoindex.xml document. The first album was created by a Lightroom template and so I manually edited the autoindex.xml doc to reflect the thumbnail and the url values. The second one was created by TTG HTML Gallery and the thumbnail and url value were left blank to auto-index. I read through the requirements of and I am pretty sure that my files are in the correct places.

http://www.brotvrego.com/gallery/ColesBdayParty
http://www.brotvrego.co/gallery/mieh-mieh-xmas07

The other issue I have is that all the formatting is not showing on the gallery page.

I love the work you have done! Deborah

Matthew
3 April 08 / permalink / feed

Something seems to be wrong with your installation. For one thing, it’s looking for a stylesheet at ../Gallery_Index/resources/css/gallery.css, which is incorrect. Should be resources/css/gallery.css.

Not sure why the PHP isn’t setting up properly, but it might have something to do with your paths again, if it’s looking for things in this mysterious ../Gallery_Index/ location that doesn’t exists.

I’d say to delete the entire thing and start over again, see whether it makes a difference.

Deborah
3 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matt!

Thank you! Thank you! I screwed up and renamed the directory after creating the directory in Lightroom. I didn’t expect hard coded references like that. I should have looked. I really appreciate your time!

Do you have any idea if it is possible to get the keyword tags exported to the web galleries image pages?

Best, Deborah

Matthew
3 April 08 / permalink / feed

Deborah,

Glad it’s going for you now.

Using LR 1.x, you can’t get keywords into galleries. I believe you can setup the Image Info to acquire keywords in the LR2beta, though.

j2chulo
10 April 08 / permalink / feed

Matthew how do i add the Home Link button to the index Page. Also to any gallery page? I see that you have a home button on the auto index page. want to add that button to my page but i cant find the option to add it. Do i have to edit the php? or they its an option on LighRoom for that button?

Carlos
10 April 08 / permalink / feed

I have uploaded several Lightroom Flash Galleries to my websites folders giving the direct link to the clients that I work with. Examples are:

http://weddingmedia.net/CristinaHector
http://weddingmedia.net/Beth

This has been fine as I only wanted the subject to view the images. Now I would like to create an Index page for those seperate galleries. Before I start to experiment with your apparently awesome creation (TTG XML Auto Index 1.4) is this the right tool for the job?

You have so many tools that I am a little lost with a cursory overview.

Thanks
Carlos (:>)

Matthew
10 April 08 / permalink / feed

@j2chulo: Look for the menu items in the Site Info pane, set one of them to Home and the URL for your main page.

@Carlos: Yes, TTG XML Auto Index can do it. For your Flash galleries, you’ll also want to employ TTG XML Maker to create the files necessary for auto index support.

Carlos
10 April 08 / permalink / feed

Wow! what quick response from you!

After reading and re-reading your instructions above and in the autoindex.xml creation page I finaly have a pretty good handle of this and have two galleries auto linking. One of them within the Portfolio folder and one in the original location!

I am getting a “No Description” in Family Gallery. I think it’s becuse of the length or perhaps some character that I shouldn’t be using. Here’s the text that I have inserted in the “Album Description” field:

Some of my Family including: Gabriel & Gabriela Galvan, Priscilla and Danny, Paty (My Lovely Wife), Yolanda (My Sister), Me and the Family and My Wonderful Mon Argentina with her Grandkids. All taken in December at Mercer Arboretum in December ’07

I’m assuming I can just edit the autoindex.xml in notepad and upload that newly saved xml file. Is that OK and do you know which characters (or is it the length) that may be the issue.

Carlos (:>)

Matthew
10 April 08 / permalink / feed

Carlos,
The length shouldn’t be an issue. I’d eliminate the ampersand (&) and maybe the apostrophe (’). The apostrophe might be okay, but almost certainly not the ampersand.

Carlos
10 April 08 / permalink / feed

Here is what I have created so far with this tool and the Shaddowbox thing:

http://carlosgalvanphotography.com/Portfolio/

I do have a couple more questions:

In TTG XML Auto Index 1.4 from the Gallery Selector…
(I see that the information under “XML Auto Index” does nothing to the preview. What is it for?)

In TG XML Maker w/thumbs 1.1:
Do the Thumbnail Width and Height need to match the size wells created in the creation of the TTGXML Auto Index 1.4?

This stuff is wonderful. When I start making some $ I’ll be donating!

Carlos

Matthew
10 April 08 / permalink / feed

@Carlos:

The XML Auto Index section in all of my galleries does the same thing – populates the autoindex.xml file used by the auto index to create the index entry. In the TTG XML Auto Index, I’ve provided this feature for those who would like to use multiple installations of the auto index template to create categorical indexes, bound by one main, top-level index.

For TTG XML Maker w/ Thumbnails, the thumbnails can be any size. If the thumbnails are too large for the auto index, they will be resized using CSS to fit the index dimensions. This can cause slightly wonky thumbnails in IE6, though.

I hope you start making some money! ;)

Danny
17 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hey there,

I’m feeling a bit confused about the use of the Album Index and Simpleviewer templates. Could you help me get to the bottom of this?

In Lightroom, there are no options for a TTG header or menu, just the simpleviewer settings. How can I get the simpleviewer gallery into a page with the header and menus like you’ve got on your example gallery?

Thanks so much,
Danny

Matthew
17 April 08 / permalink / feed

Danny,

The TTG header can be added to SimpleViewer and other Flash galleries using TTG Stage. TTG Stage also supports auto indexing, so that it will be seen by TTG XML Auto Index.

Hayden
17 April 08 / permalink / feed

I keep getting a prompt for a user/password on my link that points to the gallery folder. Im pretty novice at php but that is all I can figure is wrong. Its a very simple website. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I use godaddy for hosting.

Matthew
17 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hayden,

I had a look. That seems to be a server issue. You should contact GoDaddy.

Cheers,
Matthew

Dave
18 April 08 / permalink / feed

I really like this model of working with Lightroom, but I am a bit slow, so thanks for any direction…

I have latest version of XAMPP running fine
3 Virtual sites in test
I have the Index gallery and shadowbox gallery installed- with LR 1.4

Virtual host setup: <VirtualHost *:80>

ServerName lc.lkphotography.us ServerAlias lkphotography.us *.lkphotography.us DocumentRoot E:/xampp/htdocs/Kuttlers-Sites/lkphotography/web” <Directory /> Options All MultiViews IndexOptions FancyIndexing DirectoryIndex /index.php index.php4 index.php3 index.cgi index.pl index.shtml index.phtml index.html index.htm AllowOverride all Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory>

# Security addition if needed # AuthUserFile /var/www/www.foo.com/.htpasswd # AuthType Basic # AuthName “Authorised Users Only” # Require valid-user

CustomLog ./logs/lc.lkphotography.us.access.log combined ErrorLog ./logs/lc.lkphotography.us.error.log </Virtualhost>

Directory Structure from web root
galleries (contains autoindex.xml) -EIL (no autoindex) – expect to put others here

this is my autoindex for one site… do I need to specify the URL? or am I doing something wrong? There is no autoindex in the root or EIL folder – the site starts with Index.php
should I have to specify Index.html?

When I run the index.html in the EIL site all is fine, without it It does not work
<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?>
<album> <thumbnail>/EIL/thumbnails/sunset_cloud.jpg</thumbnail> <title>Arizona – Experiment in living</title> <description>Summer of 04 – Experiment in Living</description> <url>/galleries/EIL/index.html</url>
</album>

Sorry for the wrong formatting… if there is another way to show this to you please let me know…

Matthew
18 April 08 / permalink / feed

Dave,

You’ve completely lost me. I have no idea what you’re on about. Could you clarify the question?

Dave
18 April 08 / permalink / feed

ok, sorry about that….
installed xml auto index capability
installed shadowbox
running light room 1.4

create galleries directory under web site

export with xml autoindex 1st time all is good
delete images and autoindex

export using shadowbox
create directory EIL under galleries
autoindex in galleries directory looks like this:

<album> <thumbnail>/EIL/thumbnails/sunset_cloud.jpg</thumbnail> <title>Arizona – Experiment in living</title> <description>Summer of 04 – Experiment in Living</description>
<url>/galleries/EIL/index.html</url>
</album>

1) If I do not include the url above, it does not find my gallery… is this right or have i configured it wrong….

2)there is no button to return to main page… index from shadowbox… is this correct… or have I done something wrong… hitting the back button works ok

3) selecting the nameplate in the upper left hand corner looks for index.html… is there a way to fix that so it goes to index.php

did I say it better:?

launch web site.

Matthew
18 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Dave,

1) It should do that automatically. Can you upload your site to the web so that I can have a look at it?

2) You need to create a menu item to return to the index. You can do so from under the Site Info pane in the Web module.

3) Yes. Change the Web Link for the ID plate, found under the Site Info pane.

Matt

Dave
18 April 08 / permalink / feed

Matt: Wish I could, only trying to get it right before I put it on the web first…. so I don’t know how to get you a look…
The site info pane is in LR, yes?

Matthew
18 April 08 / permalink / feed

Well, the PHP only works from a web server, so you can’t expect that to run from your hard drive, unless you have a local server setup.

The Site Info pane is on the right-hand side of the Web module in Lightroom, yes.

Claus
25 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi !

Auto Index simply dont seem to work for me !
I have setted up anything as instructed but the Index wont appear !
I site structure :
domain/csphoto – home (created with pages 1.2)
domain/csphoto/portfolio – index (1.4)
domain/csphoto/portfolio/india1 – Shadowbox gallery
I have deleted the index.html and the thumbnail folder also ! The gallerys autoindex-file is also there – but no index gets generated. The link supposed to lead to it leads into a 403 Forbidden. What could be the problem ?
I am using Lightroom 1.4.1 !
Thanks for any help !

Claus

Matthew
25 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Claus,

My first guess is that it’s a server problem.

It doesn’t seem to be PHP related, or I’d expect to at least be able to access the /portfolio/india1/index.html file, but I can’t get at that either.

For now, I’d recommend contacting your hosting provider to ask them why the 403 error is happening, and how you should go about accessing pages and files at those locations.

Please let me know how that goes, and we can try to come up with other ideas if it’s a bust.

Cheers,
Matt

Claus
27 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matthew !

Thanks for your quick response !
Your right ! I found out that the server of my provider is not supporting php ! Damn ! Looks like I´ll have to get a own domain. Thanks for your great work !

Claus

Matthew
27 April 08 / permalink / feed

Claus,

I happily recommend my own host, SiteGround. They’ve been great. Excellent service and fair prices. Give them a look.

Brian
30 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi and thanks for some great galleries! Mac with 10.4.11, dotmac doing my gallery hosting. I’m using earlier TTG galleries and indices just fine.

Q1 I’m just starting to try out the AutoIndex. I’ve followed the index instructions and deleted the files as stated and copied the file over in to the folder I want to hold the galleries in (http://web.mac.com/spylaw4/LRG2). I’ve also set up a trial TTG HTML gallery and moved that into the LRG2 folder.
Maybe I“m being dense but I presume that one uses /index.php to launch the index? If so – zilch – “Web page does not exist” messages.
So can you assist me please?

Q2. In the various templates What are the 5 Menu Items for?

Many thanks for your help!

Brian

Matthew
30 April 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Brian,

It’s unfortunately, but .Mac hosting does not support PHP. The index cannot, therefore, be used on a .Mac account. As an alternative, do not delete the thumbnails or index.html files, and use them instead of the PHP. You’ll have to regenerate and upload the index anew to make additions, but the appearance will be the same.

As for the menus, they allow you to bind your pages together. Visit the sample site, and you’ll see the menu in the upper right. Those menu items are created via the “5 Menu Items” in the various templates.

Cheers,
Matt

Brian
30 April 08 / permalink / feed

Many thanks Matt for that somewhat disappointing news re dotmac. I“ll have to examine an alternative host.

Brian

Matthew
30 April 08 / permalink / feed

I’ve been happy using SiteGround. Here’s my referrer link.

SILENCE
10 May 08 / permalink / feed

After exporting, the edge of word in ID Plate png file will be cut down if I change the font to “Vladimir Script”.

And word I used is “Grace”, the first letter “G”, its left part get cut down a little bit.

btw, I m using v1.5

many thanks for all of your TTG gallery :-)

Matthew
11 May 08 / permalink / feed

Not sure what could be done about the font problem. I’ve experienced padding issues with some fonts when using SIFR techniques, but your ID plate is being rendered as a PNG file and the dimensions set on the fly according to the output size of that PNG, and so there’s shouldn’t be a problem with it. Can you show a sample gallery with the problem?

Chip
29 May 08 / permalink / feed

Matt-
First, thanks for all of your good work in developing these templates! Simply outstanding!

Second, I’ve run into an issue with the Auto Index that I’m hopeful you can solve. I created a set of galleries, uploaded them, added the Auto Index files as instructed (I think!) and get the index page as expected/hoped for. The issue is that in Firefox, none of the album links work i.e. clicking on an album does nothing. Interestingly, in Safari everything works fine. I only have those two browsers so I can’t check it with any thing else…

The galleries are at http://chipriegel.com/g/peytongallery

Thoughts, suggestions, admonishments?

Cheers,
Chip

Matthew
30 May 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Chip,

The code seems to be in order, and the right information is going to the PHP. I don’t know why it’s not working for you. I wonder if it might be a server PHP issue. Are you using the latest version of the index? Have you tried producing the index a second time? If that’s not the problem, please zip up your index output files and email them to me, matthew [at] theturninggate [dot] net. I’ll try them on my server to determine whether it’s a server issue or a gallery issue.

Timo
3 June 08 / permalink / feed

http://kermistilburg.new2.datacon.nl/archief/%3C?=$albums[$i][%27url%27]?%3E

above is what index.php “sees” as an album. Very strange behaviour…

http://kermistilburg.new2.datacon.nl/archief/index.php

regards,
Timo

Matthew
3 June 08 / permalink / feed

Most likely a problem with your server’s PHP configuration. You should check with your hosting company. In particular, as them if they support the ‘glob’ PHP function.

Timo
3 June 08 / permalink / feed

so “register_globals = Off” should be turned on ? (I host my own server)

Matthew
4 June 08 / permalink / feed

Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not familiar with most PHP-type things and had a friend put together the PHP script for this template. You can try looking at my server’s setup for ideas if that would help.

jeff
22 June 08 / permalink / feed

First off, thanks for a great gallery system!
I am using the xml auto index along with the TTG HTML Gallery. Everything loads fine but when I look at the gallery thumb in the index page it says there is no title and no description. I redid this a few times with the same result. This just started happening last week. I have taken down the other galleries I had there and just left one up there with the problem. There doesn’t appear to be any extra files floating around. I’m sorta lost on this one.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance Mathew.

http://wwwphotoabuse.com/album

Matthew
22 June 08 / permalink / feed

Jeff,

I believe the PHP is getting hung up on your use of the ampersand in the title. Ampersand is used in PHP to trigger various routines. It’s being read as a PHP command, not as text. Replace the ampersand with the word ‘and’, and I suspect the problem will disappear.

Darryn
24 June 08 / permalink / feed

Hey Matt,

Great work again….here’s a link to an embedded version of this gallery on my website: page link

The page has two thumbnails that should launch a shadow box gallery, and also a short movie file. I changed a few things around from the original auto shadow box template, used some different style sheet settings to fit the rest of my site.

Darryn
McKay Photography

Matthew
24 June 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Darryn,

Nicely done, and thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Matt

Michelle
25 June 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matt,
I was trying really hard to not have to write and bother you but i just can’t seem to figure out what i’ve done wrong.
I’m novice and i have a basic host site for my wedding website. I am attempting to post some photos of family and friends. I’ve got the TTG XML Auto Index running fine, it’s the connecting album that’s not working.
If you go to http://www.michellentim.com/Album.html
select the album listed… it asks you to get flash. already have flash (updated) so i click load album… but it’s blank. Everything is there… i can’t figure out what i’ve done wrong… I’m hoping it’s not a host problem… ‘cause i’m not having the site longer than 9 more months… so…. Can you help me? if so i’d greatly appreciate it. :)

Matthew
25 June 08 / permalink / feed

It looks as if you have the SimpleViewer gallery installed into the same folder as the XML Index, rather than into a sub-folder as it should be. That being the case, I’m guessing that some of your gallery resources were overwritten by the index, as they share some resource file names.

Your galleries should be installed as sub-folders within the gallery index folder, and not as loose files. Try to get things reorganized and please let me know how it works out.

Cheers,
Matt

Michelle
25 June 08 / permalink / feed

I tried that before but it seemed as though it wasn’t finding it. I shall try it again.

So i need to make sure ALL of the SimpleViewer files should be in the subfolder. Correct?

Michelle
25 June 08 / permalink / feed

Sorry if this is a repeat post. Computer hiccup…

Anyhow. i have the simple viewer in a subfolder and it’s not working. I feel like it’s my naming items. That i’ve confused something but i just can’t seem to figure out what it is. Can you take a look again and see if you see something?

Thank you for all your help.

Matthew
25 June 08 / permalink / feed

Now the links you’ve given me are all dead, so I can’t see anything. See this page and scroll down to the section on File Structure. It explains how the galleries should be organized. Also, make sure you’re using TTG XML Maker to create an autoindex.xml file for the SimpleViewer gallery, otherwise it won’t be found.

But yes, when you export the SimpleViewer gallery, it will be created in a folder of its own. That folder needs to be uploaded to your server and placed into the auto index folder as a sub-folder. Then, you need to use TTG XML Maker to create an autoindex.xml file for the gallery and include that in your sub-folder as well so that the gallery index will find it.

Michelle
25 June 08 / permalink / feed

Rock On! That explains a lot. i think i skipped over something … Thank you. i will try that …

This is really awesome! all this work and great help you’ve given all these people and me is awesome. Thank you so much!!

Debbie Silbert
2 July 08 / permalink / feed

Thanks, Matthew.

I’m able to manually add galleries, but the thumbnails are not showing up. I’ve even tried manually adding them to the autoindex.html with no luck

Do I understand correctly that they should be randomly chosen if not specifically specified?

Matthew
2 July 08 / permalink / feed

Yes, that is correct. BUT only if the thumbnails are located in a folder named thumbnails and located in the root of the gallery folder for each gallery. If they’re in any other location, the index won’t find them. Many of my galleries create the thumbnails in that location by default, but some of the older Flash galleries do not. Some of the Flash galleries don’t even use thumbnails. For those, you can use the TTG XML Maker w/ Thumbnails to generate the autoindex.xml file and thumbnails for the gallery.

j2chulo
5 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hello have the auto index running on my site My problem its how do I set Google analytics to my auto index page? or to my albums? the analytics code goes on the html page before the <body> tag. i tried putting it on the index.php but i get and error loading the index.php page. Can anybody help me on this

Matthew
5 July 08 / permalink / feed

You should insert the code into the head.html file. The index.php file calls that file into itself using an ‘include’ statement when it renders the page.

Debbie Silbert
14 July 08 / permalink / feed

Matthew:

Everything is working beautifully! I’ve replaced my studio gallery with AutoIndex and life is so much better.

I have a couple of galleries from SImpleViewer, but AutoIndex does seem to like those. GO to the link above and click on the Jennifer gallery. You’ll see that all the thumbnails are X’s. THe thumbnail folder was named “thumbnails” and they were showing as X’s, so I changed it to “thumbs,” but X’s are still there. I really love SimpleViewer and want to continue to use it so hope this is fixable.

Thanks!

Debbie Silbert
14 July 08 / permalink / feed

Sorry, Matthew. Please ignore my last post. I had mis-typed “thumbs.” It looks like that’s what Auto Index wanted; i.e., thumbnails to be named “thumbs.”

Life is really good! ;-)

Drew H
15 July 08 / permalink / feed

After creating my Catalog with sub-folders (albums), I click on “Web,” but it index all the individual photos as separate albums instead of grouping them by sub-folders (albums).

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Drew H

Matthew
15 July 08 / permalink / feed

Can you show me an example of the problem?

Terry Roopnaraine
16 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matthew,

I downloaded TTG XML Auto Index 1.51 and installed it the web gallery folder as instructed. It now appears on the RHS panel, under Gallery, which I guess is correct. But as soon as I click on it, I get a little box saying Runtime Error, Do you want to de-bug? Any idea what the problem is and how I can solve it?

many thanks, Terry

Emmanuel
16 July 08 / permalink / feed

hi ! I’m trying to use both TTG XML Auto Index and XML Maker to built a multi-SlideShowPro albums gallery. Well I’m trying this in vain actually, as it doesn’t work :(
Is it possible anyway ?
How can I do this for my four SlideShowPro galleries ?

thanks for your answer !
Emmanuel

Matthew
16 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Terry,

It’s a known issue that occurs with the Windows version of LR. Just click through the error and ignore it; it’s just a case of IE throwing stupid warnings. The template will work, and the errors should no longer appear in LR2 when it releases.

Matthew
16 July 08 / permalink / feed

Emmanuel,

It should work just fine, so long as you’re placing folders and files into the right location.

You should use your Auto Index as the parent folder for your other galleries.

Install the autoindex.xml file (created by TTG XML Maker) into each SlideShowPro folder, then place that folder into the Auto Index folder. The folders should then be indexed. This requires PHP, however, so will only work from a web server. You cannot set this up locally on your harddrive.

You might also want to look into TTG Stage for your SlideShow Pro galleries.

Emmanuel
17 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matthew !
I did exactly the same way as you just described !
Maybe my hosting server is no PHB one, I dunno….
I put above the address of my website, just in case..

thanks anyway for all your great work, and sorry for my bad english :(

best regards,

Emmanuel

Matthew
17 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Emmanuel,

The address you’ve provided is showing no content, so I can’t check it. You might want to check with your hosting provider to see whether PHP is supported on your server.

Emmanuel
17 July 08 / permalink / feed

Matthew,

sorry I deleted all the content as I was very unsatisfied !
I put it again… if it can help !
thanks for everything,

Emmanuel

Matthew
17 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Emmanuel,

I’m seeing a gallery located at http://sensphoto.free.fr/index/index.html.

1) The index.html file should have been deleted.

I am receiving an error page from http://sensphoto.free.fr/index/index.php, which should be the proper address for the gallery.

This indicates to me that either:

1) Your server does not support PHP, or
2) You have inadvertently deleted the index.php file.

Please contact your hosting provider to ensure that PHP is supported by your web server. If so, then we’ll need to troubleshoot your gallery installation. If PHP is, in fact, NOT SUPPORTED, then you’ll need to consider using another hosting service to make use of the template.

Cheers,
Matt

Terry Roopnaraine
17 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi again Matthew,

First of all, thanks a million for all your fantastic work here. I wonder if you can give me a little advice about something which is probably pretty basic…I am trying to use 3 of your products (LR Pages 1.2, Slimbox Gallery 2.63 and XML Autoindex 1.5.1) in concert, and I cannot get it to work. As you can see, I’ve used LR pages to set up the Home and About pages (haven’t input the text yet though). On the menu item called Galleries, I would like that to take you to the Autoindex page, where the Slimbox galleries will be indexed. So my question is, once I generate the Autoindex and export it to the desktop, delete the superfluous files as per your instructions, do I then upload that whole folder to my public_html folder on the server? And having done that, how do I link the Gallery menu item on the Home and About pages to the Autoindex?

Thanks again Matthew.

best, Terry

Matthew
17 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Terry,

Please read through the information posted here. If that doesn’t clear things up, let me know and I’ll try to embellish.

Emmanuel
18 July 08 / permalink / feed

Hi Matt !

you were completely right, the hosting server I used did not support PHP…
so I just looked for another one and now it just works so fine !!
the one reminding problem is that no thumbnail appears on the index page for the different existing gallery..

again, thanks for everything, your great work here and your precious help ;)

cheers,

Emmauel

Terry Roopnaraine
18 July 08 / permalink / feed

Wow…now I feel like an idiot! All my questions above are answered there. Thanks for the tip, and sorry I didn’t read it first.

Will let you know how it works out.

Terry

Matthew
19 July 08 / permalink / feed

@Emmanuel: I just looked at your site and the thumbnails look fine to me. I presume you worked out the problem?

@Terry: Glad you’ve got the answers you needed. Let me know if there’s anything else.

Drew H
22 July 08 / permalink / feed

Matthew,

Here is a screenshot of my problem (of the auto-index feature placing all of my sub-folder’s photos into one album):

http://www.drewbox.com/prob.bmp