Welcome to minishowcase

minishowcase is a small and simple php/javascript online photo gallery, powered by AJAX/JSON that lets you put easily your images in an online gallery, without having to configure databases or changing and customising code (though you may do it if you feel so) allowing to have an up-and-running gallery in a few minutes.

While here, you can check all the gallery features, get some information on minishowcase, know about all the releases, watch some screenshots of the gallery, » watch a demo gallery, share issues with the community .

Important!

Please read the instructions and the disclaimer before installing or sending any feedback, suggestion, complaint, bug or feature request.

Petit disclaimer: This program is given 'AS IS' in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE; anyway, this is such a simple program it should not be a problem to you.

Licence

minishowcase is licenced under a commercial licence. It can be found here.

 

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Screenshots

01. The gallery automatically searches your /galleries/ folder and builds the gallery main menu


02. When you select a gallery, the thumbnails are generated on-the-fly and presented on a thumbnails menu, without having to reload the entire page


03. When you click on a thumbnail from the menu, the selected image is showed in a lightbox-like screen. From there you can still navigate to ther images either with the arrows or with the generated thumbnails.

 

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Features

  • New interface: easier at-a-glance thumbnail navigation and a clean layout.
  • Simple galleries: just upload a folder full of images to your /galleries/ folder and voilá you have a new gallery!
  • Lightbox view: Images can be viewed in a lightbox way, easier and more precise, with a convenient integrated thumbnail menu.
  • Languages: set your gallery in French, Italian or Spanish. Set it to select the user's local language (if available). Translate it to your own language!
  • Permanent URLs: now you can share your galleries and images with friends and acquaintances. Just copy the permalink for a gallery or an image, and email it to them!
  • Automatic thumbnails: you don't have to worry anymore about creating your images' thumbnails. Let minishowcase take care of it
  • Added viewing features: Configurable timed slideshow (for now, more to come)
  • And more...

Next steps

  • Plug-in interface with other photo services (box.net, flickr.com) in order to let you browse your images on your site and make minishowcase an alternative interface for existing user galleries and photo storage.
  • Private galleries: protect your galleries with username/password, and share it with your private friends and clients

Petit disclaimer: This program is given 'AS IS' in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE; anyway, this is such a simple program it should not be a problem to you.

 

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Instructions

IMPORTANT: Please read this Instructions and the Disclaimer before installing or sending any feedback, suggestion, complaint, bug or feature request.

Requirements

This is what you need to run this software:

  • PHP scripting language: your server must have at least php v4.2.0 (I'm not 100% sure) installed. if you are unsure see below
  • GD/GD2 extension: either the GD or GD2 extension is required by PHP for manipulating images, hence you'll need it if you want the gallery to generate its own thumbnails on-the-fly. GD/GD2 are image manipulation extensions, are usually bundled with PHP for linux/unix/(windows?) and may just need to be enabled (by your Host, probably). if you are unsure see below
  • If you don't have GD/GD2 installed, you can turn the $create_thumbnails variable to false in the /config/settings.php file. This way, the thumbnails will show as a scaled version of the main picture.
  • An FTP account and client.
  • The user's (the person looking at your photos) browser must have JavaScript Enabled (not just have JavaScript, but have it activated). Note: This gallery is not compatible with IE 5.x Mac (it'll show a message to the user explaining this).

Server Check: If you don't know if you have PHP installed in your host, try the following:

  1. Copy and paste the following into a text file:

    <?php phpinfo(); ?>

  2. Save the file as test.php and upload it via ftp to your webspace.
    Now fire up your favourite web browser and go to http://yourdomain/path/to/file/test.php. Scrolling down you will find the current version of PHP and whether or not GD/GD2 is installed.

Installing

Once you have checked that your server meets the prerequisites as listed above you are ready to begin the installation.

  • Open the file /config/settings.php in a text editor (not Word! Notepad/TextEdit will do, saving as plain text) and make the changes you wish. Save and close the file.
  • Put all the images for a gallery inside a folder, name it as you want the gallery to be named, but without special characters (use underscores for spaces), and then put this folder inside the /galleries/ folder, then set its permissions to 0777.
  • Upload the entire minishowcase folder to the location you have chosen in your webserver. Rename it if you want.
    Note: be careful to upload images in data (binary) format, and text files in text (ascii) format.

That's all!

Tips & Tricks:

  • Linking to galleries

    If you want to have an internal link to a gallery, add this code to your link: <a href="javascript:;" onClick="setGallery('gallery_name');">, substituting gallery_name with the name of the gallery you want to load.

  • Ordering galleries

    If you want to have your galleries to appear in a specific order in the menu, just prepend a number and a dash NN- to the folder name in the order you want. These numbers won't appear in the gallery title. In my opinion, a good practice is to append every gallery with the date formatted as YYMMDD- if you want to order them by date. Note: this setting might not work in some OSes/Hosts. If this is your case, let me know in the community

  • Ordering images

    If you want your images to appear in a specific order, prepend a number and a dash NN- to the image name. If you set $settings['show_thumb_number'] to false those numbers won't show as part of the image caption.

  • Hide a gallery/image

    If you want a gallery temporarily not to show in the menu, just prepend an underscore (_) to the gallery folder name (eg. /galleries/_yourgallery/). The same applies to images you want temporarily not to appear in a gallery.

  • Show a description of a gallery

    If you want a description for the gallery, put it on a text file, name it _info.txt (the default name) and save it inside the gallery images folder. Note: you can change this file's default name in the /config/settings.php file.

  • Show a caption of an image

    If you want to show a description of the image, just name the image with the text you want to appear as a caption. Note: Underscores (_) will be parsed and shown as spaces ( ), and Dashes (-) will be parsed and shown like this ( - ), eg. my_image-comment.jpg will look like my image - comment.

  • Change text in the gallery

    If you want to change any text on the gallery, look for it in the language files, inside /languages/ directory

  • Integrating your gallery with your site

    If you want to add html code to let your gallery look like your site, you can add it in the Header/Footer files. Open the /add_header.php and add al the Header code (the code that goes on top of the gallery), and do the same with the /add_footer.php for the Footer code (the code that goes below the gallery). Follow the instructions on the files for adding the code. Then add the CSS definitions for the Header/Footer html in the /styles/includes.css css file. Note: When adding css definitions to the /styles/includes.css, be careful with the CSS id/class naming, as if some conflict with the minishowcase css definitions, your gallery's look might suffer some problems.

Troubleshooting

  • Encoding issues (Characters looking strange or wrong)

    If the gallery names are looking funny or weird, and/or some characters look erroneous, or the galleries just don't load at all and you're using non-ASCII characters in the gallery names:

    Open /config/settings.php and set $settings['set_double_encoding'] to true (default is false, if yours is false, then set it to true).

  • Cached Thumbnails Automated Creation

    Open the /galleries/index.php file and set $thumbnail_creation to true. Then go to http://your-gallery/galleries/?thumbnails and voilá! you can create thumbnails for every gallery.

    Thumbnails will be created with the size set in /config/settings.php under $settings['cached_thumbs_size']. Change this value if you want better (or less) quality/size images. Default is 128px as max size, so for square thumbs is 128x128px, and for real aspect ratio (no square) is 128px max for the larger side.

    If you decide to change the way your images show (by changing $settings['square_thumbnails']) then you might have to rebuild the cached thumbs for them to keep the selected aspect ratio (square vs. real aspect ratio).

    NOTE: In some cases, you might have to delete the thumbnails manually through FTP since the script might not be able to delete the thumbnails due to PHP strict file handling permissions.

    Please remember to set $thumbnail_creation back to false in order to avoid other people recreating all your thumbnails!

  • Images not showing in IIS Windows server

    Open the /config/settings.php file and change in line 243:

    $settings['gallery_sorting'] = 4; //2 <-- CHANGE TO "4" $settings['thumbnail_sorting'] = 0; //6 <-- CHANGE TO "0"

    This seems to be the solution if you're getting an error on line 822 as discussed in this thread

    That should help and make thumbnails show. If that does not solve your problem, or if you want more information, read and post on this thread

  • Advanced settings

    (Not supported AT ALL, use at your own risk)

    On the first lines of the /libraries/ajax.init.js file, you'll find some advance settings:

  • If you don't want to jump to the next gallery block when you are at the last image and click the arrow, set this to false // jump from last block image to next block first image var continuous_nav = true;

  • If you set to true all images will be load simultaneously. It'll slightly accelerate thumbnail loading but it might crash or block the browser on galleries with many thumbnails. // load thumbnails one by one var use_load_interval = true;

  • If you don't want to show the AJAX loader bar, set this to false // show ajax loader var show_loading_bar = true;

  • Set to true if you want the minishowcase Preview pane to animate (fade in/out) when showing an image // animate preview pane show/hide var animate_preview = false;

  • Set to true if you want to go right directly to the permalink URL when you click on the 'permalink' link (Does not work right, use at your own risk) // clicking on permalink loads it directly var active_permalink = false;

  • This one is just for debugging purposes. Do not change it. // resize the thumbnail container var set_thumbnail_container_height = false;

  • Set to true if you want visited galleries to change color // set visited galleries to 'visited' color var show_visited_galleries = false;

If you need help and your issue is not described here, please post your issue in the community forums

Customisation

minishowcase is supplied with a generic set of default values that can be customised to work better within your own site. Most of the variables for the working of the gallery are contained in the /config/settings.php file. This means that you can change many of the features by editing just one file.

At this stage, customisation is still at a minimum level. Expect improved and more thorough customisation in the (near) future.

There are /*comments*/ throughout to assist with site redesigns.

Themes

Note: themes are now working again. Be aware that old themes are not completely compatible with the latest release of minishowcase Luckily, they're easily upgradeable. Just duplicate a new theme, and copy the values of your old theme. Please check afterwards since some values might have change their appearance.

Themes are preconfigured visual styles, and they include overall color scheme and image framing. They're a neat way to adapt (for now, colors and images) for minishowcase to resemble more your website appearance.

Themes are contained within the /themes/ folder. To make your own theme, just copy one of the provided ones, modify the images and the colors in the /themes/data.php file. Then rename the theme's folder (it acts as the theme's name)

Themes included in the minishowcase download:

other themes available for download:

  • none yet

if you make a new theme, and want to share it with the rest of us, post a .zip compressed copy in the Community (under the category Themes and Templates), and it might be showcased in the themes section. please include all relevant information, including:

  • Your name
  • Name of the theme
  • Your e-mail [optional]
  • A site you want the theme to be linked to [optional]

Contact

Any doubt, information or request might be discussed in the forum. I am oftentimes very busy, a freelancer that travels from time to time, and it may happen that I don't check the threads immediately, but do not doubt that your suggestions and requests will be taken into consideration and a prompt answer is likely to be delivered.

IMPORTANT: Please read this Read Me before sending any complaint/bug/feature request. If you don't receive an answer to your post or email, chances are the answer has already been covered here and I just cannot be bothered to rewrite it.

Disclaimer

The web is full of full-fledged, perfectly-functional php image galleries, this one is for those that want an extremely simple, easy yet powerful and configurable gallery. If you're learning php, this is a very nice place where to start.

Legal stuff

This software is provided 'As Is', and no implied warranties are to be considered in any way watsoever, not even the implied warranty of FITNESS OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. By downloading this software you are deemed to this agreement and bound by the commercial licence that accompanies it.

 

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