Is there a mod which turns your homepage into a blog?

[Arantor]

Things like http://crossingoverland.com/trips/?trip=overland-2013 where the pins are just tags of a time/date/place and the little post icons are the blog posts with geotagging.

[Bloc]

Things like http://crossingoverland.com/trips/?trip=overland-2013 where the pins are just tags of a time/date/place and the little post icons are the blog posts with geotagging.

Very nice! Interesting use of maps indeed.

[Arantor]

Thanks

I do plan also to refit the gallery before the next time we go somewhere so it also geotags pictures when you upload them and integrates them into the map

But that's a way off yet, sadly

[Bloc]

Google maps integration is fascinating, in the sense of figuring out what you can use it for in a SMF context. Things like what you suggest, geotagging pictures, thats what will make a gallery function really stand out I think. I have dabbled with an idea of using maps in a blog/exercise/running type of SMF function - but the use of it like you did, like a travelling journal - is also interesting.

[Arantor]

Geotagging isn't even that hard to do if you have control over the Exif processing stage, the trick is being able to do something with it afterwards.

I have been wary of adding geotagging to the gallery I'm working on because for a general gallery case there is a privacy angle to deal with; being able to strip the data rather than preserving it.

[Bloc]

Indeed. The option to exclude it would be needed.

But even if EXIF is time-consuming to process, its still only done on upload - meaning one could get away with using a parser. I used one some time ago, for grabbing the most basic EXIF info. In my experience only photographers(and people maintain code to handle the info ) are really that interested in the technical details, like type of lense, camera type etc. It seems to depend abit on how they can participate, what options are there to tie that info to their own.

[Arantor]

Oh, it's not time consuming to process. It's just irritating - bearing in mind I already wrote a parser from scratch for the gallery.

The only bit I didn't do was a parser for the GPS data because I haven't yet had the enthusiasm to also write something to erase the GPS data (reading Exif is one thing, editing it is something else entirely)

[Drunken Clam]

Things like http://crossingoverland.com/trips/?trip=overland-2013 where the pins are just tags of a time/date/place and the little post icons are the blog posts with geotagging.

Pure brilliance Pete. Very well done.

[Bloc]

Oh, it's not time consuming to process. It's just irritating - bearing in mind I already wrote a parser from scratch for the gallery.

The only bit I didn't do was a parser for the GPS data because I haven't yet had the enthusiasm to also write something to erase the GPS data (reading Exif is one thing, editing it is something else entirely)

I am sure both parsers would be welcome by others to use in new mods/projects if you were inclined to release any of them at some point. I rather use a parser already made - wellmade of course - than make it myself. Only because its lot more fun expanding upon and putting it to use lol. Plus it takes lot of time when you haven't done anything like it before..

But, I totally see the reservation of just offering it up for free too. Especially when you see comments like one I saw yesterday on this site: "please release it so we can wait for the next update".(or something similar to it) I tell you, I felt *really wanting* to make a update when reading that. Truly non-inspiring.

[Arantor]

There are three options for parsers - the exif functions in PHP (if supported by the host, not all do), or there's Exifer/Exifixer (as used in Aeva and Nibogo's galleries, both of which do so in violation of the GPL licence) or there's Pel, which also is GPL licensed.

The problem, of course, is that GPL has connotations that are utterly unsuitable for me for a paid gallery script But for free mod authors this is less problematic in the grand scheme of things (especially if a GPLv2 script is used under the terms of the GPLv3, as permitted by the GPL itself stating 'or any later version')

The other problem is that I can't really afford financially to spend vast amounts of time on just giving things away these days.

[Bloc]

Indeed. One have to balance whats useful for others against whats useful for oneself - both time and effort(as eating of the time to make actual money). I don't have alot of time for free these days, meaning things take time. And they are not what *others* might want, but what I choose to spend time on. Theres just no reward in anything else.

But making something to be purchased is also risky. You might end up with a product there just isn't a market for. I am basing this on trend later years that I've noticed, of people seeing a couple dollars as *big* spendings on software. Which is ridiculous by normal software rates(I spend monthly at least 50-80 dollars just on various site subscription services lol)..but then again many might not actually have the same level of financial resources as most developed countries operate within. Or maybe they just don't see the value of software in general...Plus the inevitable leak to big social sites. To put this way: you cant expect to get rich by making software especially for SMF But I know you already are aware of this.

[Arantor]

That's the thing about my gallery... it's a risk, sure, but it's one I'm going to try. I'd rather try and fail than not try and end up regretting never trying it. Spent too long being afraid to try things, as odd as that might sound.

I know there is something of a market for it, I know also that I need it myself because I kept running into limitations in Aeva and wading through that to fix the issues I perceive (like not autorotating photos uploaded from mobile) is sufficiently time-consuming that it may end up being faster to do it myself anyway.

And even if it flunks commercially, I still have an awesome gallery that doesn't just do what I wanted, but is also a showcase of "I can build big, scary, powerful stuff" since there's a lot of complexity most people don't realise in such a thing.

[Bloc]

It is that - its built, its "done". One aspect that might be the tipping point for going on with it.

I must say I was a bit suprised that you chose a gallery mod though - seeing as there are already quite a few around..but then again I should not be one to talk about re-inventing wheels haha. At least its interesting, and for me thats all that matters these days.

[Arantor]

There are 3 gallery mods around, yes. Having tried all three of them, I found all three of them failing to meet the needs I have.

Specifically my needs for a media gallery: ability to rotate uploaded mobile images correctly, and the ability to handle large files (> 50MB) ideally without changing server configuration, e.g. PHP's upload_max_size. None of the three galleries (I'm not counting SMF Gallery Lite in this consideration since it is a subset of SMF Gallery Pro) can do either of these things.

Additionally, none of the other galleries actually attempt to properly protect against direct linking (admittedly, Aeva does make this harder, but it's possible to drop an .htaccess file in that would negate all access to files regardless of file guessing)

[Bloc]

Auto-rotate image, handle large files and protect against direct linking - all very useful for any kind of photographer site. Is that your main target audience?

I can see possible solutions for 1 and 3 lol, but the second is challenging...does it involve uploading the file in chunks? using flash?

[Arantor]

Actually, I was my original target audience - and replacing Aeva on Crossingoverland.com was the originally intended purpose, which is where auto rotate came from.

I have a second site where assets for in-development things go, which is all kinds of media files, of all kinds of sizes, which is where the size requirement comes from, and the privacy angle.

As for the uploading aspect, modern browsers with the File API actually allow you to do chunking without even using Flash, but Flash and Silverlight fallbacks are available too for less modern browsers. The extra trick is then doing this securely within SMF as well And of course, no use having ability to upload large files if you can't then download them again (since SMF's attach handler will run into issues on larger files, be it PHP's or Apache's timeout) - so being able to download in chunks is *also* a consideration.