3. Running Gallery Server Pro

Administrator’s Guide Version 2.6 Updated April 11, 2012

Contents at a Glance 1. Welcome ...... 6 2. Installing/Upgrading Gallery Server Pro ...... 8 3. Running Gallery Server Pro ...... 36 4. Working with Albums ...... 40 5. Working with Media Objects ...... 64 6. Working with Galleries ...... 112 7. User Management and Security ...... 120 8. Site Administration ...... 136 9. Membership Configuration ...... 192 10. Data Provider ...... 202 11. Customizing Gallery Server Pro ...... 206 12. Using Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager ...... 212 13. Configuring NTFS Permissions in Microsoft Windows ...... 220 14. Management Tools for SQLite, SQL CE and SQL Server ...... 225 15. How-To: Helpful Tutorials ...... 227 16. Glossary ...... 267

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Contents 1. Welcome ...... 6 What is new? ...... 6 How Gallery Server Pro works ...... 6 Requirements ...... 7 License ...... 7 Product key ...... 7 Known issues ...... 8 2. Installing/Upgrading Gallery Server Pro ...... 8 Quick Start for new installs ...... 8 Upgrading previous versions ...... 9 Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.5 or 2.6 ...... 11 Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.4...... 11 Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.3...... 12 Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.0 - 2.2 ...... 12 DotNetNuke Module upgrades ...... 13 Installation overview ...... 13 Performing a new installation of Gallery Server Pro, SQL CE ...... 16 Performing a new installation of Gallery Server Pro, SQL Server ...... 22 Troubleshooting the installation or upgrade ...... 33 Uninstalling Gallery Server Pro ...... 35 Install the Gallery Server Pro Binary Pack ...... 35 3. Running Gallery Server Pro ...... 36 Running Gallery Server Pro for the first time ...... 36 Adding albums and media objects...... 39 4. Working with Albums ...... 40 Overview of albums ...... 40 Creating an album...... 41 Edit album information ...... 43 Delete an album ...... 45 Move or copy an album ...... 46 Assign album thumbnail object ...... 46 Synchronize an album ...... 48 Album Ownership ...... 53 User Albums ...... 56 Hiding Albums ...... 61 5. Working with Media Objects ...... 64 Overview of media objects ...... 64 Gallery Server Pro 2.6 Administrator’s Guide Page 3 of 267

Adding media objects ...... 64 Edit captions ...... 77 Download media objects ...... 79 Delete objects ...... 83 Delete original files ...... 85 Move or copy media objects and albums ...... 87 Rearrange objects ...... 90 Rotate objects ...... 90 Watermarking ...... 94 Media object metadata ...... 97 Searching ...... 98 Adding or editing a file/MIME type ...... 99 Rendering media objects in the browser ...... 100 Microsoft Silverlight ...... 106 Flash ...... 107 QuickTime ...... 108 DIVX ...... 109 HTML 5 ...... 110 6. Working with Galleries ...... 112 Overview ...... 112 About multiple galleries...... 112 Every gallery gets its own web page ...... 113 Gallery isolation and user/role security ...... 113 Creating a read-only gallery ...... 118 7. User Management and Security ...... 120 Overview ...... 120 Require everyone to log on ...... 121 Users ...... 122 Roles ...... 127 Self Registration ...... 132 8. Site Administration ...... 136 Overview ...... 136 Site Settings – General ...... 137 Site Settings – Backup and Restore Data ...... 141 Gallery Manager ...... 147 Gallery Settings ...... 148 Gallery Control Settings ...... 152 General – Error Log ...... 157

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Membership - User Settings ...... 158 Membership – Users ...... 162 Membership – Roles ...... 163 Albums – General ...... 163 Media Objects – General ...... 168 Media Objects – Metadata ...... 177 Media Objects – Media Object Types ...... 180 Media Objects – Images ...... 182 Media Objects – Video & Audio ...... 188 9. Membership Configuration ...... 192 Membership overview ...... 192 New membership in current SQL database ...... 192 Use existing membership schema in current SQL database ...... 193 Use existing membership schema in different SQL database ...... 194 Integrate Gallery Server Pro with Active Directory ...... 195 10. Data Provider ...... 202 About the data provider model ...... 202 Moving data between SQL Server and SQL CE ...... 202 Configuring provider options ...... 203 Create a custom data provider ...... 204 11. Customizing Gallery Server Pro ...... 206 Overview ...... 206 Styling ...... 207 Multi-language support ...... 207 Adding a gallery to an existing web application ...... 210 Opening the source code in Visual Studio ...... 211 12. Using Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager ...... 212 IIS 6 ...... 212 IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 ...... 217 13. Configuring NTFS Permissions in Microsoft Windows ...... 220 14. Management Tools for SQLite, SQL CE and SQL Server ...... 225 Overview ...... 225 SQLite ...... 226 SQL CE ...... 226 SQL Server ...... 226 15. How-To: Helpful Tutorials ...... 227 Overview ...... 227 How-To: Install using Microsoft Web Application Gallery on a web host ...... 227

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How-To: Convert an existing set of directories and files to a read-only gallery ...... 232 How-To: Set up multiple galleries ...... 236 How-To: Add a slide show to a page ...... 241 How-To: Create a treeview menu...... 246 How-To: Add a gallery to an existing ASP.NET application ...... 250 How-To: Integrate into non-ASP.NET web sites (iframe Method) ...... 264 16. Glossary ...... 267

1. Welcome Gallery Server Pro is a free, open source web application for sharing photos, video, audio, documents and other files. It’s like having your own personal YouTube or Flickr site. It is intended for users who want to share large collections of media objects on their own web site while maintaining a high degree of control.

What is new? View the Release History page (http://www.galleryserverpro.com/releasehistory.aspx) to see full details for each release.

Upgrading from 2.4.5 or earlier? Version 2.4.6 introduces new metadata extraction capabilities. If you are upgrading from an earlier version, your first action should be to re-extract the metadata. Do this by navigating to the root directory and then choosing Synchronize from the Actions menu. Select the recursive and ‘Re-import metadata’ options and then synchronize the gallery.

NOTE: If you previously deleted the high resolution versions of images, DO NOT re-import the metadata! This is because there is no longer any metadata to import – the original image is gone and selecting the option will have the effect of deleting your existing metadata. In this case just do nothing.

How Gallery Server Pro works  Gallery Server Pro is a web application you install on your web server or your web hosting company's server.  Add your media library by synchronizing your directory containing photos, videos and other media objects with the Gallery Server Pro database. You can also ZIP up your files and upload them.  Gallery Server Pro automatically creates a thumbnail image to represent each media object. If you upload a high resolution image, a bandwidth-friendly, compressed version is created. EXIF, IPTC and other types of metadata are extracted and stored in the database.  Media object files are stored on the local hard drive or a UNC-accessible location such as a NAS device or network share. Metadata about these files, such as width, height, caption, etc. are stored in the database.

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 When web users browse your albums and media objects, Gallery Server Pro queries the database for the necessary information, and dynamically renders a custom web page. If watermarking is enabled, the watermark is applied to the image before it is sent.

Requirements

Server Requirements:  Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 or higher  Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.0 or higher or a compatible web server such as UltiDev Cassini Web Server  Optional: SQL Server 2005 or higher, including the free Express versions. It does not have to be installed on your server, but it must be available on the network.  Optional: SMTP server (required for e-mail functionality).  Optional: Full trust. When the gallery is running under full trust, it automatically takes advantage of features available only in full trust, such as real-time feedback during file uploads and enhanced metadata extraction.

Client Requirements:  Any modern web browser (IE 5+, Netscape 6+, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome)

License Gallery Server Pro is released under the GNU General Public License, meaning it is freely available for you to use, edit and distribute. Enjoy!

If the open source license is insufficient for your requirements, alternative license structures are available. Use the Support page to describe your needs.

There is a commercial version of Gallery Server Pro available as a DotNetNuke Module that offers flexible, low cost licensing. Go to www.snowcovered.com and search for “Gallery Server”.

Product key Gallery Server Pro is fully functional for the first 30 days. At the end of the trial period, a watermark appears on each image and the Site Admin area becomes read-only. Enter a product key to restore full functionality. The key is free and easily obtained from the Product Key Wizard at www.galleryserverpro.com.

Note: The Web Platform Installer version of Gallery Server Pro acts a little different at the end of the trial period. No functionality is restricted. Instead, an annoying picture of Roger Martin appears on every page of the Site Admin area. Make him go away by entering a product key.

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The purpose of the product key is simple: to encourage you to return to the web site after a trial period to give you an opportunity to provide financial support.

Gallery Server Pro is supported by your donations. Without them, I must look for work elsewhere, and that takes away from the time I can spend on it. You can help make Gallery Server Pro a success and prove that the open source model works by providing a donation when you request the product key.

To get your product key, go to the Product Key Wizard at www.galleryserverpro.com. If you provide a donation, the wizard will temporarily transfer you to PayPal where you can make a secure donation by credit card or through your bank. Whether or not you provide a donation, you will receive a valid product key at the end of the wizard.

BONUS: I periodically offer free thank you gifts to donors. If a promotion is active, it will be offered in the Product Key Wizard.

Known issues  Internet Explorer 8 and earlier does not support the rounded corners CSS style, so objects appear with square corners.  Due to the technique used to provide drop shadows around images in IE 8 and earlier, media objects are left aligned. They are centered in IE9 and in all other browsers.  When running in IIS 7 or higher, the IIS application pool must be running in Integrated Mode.  A username or role name containing quotation marks cannot be deleted from the Manage Users and Manage Roles pages. This is a limitation of the ComponentArt Grid control.  (Upgrading from 2.3 or earlier) The upgrade wizard imports some, but not all, settings in your galleryserverpro.config file. If you edited this file with a text editor you may find those settings are not imported. In this case they must be manually migrated.  Restoring data to SQL Server using the Restore function requires SQL permissions equivalent to that provided in the db_ddladmin or db_owner roles. You may have to manually configure the SQL user using a tool such as SQL Management Studio to provide this permission prior to using the Restore feature.  Support for upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 1.0 was removed in 2.4. To upgrade from this version, first upgrade to 2.3 and then upgrade to the current version.

2. Installing/Upgrading Gallery Server Pro

Quick Start for new installs If you don’t have much experience installing web apps, skip everything else in this chapter and just read this.

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To install Gallery Server Pro on your own web server – Go to the Download page and click the link for the Web Platform Installer version. A wizard will guide you through the process. Ba-da-boom, Ba-da-bing, done.

To install Gallery Server Pro on a hosted site – If your web host supports Microsoft’s Web Application Gallery (WAG), install the gallery through that. If you need a web host, sign up with Arvixe and follow the How-To for installation using WAG on a web host. If your web host does not support WAG, you’ll need to install by following the directions later in this chapter.

DotNetNuke users – Read the section Gallery Server Pro DotNetNuke Module.

Upgrading previous versions Beginning with version 2.5, Gallery Server Pro requires .NET 4.0 or higher. If you are currently running GSP 2.3 or 2.4, upgrade your gallery to .NET 4.0 before upgrading the gallery code to the current version. Technically, you could perform the .NET 4.0 upgrade and the gallery upgrade at the same time, but by separating it into two steps it will be easier to troubleshoot if anything goes wrong.

If you are using GSP 2.0 – 2.2, you must perform the .NET 4.0 upgrade and the gallery upgrade at the same time. The reason is that those versions never shipped with a .NET 4.0 version of web.config, and it is not worth the trouble getting them working under .NET 4.0 only to immediately upgrade to the current version.

Below are step by step directions for upgrading your version of Gallery Server Pro.

Note: If you get an error, temporarily make these two changes to cause detailed messages to be rendered in the browser: (1) Set customErrors=”Off” in web.config (2) Set debug=”true” in web.config

Deleted assemblies and updated web.config When upgrading from 2.4 or earlier, the upgrade wizard automatically removes the cachingConfiguration section in web.config, which is no longer needed. (Caching is now done with the .NET 4.0 MemoryCache class.) It also deletes these DLLs from the bin directory:

 AjaxControlToolkit.dll  System.Data.SQLite.DLL  Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.dll  Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.dll  Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder.dll  GalleryServerPro.Business.Wpf.dll  GalleryServerPro.Data.SQLite.dll  TechInfoSystems.TracingTools.dll If you integrated the gallery into an existing site that requires one or more of these assemblies, be sure to save a copy and then restore them when the upgrade is complete. Similarly, if your site uses the caching

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functionality from the Microsoft Enterprise library, you will need to restore the cachingConfiguration section in web.config.

New metadata features Version 2.4.6 introduces new metadata extraction capabilities. If you are upgrading from 2.4.5 or earlier, your first action after upgrading should be to re-extract the metadata. Do this by navigating to the root directory and then choosing Synchronize from the Actions menu. Select the recursive and ‘Re-import metadata’ options and then synchronize the gallery.

Upgrading in medium trust If you receive a SecurityException when starting the upgrade wizard, try deleting the following files from the bin directory:

 Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.dll  Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.dll

Then recycle the application pool and try again. While these files are required for the caching system to work, they are not necessary for the upgrade wizard. Version 2.5 and higher does not use them, so there is no need to restore them when the upgrade is complete.

SQL Server 2000 / MSDE no longer supported Gallery Server Pro no longer supports SQL Server 2000 or MSDE. If you are using one of these versions, you must upgrade the database engine before you can upgrade Gallery Server Pro. There is a link to the most recent version of SQL Server Express on the download page.

Upgrading to .NET 4.0 Getting your Gallery Server Pro 2.3 or 2.4 gallery running under .NET 4.0 involves two basic steps. These steps are explained below.

1. Configure IIS to run the application under .NET 4. 2. Update web.config to conform to .NET 4. Note: If you are running Gallery Server Pro 2.2 or earlier, perform the .NET 4.0 upgrade and the gallery upgrade at the same time by following the instructions in the section Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.0 - 2.2. It is technically possible to get those versions working under .NET 4.0, but the tinkering you need to do with the web.config file is – in my opinion – not worth the trouble.

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Configure IIS to run the application under .NET 4 This step is performed with IIS Manager (type inetmgr in a Start-Run box). For IIS 6, right click the gallery web application and choose Properties. Then click the ASP.NET tab and select 4.0 in the ASP.NET version dropdown box.

For IIS 7 and higher, the .NET version is associated with the application pool the application is running under. In IIS Manager, select the Application Pools node in the treeview, then double-click the relevant application pool in the grid. A dialog appears where you can change the .NET Framework version to 4.0. If you don't know which app pool the gallery is running under, right-click the name of the application in the treeview and select Manage Application - Advanced Settings. This brings up a dialog window that shows the app pool.

If you do not see an option for .NET 4.0, you may need to install it. Use Windows Update to get it.

If you are using a hosting provider, look in your host’s control panel for this setting.

Update web.config to conform to .NET 4 The web.config file, stored in the root of the web application, contains several references to a specific version of .NET. These must be updated to .NET 4.0 references or, in some cases, removed since they are now present in the machine-wide web.config file. Follow these steps:

1. Rename your existing web.config to web_old.config. 2. Grab the relevant web.config from the 2.6 Upgrade Resources download and copy to your web application. For example, if you have version 2.3 with SQLite as your database, use the web.config from the “Files for upgrading from 2.3\SQLite” directory. 3. (SQL Server only) Update the connection string to your SQL Server database in web.config with the one from your previous one (now named web_old.config). It should be named SqlServerDbConnection.

Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.5 or 2.6 1. Make a backup of your web files and database. 2. Copy the upgrade files over the ones in your web application. 3. You are done! Browse to your gallery and confirm you are on the new version by referring to the version number in the site admin area.

Note: The Upgrade Wizard is not displayed when upgrading from 2.5 or higher. The application startup code automatically detects the new version and, if necessary, silently runs a SQL upgrade script to bring the database up to the same version as the application.

Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.4 1. Before starting, update your gallery to .NET 4.0. 2. Make a backup of your web files and database in case anything goes wrong.

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3. Copy the upgrade files over the ones in your web application and browse to the web site. The upgrade wizard should automatically appear (add “?g=upgrade” to the URL if necessary). 4. Step through the upgrade wizard.

Note: If your data was stored in SQLite, the upgrade wizard will import it to SQL CE. The database file for SQL CE is named GalleryServerPro_Data.sdf and is located in the App_Data directory.

Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.3 1. Before starting, update your gallery to .NET 4.0. 2. Make a backup of your web files and database in case anything goes wrong. 3. Rename galleryserverpro.config to galleryserverpro_old.config (in the gs\config\ directory). 4. Replace System.Data.SQLite.dll in bin directory with the one from the 2.6 Upgrade Resources download (http://www.galleryserverpro.com/download/2.6_UpgradeResources.zip). 5. Copy the upgrade files over the ones in your web application and browse to the web site. The upgrade wizard should automatically appear (add “?g=upgrade” to the URL if necessary). 6. Step through the upgrade wizard.

Note: If your data was stored in SQLite, the upgrade wizard will import it to SQL CE. The database file for SQL CE is named GalleryServerPro_Data.sdf and is located in the App_Data directory.

Upgrading from Gallery Server Pro 2.0 - 2.2 1. Make a backup of your web files and database in case anything goes wrong. 2. Execute SQL scripts against the gallery database to update it to the 2.3 schema. Get the scripts from the 2.6 Upgrade Resources download (http://www.galleryserverpro.com/download/2.6_UpgradeResources.zip).

Which scripts you run depends on the version you are upgrading from:

Upgrading from: Run these scripts: 2.0.2830_to_2.0.2886_upgrade.sql 2.0.2830 2.0.2886_to_2.1.3162_upgrade.sql 2_1_3162_to_2_3_3421_upgrade.sql 2.0.2886_to_2.1.3162_upgrade.sql 2.0.2886, 2.0.2887, or 2.0.2898 2_1_3162_to_2_3_3421_upgrade.sql 2.1.3162 – 2.2.3286 2_1_3162_to_2_3_3421_upgrade.sql

HINT: See the section Management Tools for SQLite and SQL Server for information about tools to help you execute the SQL files.

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3. Rename galleryserverpro.config to galleryserverpro_old.config (in the gs\config\ directory for 2.2; in the config directory for 2.0-2.1). 4. Rename web.config to web_old.config (in the root of your web application). 5. Retrieve the appropriate web.config from the 2.6 Upgrade Resources download and place it in the root of your web application (that is, place it in the same directory where your old web.config was). For example, if you have version 2.1 with SQL Server as your database, use the web.config from the “Files for upgrading from 2.0 – 2.2\SQL Server” directory. 6. (SQL Server only) Copy connection string from web_old.config to web.config. 7. (2.0 only) Rename connection string from GalleryServerDbConnection to SqlServerDbConnection. 8. Delete global.asax (it is in the same directory as web.config). 9. Replace System.Data.SQLite.dll in bin directory with the one from the 2.6 Upgrade Resources download. 10. Copy the upgrade files over the ones in your web application. 11. (2.0 – 2.1 only) Move galleryserverpro_old.config to the gs\config\ directory. 12. Browse to the web site. The upgrade wizard should automatically appear (add “?g=upgrade” to the URL if necessary). 13. Step through the upgrade wizard.

DotNetNuke Module upgrades Log in as host, go to Host – Module Definitions, and install the Gallery Server Pro module just like the first time you installed it. DotNetNuke will detect it is an upgrade and update your existing installation.

Installation overview There are several versions of Gallery Server Pro available for download:

 Gallery Server Pro DotNetNuke Module  Gallery Server Pro, Web Platform Installer version  Gallery Server Pro web application (pre-compiled, new installs)  Gallery Server Pro web application (pre-compiled, upgrades)  Gallery Server Pro source code (Visual Studio format)

Gallery Server Pro DotNetNuke Module This is a commercial module that provides gallery functionality for DotNetNuke, an open source web content management framework. This guide will not specifically discuss this module, but most of the concepts in this document apply to the DotNetNuke version. Documentation for the module can be downloaded from the Gallery Server Pro DotNetNuke Module Download Page.

Web Platform Installer Version The Web Platform Installer (WPI) version of Gallery Server Pro is the easiest way to get up and running. Just click the install button on the download page and a wizard will guide you through the process. Use this version in the following circumstances:

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 You have complete access to the web server *OR* the web host supports Microsoft’s Web Application Gallery.

 You have no idea how to set up and configure web applications with IIS Manager – and don’t want to learn

 You prefer a wizard-based install experience

In most cases, the WPI version is the preferred way to install Gallery Server Pro. However, use the pre-compiled version if:

 You want the fastest possible performance

 You are using a hosted environment that does not support Microsoft’s Web Application Gallery.

 You want complete control over every step of the installation

 You are a developer and want to compile from the source code

Note: Some hosting companies allow you to install applications directly from Microsoft’s Web Application Gallery. Gallery Server Pro can also be found there.

Compiled Versions The pre-compiled versions of Gallery Server Pro use a web-based installer to configure the database and initialize the data. The setup process is largely the same whether you are installing it locally or using a hosting provider. The basic steps are:

1. Extract the files from the ZIP and convert the root directory to a web application in IIS.

2. Use your browser to run the web-based installer and step through the wizard.

3. Optional: Install the Gallery Server Pro Binary Pack.

4. You’re done!

Step by step instructions for installing and upgrading are later, but first let's touch on a few topics that may affect your installation:

 Video/audio encoding and advance thumbnail extraction

 Choosing a data provider

 Reduced trust installation

 Integrating with an existing web site

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Video/audio encoding and advance thumbnail extraction Gallery Server Pro provides advanced media capabilities such as video/audio encoding and thumbnail extraction from videos and a variety of document types. These features require the installation of the Gallery Server Pro Binary Pack. It also requires that the web application be running in full trust.

To configure, first install or upgrade to the latest version of Gallery Server Pro. Then follow the instructions to install the binary pack.

Choosing between SQL CE and SQL Server There are two types of data managed by Gallery Server Pro:

Media files - These are your images, videos, audio files, and documents. The default storage location is the gs\mediaobjects directory in the Gallery Server Pro web application, but you can specify any location on the web server's hard drive or any UNC-accessible location.

Gallery data - Information about the media files, such as captions, width, height, and the album to which they belong, are stored in either a SQL CE or SQL Server database.

The web-based installer will ask you to choose whether to store data in SQL CE or SQL Server.

Microsoft SQL Server Compact (SQL CE) (http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/compact.aspx) is a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional, ACID compliant SQL database engine. The data reside in a file named Galleryserverpro_Data.sdf in the App_Data directory of your web application.

Microsoft SQL Server (www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/) is an enterprise class client-server database engine. It is in use by many companies and supported by a large number of web hosting providers.

Most users should choose SQL CE due to its ease of management and potentially lower hosting costs. You may want to use SQL Server if any of the following are true:

 You are comfortable with SQL Server.

 You are already using SQL Server and want to keep all your data in one place.

 You want the fastest possible performance. SQL Server is significantly faster than SQL CE.

 Your installation of Gallery Server Pro is mission-critical and you don’t want to take any chances with your data.

 You have other applications besides the Gallery Server Pro web application interacting with the data file. You may encounter file locking issues and slowed performance as multiple threads wrestle for access to the file. This is a situation where a traditional client-server database such as SQL Server is superior.

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Reduced trust installation Some hosting providers force .NET applications to run at medium trust. Gallery Server Pro runs well in this environment, but with a few caveats:

 The directory containing the media object files must reside within the web application.

 Some metadata items, such as title, keywords, GPS coordinates, and IPTC data, can only be extracted in full trust.

 The Gallery Server Pro Binary Pack cannot be installed.

Integrating with an existing web site The easiest way to install Gallery Server Pro is as a stand-alone web application living in its own directory. But you can integrate it with an existing web site using one of two techniques:

 (ASP.NET sites only) Add the Gallery Server Pro user control to a page (.aspx) or user control (.ascx) in your web appliction

 Install Gallery Server Pro as a stand-alone application on an ASP.NET-compatible server. Then add an iframe to your existing site that points to this location.

Read more in the section Customizing Gallery Server Pro.

Performing a new installation of Gallery Server Pro, SQL CE Follow these instructions to install Gallery Server Pro using SQL CE as the data store. You can also install the SQL CE version with the Web Platform Installer.

Set up the web application 1. Download the ZIP file containing the compiled Gallery Server Pro web application from www.galleryserverpro.com. Note: Unblock the ZIP file before extracting the contents. Do this by right-clicking the file, choosing Properties, and then clicking the ‘Unblock’ button on the General tab. If you don’t see this button, then ignore this message.

2. Extract the contents of the zip file to a directory on your web server. For example, C:\inetpub\wwwroot\galleryserverpro\. 3. Use Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to configure this directory as a web application 4. (IIS 5 and 6 only) Use IIS Manager to make sure the application is running under .NET 4.0 and that the default document is default.aspx.

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Note: For more information on using IIS Manager, refer to Using Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

5. Use Windows Explorer to give the user account IIS is running under modify permission to the web application directory (ex: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\galleryserverpro\). Note: If you are not sure how to do this step, read the section Configuring NTFS Permissions In Microsoft Windows.

Note: Technically, Gallery Server Pro requires modify permission only to the following directories: App_Data and mediaobjects. If desired, you can assign this permission to each of these directories instead of applying them to the parent directory.

Note: Depending on your system and where you install the files, this step may not be needed. You can skip this step for now and come back to it if you receive permission-related errors.

Note: If you are using a hosting provider, follow the process provided by them for performing the above steps. This step is not necessary for some hosting companies, so you can try skipping it for now and only come back to it if you receive an error.

Running the web-based installer 1. Use a web browser to navigate to the gallery. The install wizard should appear. If not, you can manually invoke it by adding “?g=install” to the URL. The screen should look similar to this:

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2. Click next. Review the license agreement. If you agree to the terms, select the checkbox and click Next.

3. The following screen appears. Select the SQL CE database engine. If you want to use the SQL Server engine, then follow the instructions in the section Performing a new installation of Gallery Server Pro, SQL Server.

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4. The next step requests the username, password, and email address you would like to use for the administrator account of your new Gallery Server Pro site. You will use this account to log on to Gallery Server Pro to perform administrative tasks. Fill in the fields and click Next.

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5. The final step indicates that all required information has been gathered and it is ready to perform the installation. Click Next.

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6. If the installation was successful, you will see a confirmation message. This page may also specify additional steps you must take to complete the installation. Follow the instructions given. For example, in the screen shot below, the web.config file must be manually updated. Be sure to update the file before clicking the link to go to your gallery. Note: You must manually update web.config when the IIS application pool identity does not have modify permission to the directory containing these files.

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7. Congratulations! Click the link to go to your new Gallery Server Pro site.

Note: When the wizard finishes, it automatically disables the install and upgrade wizard. To re-enable, change the value of the ENABLE_SETUP hidden field to “true” in install.ascx and upgrade.ascx (in the gs\pages directory).

Performing a new installation of Gallery Server Pro, SQL Server Follow these instructions to install Gallery Server Pro using SQL Server as the data store.

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2. Extract the contents of the zip file to a directory on your web server. For example, C:\inetpub\wwwroot\galleryserverpro\. 3. Use Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager to configure this directory as a web application. (Click Start – Run and then type inetmgr to start IIS Manager.) 4. (IIS 5 and 6 only) Use IIS Manager to make sure the application is running under the desired version of ASP.NET (such as ASP.NET 2.0) and that the default document is default.aspx. Note: For more information on using IIS Manager, refer to Using Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

Note: Depending on your system and where you install the files, this step may not be needed. You can skip this step for now and come back to it if you receive permission-related errors.

6. Use a SQL management tool such as SQL Management Studio to create a new, empty database. Note: You can optionally install Gallery Server Pro into an existing database that contains other applications. The only requirement is that there must not be any name conflicts. All database objects in Gallery Server Pro are prefixed with “gs_”, so there is a good chance the tables and stored procedures used by Gallery Server Pro will be unique.

Changing the schema or object name prefix

Database schema – The SQL Server database objects are created with the dbo schema by default. To specify another schema, add an application setting to web.config before running the installer, like this:

...

The schema must already exist in your database. Membership, Roles, and Profile database objects are always created using the dbo schema, regardless of this setting. (This is because the

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Microsoft-supplied scripts that create these objects hard code dbo and I thought it unwise to change them.)

Object name prefix – The names of all database objects start with “gs_”. You can supply an additional prefix by adding an application setting to web.config before running the installer, like this:

...

In this example, database objects will begin with “GSP_gs_”. (The prefix “gs_” is always present, even when explicitly specifying an object name prefix.)

2. Click next. Review the license agreement. If you agree to the terms, select the checkbox and click Next.

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3. The following screen appears. Select the SQL Server database engine. If you want to use the SQL CE engine, then follow the instructions in the section Performing a new installation of Gallery Server Pro, SQL CE.

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4. On the next screen, specify the desired SQL Server instance and the security credentials to use to configure the database. The credentials must have permission to create database objects and, if you request a new login be created (see step 6), must be able to create a new login as well. Note: These credentials are used only by the installer and are discarded once the installation is complete. A later step in the wizard will request the connection setting used for normal operation.

Note: The SQL Server database engine does not have to be installed on the web server. As long as the web server can “see” the database, it doesn’t matter where it is. If you are connecting to a local installation, specify (local), 127.0.0.1, or the name of the server. Include the SQL Server instance name if necessary, such as when using SQL Express or when there is more than one instance of SQL Server. The instance name of a default installation of SQL Express on the local server is .\SQLExpress (replace the period with the server name or IP address if it is on another machine, such as MYSERVER\SQLExpress or 192.168.10.100\SQLExpress).

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5. When you click Next, the installer will attempt to connect. If it is successful, you will see a drop-down list with your database as one of the options. Select your database and click Next.

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6. Specify the account Gallery Server Pro will use to communicate with the database during normal operation. This can be the same account specified earlier, an existing login, or a new SQL login. The credential entered here will be used for the runtime connection string and written into the web.config file in the root of the web application. Note: If you specify a login that does not exist or is not a member of the database you selected, the wizard will attempt to create it during installation.

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7. The next screen provides installation options. Leave the option “Script ASP.NET Membership” checked unless the database already has the ASP.NET Membership installed or you want to configure Gallery Server Pro to communicate with an external Membership data store. Note: For more information on configuring the membership, see the Membership Configuration section.

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8. The next step requests the username, password, and email address to use for the administrator account of your new Gallery Server Pro site. You will use this account to log on to Gallery Server Pro to perform administrative tasks. Fill in the fields and click Next.

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9. The final step indicates that all required information has been gathered and it is ready to perform the installation. Click Next.

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10. If the installation was successful, you will see a confirmation message. This page may also specify additional steps you must take to complete the installation. Follow the instructions given. For example, in the screen shot below, the web.config and galleryserverpro.config files must be manually updated. Be sure to update these files before clicking the link to go to your gallery. Note: You must manually update web.config when the IIS account that the installer is running under does not have “modify” permission to the directory containing these files.

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11. Congratulations! Click the link to go to your new Gallery Server Pro site.

Troubleshooting the installation or upgrade

Show detailed error messages You may get this generic error message:

“An error occurred. We are sorry, but Gallery Server Pro encountered an error. It has been logged and, if error reporting is enabled, an email describing the problem has been sent to the administrator.”

To see the detailed error message, do one of these actions:

1. Enable the option on the Gallery Settings page to show detailed information when an error occurs, as seen below, then try again.

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2. In many cases the error prevents you from getting to the Gallery Settings page, so when this happens, open web.config, set the debug attribute to true, and try again.

3. Review the contents of the gs_AppError table. The error may not be logged if the problem is preventing the error logger from working, so don’t be surprised if it’s not there.

The detailed message will help pinpoint the cause. If you cannot figure it out and want to post a question to the support forum, please copy ALL the text and include it in your post. Remember to search this document and the forum before posting your question.

Insufficient NTFS permissions Depending on your configuration, the IIS application pool identity may need modify permission to the App_Data and \gs\mediaobjects\ directories as well as the web.config file. If you are not sure how to do this, read the section Configuring NTFS Permissions In Microsoft Windows.

SQL Server connection issues There are many reasons why a web application cannot connect to SQL Server:

 Incorrect username/password

 The server name is not entered correctly

 SQL Server was installed with Windows-only authentication and you are specifying a SQL login

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 You are specifying Windows authentication and the IIS application pool identity has not been added to SQL Server

 A firewall is blocking communication

 SQL Server service is not running

 SQL Server requires a password change before giving a user access

 One or more required protocols are disabled

SQL Server connection issues are commonly discussed on the internet, so perform a web search with the specific error message to learn about the possible causes. Since this is most likely not a problem with Gallery Server Pro, I respectfully ask that you try to resolve the problem on your own rather than submitting a question in the forum. This type of issue is difficult for an outside person to resolve (it is hard enough for the “inside” person).

If you continue to have trouble, consider using SQL CE, which is easier to use for most people.

Uninstalling Gallery Server Pro To uninstall Gallery Server Pro, delete the web application files and the database. You may also want to use IIS Manager to delete the application instance.

Note: Use caution when deleting the mediaobjects directory, since it may contain media files you want to keep!

Install the Gallery Server Pro Binary Pack Gallery Server Pro provides advanced media capabilities such as video/audio encoding and thumbnail extraction from videos and a variety of document types (text files, PDF, EPS, and PSD (Photoshop) files). These features require the installation of the Gallery Server Pro Binary Pack. Below are two albums showing thumbnails generated from a variety of video and document files.

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These features are made possible through the use of three open source components:

ImageMagick – Creates thumbnail images from EPS, PSD, TXT, and PDF files. It requires GhostScript to be able to create images from EPS and PDF files.

How to install: Copy convert.exe to the bin directory.

GhostScript – GhostScript knows about the internal format of EPS and PDF files.

How to install: Execute the setup program on the web server.

FFmpeg – Creates thumbnail images from video files.

How to install: Copy ffmpeg.exe and libx264-medium.ffpreset to the bin directory.

You can acquire these programs from the sites linked above or from any number of sites that redistribute them. For your convenience, I created a Gallery Server Pro Binary Pack that includes all three. Download it from www.galleryserverpro.com.

Installing these utilities is optional. If they are not present, encoding is not possible and Gallery Server Pro falls back to the default technique of using a generic image for the thumbnail.

NOTE: My experience has demonstrated that you must install the 32-bit version of GhostScript, even when installing on a 64-bit server.

3. Running Gallery Server Pro

Running Gallery Server Pro for the first time The first time you run Gallery Server Pro, a screen similar to the one shown below is displayed.

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Log in with the administrator account you specified during the installation. An Actions menu appears to the left of the album breadcrumb menu. This menu gives you access to most of the functionality in Gallery Server Pro. Any function the logged on user does not have permission to execute is disabled.

The installer adds an album named Samples and one photo. Click the album to see a thumbnail of the photo. Click the thumbnail of the photo to see a larger version, as shown below.

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Download objects in ZIP

Show image metadata Start/pause slideshow Delete media object

Download media file Rotate image

Get permalink Copy to another album

Move to another album

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Notice the toolbar that appears above the photo. Individual buttons are shown or hidden based on the authorization of the current user and whether certain features are enabled. Below is a table that describes the toolbar buttons.

Toolbar button Description

Show image metadata Displays a resizable, movable popup window with metadata, such as EXIF and IPTC, from the image. Does not apply to non-image media objects.

Download media file Download the media file to the user’s computer.

Toggle hi-res image Shows or hides the original, high resolution version of an image, if it exists. This button is hidden when no high resolution image exists or the user does not have permission to view it.

Get permalink Displays a hyperlink that can be used to link directly to the current media object. This is useful because the Next/Previous buttons use AJAX callbacks to load the media object, which does not update the URL in the browser’s address bar.

Start/pause slideshow Starts or pauses a slide show of images in the current album. Slide shows only display images; any video, audio, or documents in the album are skipped.

Move to another album Transfers the current media object to another album. The user is redirected to another page where the destination album can be selected. Not shown if the user does not have permission to move media objects.

Copy to another album Copies the current media object to another album. The user is redirected to another page where the destination album can be selected. Not shown if the user does not have permission to copy media objects.

Rotate image Redirects the user to another page where the image can be rotated. Applies only to images. Not shown if the user does not have permission to edit media objects.

Delete media object Deletes the current media object, including the thumbnail, compressed version (for images), and original media file.

Adding albums and media objects You can add media files into the root album or any child album. Choose Add objects from the Actions menu to add one or more media files. Choose Create album to create a new album.

By default, only JPG and JPEG media files can be added to the gallery. This can be changed on the Media Object Types page in the Site Admin area.

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There are several ways to add large numbers of albums and media objects in a single operation. Read the section Working with Media Objects for details.

4. Working with Albums

Overview of albums Gallery Server Pro stores media objects in albums, and each album holds zero or more media objects and/or child albums. This is similar to how Windows stores directories and files. In fact, Gallery Server Pro stores albums as directories in the file system, and media objects are stored as files (which makes sense, since they are files.)

Gallery Server Pro starts with one album that serves as a container for all other albums. This top-level album is called the root album and by default is named All albums. This album can never be deleted. Media objects and albums are added to the root album. In turn, each child album can store additional media objects and/or child albums.

There is no limit to the number of media objects and albums one can store, except the limit presented by hard drive space limitations and the operating system for maximum file path length. That is, since some versions of Windows have a maximum file path length of 260 characters, the full path to the album (directory) must be less than this limit.

You must be logged on to perform any action in Gallery Server Pro that modifies albums or media objects. Once logged on, the Actions menu (shown below) is displayed.

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Note: If the Actions menu does not appear when you are logged on, that means you do not have permission for any of its menu items. In this case, Gallery Server Pro does not render the menu.

Only those menu items that are valid for the current album, and for which the current user has permission, are enabled. For example, if the logged on user does not have Add album permission, the Create album menu item will be disabled.

Creating an album An album is a container that holds one or more media objects and/or child albums. Upon installation Gallery Server Pro has one album named All albums.

To create a new album select Create album from the Actions menu. The following page appears.

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Step 1: Type the desired name of the album in the Album name field. To make the album private, check the box labeled Private album. Learn more about private albums in the Hiding Albums section.

Step 2: Specify the album to contain the new album. The existing albums are displayed in a tree view. A check box appears next to all albums for which the current user has Add album permission. By default, the album you were viewing when you chose Create album from the Actions menu, is selected.

Note: Only those albums the user has permission to add an album to are shown.

After clicking Create album, the album is created and a screen showing its contents is displayed, as below. It is, of course, empty.

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Edit album information To edit the information for the albums, select Edit album info from the Actions menu or double click the rectangular area in which the Album’s name, summary and begin and end dates appear, as shown below.

Double click to edit

Note: If nothing happens when you double click in the album area, then you are not logged on or you do not have Edit album permission.

The Edit album box appears as shown below.

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Fill in the text boxes as desired. All fields are optional. To learn more about private albums see the section Hiding albums. Click Save to return to the album view with the newly entered information displayed.

Note: Learn more about album ownership in the Album Ownership section.

The begin and end date is intended to convey to the user the dates associated with the contents of the album. When not specified, the date label is hidden. It will re-appear if a date is entered.

How album titles correspond to the directory names on the hard disk Recall that each album in Gallery Server Pro has a matching directory in the media objects folder. When an album’s title is changed, Gallery Server Pro modifies the name of the directory for that album to match the title.

This is all well and good, but we have a problem. Most (all?) Windows operating systems cannot handle a directory path longer than 255 characters. Since an album title in Gallery Server Pro can be up to 1000 characters, one could reach this limitation pretty easily. To help prevent this, Gallery Server Pro only uses the first twenty-five characters of the title for the directory name. As a result, you will notice an album with the title “This is a long title for an album” has a directory with the name “This is a long title for ”.

Note: When a gallery is configured as read-only, Gallery Server Pro never changes the files or directory names.

You might want to change this behavior. For example, you may have all your photos in a directory structure with lots of long names, and you don’t want Gallery Server Pro truncating them when you edit the album’s title. There are two settings available to modify this behavior:

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Synch Album Title And Directory Name – Indicates whether to update the directory name corresponding to an album when the album's title is changed. The default value is true. Setting it to false tells Gallery Server Pro to never alter the directory name. The only exception to this is when Gallery Server Pro has to slightly tweak the name of a directory to prevent a naming conflict. For example, this may happen if you move or copy an album into a directory containing another album with the same name. Adjust this setting on the Media Objects - General page in the Site Admin area.

Default Album Directory Name Length – Gallery Server Pro will truncate directory names longer than this value. The default value is 25, but it can be any value from 1 to 255. This setting is not exposed in the UI. To change it, look in the table gs_GallerySetting and adjust it there.

Delete an album To delete an album, first navigate to the album to be deleted. Choose Delete this album from the Actions menu. The following confirmation page appears.

If you are sure you want to delete the album, click Delete album. The album, all child albums, and all media objects in the album(s) are permanently deleted. There is no undo function, so use caution!

Note: For media objects, both the records in the data store and the media files on the hard drive are permanently deleted.

Note: The current user must have Delete child album permission for the parent album of the album being deleted. If the album contains media objects, they are also deleted, even if the user does not have Delete media object permission.

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Performance tip: ASP.NET automatically restarts the web application when a directory within the application hierarchy is deleted. This causes a noticeable delay after an album is deleted and may cause errors for other users who are synchronizing, uploading files, or performing other tasks. This, unfortunately, is a "feature" of ASP.NET that occurs when a directory is deleted within the web application. The easiest solution is to place the media objects directory outside the web application (for example, D:\my_media_objects). Read the section Media Objects – General for more information about changing the media objects directory. Another solution is to create a directory junction.

Move or copy an album Albums are copied in the same way that media objects are copied. See Move or copy media objects and albums for instructions.

Assign album thumbnail object Each album has an album thumbnail image. This image is shown whenever an icon representing an album is displayed on a web page. In the screen shot below, there are two albums and two images. The images shown for the two albums are the thumbnail images for that album.

Album thumbnail images

By default, the first media object added to an album is used as the thumbnail image for the album. However, you can choose any media object in the album. To designate an album’s thumbnail image, choose Assign

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thumbnail from the Actions menu. The media objects are then displayed—each with a radio button underneath, as below.

Select the image you would like to use as the thumbnail image for the album. When you click Assign thumbnail, the image you selected is now set to be displayed whenever an icon view of the album is shown.

NOTE: You must select an image from the current album.

If the image currently set as the thumbnail image for an album is moved or deleted, Gallery Server Pro automatically chooses the next media object in the album as the thumbnail image. If no image is available (because the album is empty), a default image is used. The format and text displayed on the default image can be specified on the Albums – General page in the Site administration console.

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Synchronize an album Gallery Server Pro maintains two related sets of data – the media files stored in directories on the web server’s hard drive and metadata about those files and albums in the database. If the two sets of data ever get out of synch, you can synchronize the database with the media files on the hard drive to restore data integrity.

When should you synchronize? You might want to synchronize when:

 You just installed Gallery Server Pro and you want to load the database with your entire media library.

 You just extracted a bunch of photos or videos from your digital camera and you want to quickly add them to Gallery Server Pro. You could ZIP them up and use the Add objects menu command, but some people find it easier to copy the media files to the web server and then synchronize.

 You have a read-only gallery and want to add or remove media objects and albums.

 You prefer using FTP to transfer files to the web server. FTP is generally more reliable when dealing with large files.

 You added, moved, copied, or deleted images using Windows Explorer instead of the Gallery Server Pro interface, causing the database to become out of synch with the media files on the web server's hard drive.

 You used a third party program like PhotoShop to alter one or more images, and you want Gallery Server Pro to recreate the thumbnail and compressed images.

In simple terms, the synchronization procedure updates the Gallery Server database with information about the media files on the web server’s hard drive and makes sure the media files have valid thumbnail and compressed versions. Remember that the files themselves are not stored in the database; only metadata about them (size, width, height, etc…)

Synchronizing also ensures the album has a valid album thumbnail image. See the section about setting the album thumbnail image to learn more about what this is.

You can synchronize an album, an album and all child albums, or the entire gallery.

To synchronize an album, navigate to the album you want to synchronize. Then click the Synchronize command from the Actions menu. The following screen appears.

Note: The current user must have Synchronize permission for the album being synchronized.

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There are four options you can check. They are:

Include child directories (recursive) – When checked, any albums within this album are also synchronized. Recently added directories are added to the gallery as new albums. If the current album does not contain any child albums, this setting has no effect.

Overwrite existing thumbnail images – When checked, new thumbnail images are created when you synchronize the database, even if it means overwriting existing thumbnails. The thumbnails are created from the original media object. If unchecked, a new thumbnail is created only if it doesn't exist. Synchronizing the database will run faster if you leave this option unchecked.

Overwrite existing compressed images – When checked, new compressed images are created when you synchronize the database, even if it means overwriting existing compressed images. The compressed images are created from the original image. If unchecked, a new compressed image is created only if doesn't exist. This setting applies only to images in the gallery. Synchronizing the database will run faster if you leave this option unchecked.

NOTE: Compressed versions of images will exist only for images whose file size is larger than the Compression limit or whose length is larger than the Compressed image length. More information about these settings can be found in the Media Objects – Images section.

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Re-import metadata for existing images – When checked, metadata that was extracted from images when they were first added to Gallery Server Pro are replaced with the current metadata in the original image file. Metadata includes items such as camera model, shutter speed, title, and keywords. Gallery Server Pro supports the following formats: EXIF, XMP, tEXt, IFD, and IPTC. For example, this is useful if you used a program like Vista Photo Gallery to add keywords to the image files and you want Gallery Server Pro to retrieve this information to aid in searching. This setting has no effect on non-image media objects. More information about image metadata is in the Image metadata section.

Note: Metadata that may exist in the original image files are not replicated to the thumbnail and compressed versions. If you delete the original versions of photos using the Delete high-res images command, that means there is no metadata to extract during subsequent synchronizations. The consequence of this is that checking this option after you have deleted the original images will cause you to lose the metadata that was extracted from the original files. Therefore, it is recommended to leave this option unchecked when you synchronize an album whose original, high resolution photos have been deleted.

When you have selected the desired options, click Synchronize. A popup window like that shown below provides real-time status of the task.

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A message will indicate when the task is complete, and a Close button will appear on the popup window. Click Close to close the popup window.

NOTE: You can click Cancel to stop a synchronization, but be aware this can cause the database to become out of synch with the media files on the hard drive. If you discover issues after cancelling, start another synchronization and allow it to finish.

Some additional points to remember about synchronizing:

Note: The properties mentioned below in bold can be found on the Media Objects – General page in the Site administration console (i.e. Original file storage location, Thumbnail image storage location, and Compressed image storage location)

 Gallery Server Pro will ignore any file whose type is not enabled on the Media Object Types page in the Site administration console. It also ignores hidden files, even if they are an enabled file type.

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 Gallery Server Pro ignores any directory it does not have permission to access. This can be used to selectively “hide” directories from the gallery.  Gallery Server Pro NEVER modifies or deletes the original media files during synchronizing. (Rotating is the only function in Gallery Server Pro that modifies the original media file, and that applies only to images.)  Gallery Server Pro searches for media files only in the directory corresponding to the specified album. If the Include child directories option is enabled, then all files below the specified directory will also be synchronized. Gallery Server Pro never searches for or adds media files from outside the Original file storage location.  Thumbnail images are stored in the Thumbnail image storage location. By default, all thumbnail images begin with the prefix zThumb_. If desired, this can be changed on the Media Objects - General page in the Site Admin area.  Compressed images are stored in the Compressed image storage location. By default, all compressed images begin with the prefix zOpt_. If desired, this can be changed on the Media Objects - General page in the Site Admin area.  If the thumbnail or compressed images are ever deleted, they can be recreated by performing a synchronization.  Depending on your web server, Gallery Server Pro typically synchronizes from one to one hundred images per second. Keep in mind that if you have thousands of images, it may take a long time.  Gallery Server Pro does its best to preserve captions and other information you enter about a media object. For example, if you use Windows Explorer to move a media file from one directory to another, and then synchronize the database, Gallery Server Pro will re-link the file with the existing database record, thus preserving the information. (This is done by creating a hash code of the file based on its name and creation date and searching for a matching hash code.) However, Gallery Server Pro does not preserve album information (e.g. the summary and begin/end dates) if you move a directory to another directory outside of the Gallery Server Pro user interface. In general, you should use the Gallery Server Pro web interface when you add, move, copy, and delete media objects and albums.  You can modify any Gallery Server Pro media object in a third party program like PhotoShop without losing the caption or other data you entered, as long as you don’t change the file name or the file’s created date/time stamp. * Behind the Scenes * During a synchronization, database records are inserted, updated and deleted, and compressed and thumbnail versions of media objects are created and/or overwritten on the hard drive. Specifically, synchronizing performs these steps:

1. A table named gs_Synchronize exists in the database to manage the synchronization process. When a synchronization starts, this table is updated so that other users cannot begin a second synchronization until the first one is complete.

2. Starting with the first file Gallery Server Pro finds in the directory representing the specified album, Gallery Server Pro checks its file type to determine if it should be managed by Gallery

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Server Pro. If it is, it tries to find the corresponding record in its database, based on a hash of the file name and the date/time stamp of when the file was created.

3. If a record is found, it is updated with current information about the file, such as its size and the album to which it belongs.

4. If a record isn’t found, a new media object is created.

5. Gallery Server Pro checks to make sure a thumbnail image exists to represent this media object. If the media object is an image, it verifies a compressed image exists. If not, one is created. If the option Overwrite existing thumbnail image or Overwrite existing compressed image is checked, then new versions are always created, even if it means overwriting an existing compressed or thumbnail image.

6. Gallery Server Pro continues processing each file it finds. If the Include child directories option is checked, then all the album’s subdirectories are recursively processed.

7. If any album or media object records in the data store weren’t updated during this synchronization, then they must not have corresponding media files on the hard disk, and the records are deleted from the data store.

Album Ownership An album owner can add, edit, and delete objects within the album. Think of it as being an administrator of an album.

The permissions an owner has propagate to all child albums and cannot be revoked at a lower level. For example, if an owner can create child albums, he or she can create child albums on those child albums, and so on. This is consistent with the overall security pattern in Gallery Server Pro that permissions always propagate downward.

Only site or gallery administrators can assign a user as the owner of an album. Owners cannot re-assign ownership to another user (unless the owner is an administrator, of course).

Assign the owner of an album on the Edit album info dialog window. The window appears when you select Edit album info from the Actions menu or double click the album title and summary area. The dialog appears as seen here:

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By default, the owner of an album can add, edit, and delete objects within the album. The permissions given to owners are defined in a role whose name begins with “_Album Owner Template” and can be easily changed using the Manage Roles page in the Site Admin area.

If a user who is the owner of an album is deleted, the album is updated to no longer have an owner.

Multiple ownership for simplified management Only one user at a time can be assigned as the owner of an album. However, child albums can be given a different owner. Since albums always inherit permissions from their parent albums, this has the effect of allowing multiple owners.

For example, above we see that Albin is the owner of an album called Photos. If that album contained a child album Summer Vacation and we brought up the Edit album info dialog, it would look like this:

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Notice the note about Albin being an inherited owner. If an administrator assigns another user - say, Sam - as the owner of this child album, both Sam and Albin have owner rights to the Summer Vacation album, but only Albin has owner rights to the containing Photos album.

This multiple-owner feature can be used to simplify certain management scenarios. Imagine a gallery configured in a corporate intranet. The system administrator in IT assigns the manager of the marketing department as the owner of the album Marketing Photos. This album has a child album for each employee in the marketing department. Each employee is assigned as the owner of one of the albums.

The manager has full editing permission on all albums in the Marketing Photos album, but each employee can only edit the objects in their album.

Note: A very similar feature - user albums - provides an album for each user and assigns that user as the owner of the album. Using user albums may be a better approach depending on your requirements.

* Behind the Scenes * When a user is assigned as the owner of an album, a new role is created with the user as the sole member. The permissions in the role are copied from the template role. There is one template role for each gallery, and its name begins with “_Album Owner Template”. Note that if the template role is assigned to one or more albums, those albums are also applied to the new role.

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The name of the role follows this pattern:

Album Owner - {UserName} - {Album Title} (album {album ID})

For example: "Album Owner - Albin - Photos (album 3)"

You can view these roles on the Manage Roles page by selecting the checkbox labeled Show roles that support the album ownership and user album features.

The ownership feature (and the user album feature) is an abstraction of the underlying security model of using roles to limit access to albums. Both of these features manipulate roles behind the scenes to manage the desired level of access for a user.

User Albums

Overview Gallery Server Pro can be used in community scenarios where users automatically receive a personal album they manage. A variety of configuration options are available to satisfy the majority of needs. For example, the following are possible:

 User albums are publicly available for everyone to view, even anonymous users

 Users can add photos to their album, but not other file types such as videos, nor can they create child albums.

 Only logged on users can view albums

 User albums are private and viewable only to each user

 Many more possibilities…

By default, users can perform any function within their album, such as adding and deleting media objects and child albums, rearranging objects, and synchronizing.

These default permissions are stored in a template role. There is one template role for each gallery, and its name begins with “_Album Owner Template”. For example: “_Album Owner Template (Gallery ID 2: 'Engineering')” When a user album is created, the template role for the current gallery is copied and assigned to the user. You can adjust the permissions in this role to change the default permissions users are assigned when their user album is created.

To adjust the permissions a user has for an existing user album, edit the permissions for the role that was created for that user. The role is visible on the Manage Roles page once the option “Show roles that support the album ownership and user album features” is selected.

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Note: If you don't see the template role on the Manage Roles page, it may not exist. This role is automatically created the first time it is needed. You can trigger its creation by assigning a user as an owner of an album or enabling user albums and navigating to your album.

When user albums are enabled, a user can jump to their personal album by clicking the icon at the top right of every page:

The user album starts out empty. Only the user who owns the album (and administrators, of course) is able to add, edit, and delete objects, unless the administrator has configured a gallery that gives multiple users editing permission to the album that contains the user albums.

Enabling user albums User albums are enabled on the User Settings page in the Site Admin area. This is the relevant portion of that page:

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There are several configuration options available.

Always redirect to user's album after logging on - When enabled, the user's personal album is displayed each time the user logs on. If the user has disabled the album on their account page, the top level album is displayed.

Album name template - Specifies the template to use for naming the album that is created for new users. The placeholder string {UserName}, if present, is replaced by the user's account name. No other placeholder strings are supported.

Album summary template - Specifies the template to use for the album summary of a newly created user album. No placeholder strings are supported.

User album container album - Specifies the album in which user albums are created. If a different album is selected, existing user albums are not automatically moved. To move them to another album, use the standard functionality for moving albums.

Auto create user albums – Specifies whether a user album is automatically created for a user the first time he or she logs on. Disabling this option can be useful when the user album feature may only be used by a subset of users and you do not want a bunch of empty albums sitting in the user album gallery.

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When this option is disabled, user albums are not created for users. (If a user album already exists, it is not deleted, however.) If a user wants to enable their personal album, he or she can click the My account link in the top right of the page:

The account page has a section where the user album can be enabled:

When the user checks this box and saves the page, an album is immediately created.

Warning: When a user disables their album, it is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. Read the next section about deleting user albums for more information.

Note: If you turn off the option to allow a user to manage their account, then only an administrator can enable or disable a user's album on the Manage Users page.

Enable / disable existing user albums The user albums section on the User Settings page allows an administrator to enable or disable user albums for existing users:

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How is this different than enabling or disabling user albums with the Enable user albums checkbox? The Enable user albums checkbox turns user albums on or off at the gallery level, while the Enable All or Disable All buttons enables or disables user albums at the user level. That is, these buttons update the profile setting of every user, allowing the user or an administrator to subsequently enable or disable user albums on a user by user basis.

For example, you may decide to enable user albums at a time when many users - and their profile records - already exist, but the profile setting does not have the desired value. (Maybe you want each user's album disabled by default but the profile records were created with the EnableUserAlbum setting set to true.) Click the Enable All or Disable All button to update the EnableUserAlbum profile setting to either true (enabled) or false (disabled) for all existing accounts.

IMPORTANT: Clicking either of these buttons will not immediately create or delete any user albums. The next time each user logs on, the validation logic will create or delete the user's album based on the value of their profile setting. When the user's profile specifies a disabled user album and a user album currently exists, the album - and its contents - are permanently deleted. Use with caution!

Note: To improve performance, user profiles are stored in the server's session, which means currently logged on users will not see the effect of you enabling or disabling profiles until the next time their profile is retrieved from the data store. To force your change to take immediate effect, restart the application.

Configuring the visibility of albums Whether or not any album, including user albums, are visible to a person is controlled by two key factors, depending on whether the user is logged on:

Anonymous users – Albums are visible to non-logged on users only when the setting Allow anonymous browsing is enabled (setting is on the Gallery Settings page in the Site Admin area). Disable this option to require users to log on to view objects. See the section Hiding albums from anonymous users for more information.

Logged on users – Albums are visible when a user belongs to a role with view permission to an album. The roles to which a user belongs can be controlled in several ways:

 An administrator manually adds a user to a role.

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 Self-registration is enabled, and an administrator has specified new users to be automatically assigned to one or more roles.

 An administrator has assigned a user as the owner of an album, which creates a role behind the scene to manage the security access.

For a full discussion of roles, read the Roles section.

Deleting user albums It is important to understand what happens to user albums in various circumstances.

 Deleting a user – When an administrator deletes a user or the user deletes their own account on the account page, the user album is also deleted, including any media objects and child albums it contains. The items are not recoverable.  Disabling user albums at the user level – When a user disables their personal album on the account page, all media objects and child albums in their album are deleted. The items are not recoverable.  Disabling user albums at the gallery level – When an administrator disables user albums on the User Settings page in the Site Admin area, user albums are not deleted, but they are no longer treated as user albums by the gallery - they are just regular albums. If desired, the administrator can delete them through the delete album or delete objects page.  Deleting an album that is a user album – If the delete album or delete objects task on the Actions menu is used to delete a user album, Gallery Server Pro will allow it to be deleted, but the album will be automatically re-created the next time the user who owned that album logs on. Because of this "my album keeps coming back" behavior, this is not the recommended way to get rid of a user album. To delete an individual user album, the user can disable their user album on their account page. To delete all user albums, the administrator can disable user albums at the system level (click Disable All on the User Settings page) and then manually delete them.

Hiding Albums An album can be hidden from anonymous and logged on users so that, from the user’s perspective, the album and any child albums and media objects do not exist. They don’t appear in the browser, cannot be navigated to via URL, and don’t appear in any task pages. However, you can configure individual users to have full access to these albums.

SECURITY WARNING: If your media objects directory is within the web application (which is the default), then users can bypass security by guessing the URLs to the media object (e.g. http://www.site.com/gallery/mediaobjects/photo.jpg). If you wish to prevent this, move the directory outside the web application so that IIS will not serve requests to the objects. Information about changing the media objects directory is in the Media object storage section.

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Hiding albums from anonymous users To hide all albums from users who are not logged on (anonymous users), disable anonymous browsing for the entire gallery. This is described in the Require everyone to log on section.

To hide an individual album from anonymous users, mark an album as private. This is done in the Edit album popup, which is shown when selecting Edit album info from the Actions menu or double clicking the album title/summary/date area. The Edit album popup appears below.

When an album is private, a small “lock” icon appears next to the album name, as shown below.

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Private albums have the following features:

 They are never shown to anonymous users.

 The privacy setting of an album applies to all child albums and media objects. You cannot make a child album un-private if its parent is private.

 The privacy setting of an album has no effect for logged on users.

Hiding an album from a logged on user Each user in Gallery Server Pro is a member of one or more roles. Roles are assigned permissions such as View albums / objects, Add albums, and Delete media object.

To make an album invisible to a user, ensure the user does not belong to any roles with View albums / objects permission for the album.

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5. Working with Media Objects

Overview of media objects A media object is any file or HTML snippet managed by Gallery Server Pro. Typically these are photos, video, audio, and documents, but they can be any file type. The default installation enables JPG and JPEG files. To enable additional types, use the Media Object Types page in the Site administration console.

A media object can also be raw HTML text. This is called an external media object, and can be used to:

 Link to media objects on other servers such as YouTube videos.  Display custom snippets of HTML.  Link to other web pages by embedding other web pages in an iframe HTML tag. All media objects can be rearranged, moved or copied to another album, deleted and have their captions edited.

Additional features are available for images. Gallery Server Pro extracts metadata such as camera model, shutter speed, and more from images and displays it in a popup window. Gallery Server Pro also provides the ability to apply a watermark to images, run a slide show, and rotate images.

The available functions also depend on the authorization of the logged on user. A user with Administer site permission has unrestricted access to all functions for all albums. A user with restricted access, however, will find particular functions disabled in the Actions menu or toolbar items will be missing from the media object view page.

Any media object - except external media objects - can be downloaded by clicking the Download toolbar item on the media object view page.

Media files are rendered to the browser using HTML defined in templates. For example, .webm files are rendered in a

Adding media objects There are several ways to add media objects to the gallery. Each of these is discussed below.

 Use a web browser to upload individual files.  Use a web browser to add external media objects.  Use a web browser to upload a ZIP file containing multiple files.  Configure Gallery Server Pro to change the media objects directory to an existing directory containing media objects, and then use a web browser to synchronize Gallery Server Pro with the files.

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 Manually copy files into the Gallery Server Pro media objects directory, then use a web browser to synchronize Gallery Server Pro with the files.

Upload files using a web browser You can add individual media objects to a single album with this technique.

1. Log on to Gallery Server Pro with an account that has permission to add media objects. 2. Navigate to the album to which you want to add media objects. 3. Choose Add objects from the Actions menu. A page similar to the following appears. Note: If you do not see the Actions menu, either you are not logged on or the account under which you are logged on does not have permission to execute any of its commands.

4. Click the Add files button and select one or more files. When a browser supports HTML5 drag and drop, you can drag files onto the file selection window. 5. Optionally select one of the options near the bottom:

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 Discard original file - When selected, the original file is deleted after the thumbnail and web-optimized versions are created. In browsers that support it, images are compressed before uploading to the server. Administrators can force this option to be always selected through a configuration option on the Media Objects - Images page in the Site Admin area.  Treat ZIP file as media object - When checked, Gallery Server Pro will not extract the contents of any ZIP files that are uploaded. Instead, the ZIP file will be preserved and treated as its own media object. This option will be disabled when the ZIP file extension is disabled on the Media Object Types page in the Site Admin area. 6. Click Add to album. While the files are being transferred to the server, progress indicators display the status. Note: The caption for each object defaults to the file name. For images, if the title metadata item has been specified, that value is used for the caption instead of the file name.

7. When the upload is complete, you will be redirected to the album view page.

About the upload widget The upload control is an open source component named Plupload. It offers several nice features, including:

 HTML 5 drag and drop support  Ability to resize images in the browser  Takes advantage of advanced browser features while gracefully degrading when necessary  Progress feedback in medium trust scenarios  Multiple file selection When the add objects page loads, the upload control detects the browser’s capabilities and chooses the most appropriate runtime, based in this order of preference: HTML5, Silverlight, Flash, BrowserPlus, and HTML4. The runtime is shown in a tooltip when you hover over the upload area, as seen in this screen shot:

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The exact features available depend on your browser’s capabilities, including whether it has Flash or Silverlight installed. For example, drag and drop works only in Chrome and Firefox. Client side image resizing requires Flash or Silverlight to work in IE.

The upload widget and metadata As mentioned earlier, the upload widget will try to create a compressed version of images in the browser when the ‘Discard original file’ option is selected. This can greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to transfer files to the server.

In most cases, the image’s metadata is copied to the compressed version so that it can be extracted on the server. However, there is one unfortunate exception. The Silverlight implementation, which is often used in Internet Explorer, fails to copy the image’s metadata to the compressed file, resulting in the metadata being lost. There are two workarounds:

1. Do not select the ‘Discard original file’ option when uploading files. Instead, delete the original files after they have been uploaded with the ‘Delete original files’ option in the Actions menu.

2. Modify the file upload’s control definition so that it never uses the Silverlight implementation, or at least prefers the Flash one to the Silverlight one. Do this by opening the file gs\pages\task\addobjects.ascx in a text editor and looking for this line:

runtimes: 'html5,silverlight,flash,browserplus,html4',

Either delete Silverlight from the list or rearrange it to be after Flash.

Add external media objects Note: As a security precaution, a default installation does not allow external media objects to contain HTML. Read the section Security considerations when allowing HTML and javascript in user-entered input to learn how to safely allow HTML to be entered.

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You can add media objects that refer to objects hosted elsewhere, such as another web site on your intranet or even the internet. These objects are called external media objects and are really nothing more than HTML text that contains anything you want. Typical uses:

 Link to media objects provided as embed code on other servers (e.g. YouTube).  Display custom snippets of HTML.  Link to other web pages by embedding other web pages in an iframe HTML tag. For example, you might upload your videos files to YouTube and then add links to those videos within Gallery Server Pro. Since the videos are streamed straight from the external web site, you save on disk storage and bandwidth costs.

Any web site that offers embed code can be used. A few common ones are YouTube, MSNBC, CNN, Comedy Central's Daily Show, and metacafe.

For example, below is a screenshot of a video on YouTube. Notice, at center right, the embed code. This code can be added to any web site to refer to the original video. Copy this code and paste into Gallery Server Pro to add the video. Although the video appears within the Gallery Server Pro gallery and can be browsed, moved, copied, and deleted, the video is actually stored on - and served from - the YouTube web site.

Follow these instructions to add an external media object:

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1. Log on to Gallery Server Pro with an account that has permission to add media objects. 2. Navigate to the album to which you want to add media objects. 3. Select the Add objects link from the Actions menu. Click the External Content tab. The screen shown below appears. Note: If you do not see the Actions menu, either you are not logged on or the account under which you are logged on does not have permission to execute any of its commands.

4. Select the type of media object you are adding (audio, image, video, or other). This is used to determine an appropriate thumbnail image for the object. 5. Enter a title. 6. Paste the HTML text into the HTML Fragment / Embed Code textbox. 7. Click Add media object. The media object will be created and shown, as seen here:

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8. When you click on the thumbnail image, the object will appear:

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Note: External media objects do not respect the setting for automatically playing video and audio on the Media Objects - Video / Audio / Other page in the Site Admin area. That setting applies only to media files that are uploaded or synchronized in Gallery Server Pro.

Security considerations when allowing HTML and javascript in user-entered input In a default installation, Gallery Server Pro does not allow HTML or javascript to be entered by the user in any textbox. This is the safest way to run your gallery, but it effectively prevents you from creating external media objects.

You can enable HTML input on the Membership - User Settings page in the Site Admin area, as seen here:

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You can also specify the allowed HTML tags and attributes. The default list does not allow dangerous tags such as

The only way to add this to the gallery is to do three things: (1) enable javascript; (2) add the HTML tag script to the list of allowed tags; (3) add the HTML attribute type to the list of allowed attributes. Doing this makes you vulnerable to an XSS attack, so I do not recommend you use these settings on a long-term basis. However, you can change the settings just long enough to add the code. Then go back to Site admin and revert to the previous settings. The snippet will continue to work, synchronizing won't break it, and your site is still safe.

Forcing the menu to appear above media objects Certain plug-ins, in certain browsers, will render in the browser as the top level object, preventing other objects from displaying above them. For example, in Safari, when you add a YouTube video, the menu appears behind the video, like this:

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In some cases you can prevent this issue by tweaking the embed code provided by the web site. For example, the default embed code from YouTube looks similar to this:

This code instructs the browser to use the Flash plug-in to play the video. If you know a little about Flash, then you know that you can get a little better behavior by adding a element and a wmode attribute to the tag, like this:

When you add a media object with this modified embed code, the menu now appears on top of the Flash plug-in:

Note: It is not currently possible to edit the HTML fragment of an existing external media object.

Upload a ZIP file containing multiple files This is a flexible technique allowing you to efficiently add a virtually unlimited number of media objects very quickly. First prepare a ZIP file containing the files you wish to add to Gallery Server Pro, then upload the ZIP file using the Add objects menu option.

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Refer to the previous section for uploading a file. When you select a file to upload, choose the ZIP file you prepared.

Note: If the ZIP file contains multiple directories, even nested ones, then those directories are converted to albums. Use this to your advantage! For example, the first time you use Gallery Server Pro, you may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of photos you want to add. Put them all into a ZIP file with the desired directory hierarchy, and upload it to Gallery Server Pro.

Configure Gallery Server Pro to point to an existing directory containing media objects, and then use a web browser to synchronize Gallery Server Pro with the files. By default, Gallery Server Pro stores all media object files in a subdirectory named mediaobjects. This can be changed to any location on the web server’s hard drive. To change this location, follow these steps:

1. Log on to Gallery Server Pro with an account that has Administer site or Administer gallery permission. 2. Click the Actions menu and go to Site admin. 3. In the left menu, navigate to Media Objects – General. At the top of the page is a section called Media object storage. It allows you to specify the storage location for media objects, the thumbnail that represent the media objects, and the optimized (compressed) versions of images. 4. You can enter a path relative to the web application, or a full physical path to any UNC-accessible location. Examples: C:\my_media, gs\mediaobjects, \\server1\media, \\mynas\media 5. Click Save changes. If successful, you will see a confirmation message. A label below each text box shows the full physical path to the directory you specified. This helps confirm the directory location is where you intend it when you enter a relative path. Note: Changing the location does not move media objects to the new location. For example, if you choose a new location for thumbnail images, you should immediately synchronize the database to generate new thumbnails in the new location (or you can use Windows Explorer to manually copy the files). If you change the media objects path and then synchronize the database, the files in the new location will replace all database entries for the previous media objects. Use care so you do not inadvertently delete objects.

Follow the steps in the Synchronize an Album section to synchronize the media object files on the hard disk with the Gallery Server Pro database.

Manually copy files into the Gallery Server Pro media objects directory, then synchronize By default, Gallery Server Pro stores all media object files in the directory \gs\mediaobjects\ in the web application. You can copy files to this directory and then synchronize the files with the Gallery Server Pro database. If you copy directories into this folder, they will be converted into albums in Gallery Server Pro.

You can copy the files using any technique such as FTP or Windows Explorer. Once you finish, follow the steps in the Synchronize an Album section to synchronize the media object files on the hard disk with the Gallery Server Pro database.

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Edit captions Each media object has a caption associated with it. You can edit all captions for an entire album at once, or edit a caption for a single media object. Both techniques are described below.

Note: HTML and javascript are not allowed unless explicitly enabled on the Membership - User Settings page in the Site Admin area.

Editing multiple captions at once When viewing multiple objects within a single album, captions can be edited by choosing Edit captions from the Actions menu. When the images are displayed with text boxes beneath them, edit the contents of the scroll bar to read the desired captions, and choose Save captions. Below is a screenshot of the Edit captions page.

Edit the caption for a single media object When viewing a single object on the media object view page, its caption can be edited by double clicking the existing caption beneath the object, as seen here:

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A text box appears as shown below. Edit the text and choose Save changes.

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Download media objects Users can download a media object one at a time or by using the built-in ZIP download functionality. Users are allowed to download only those objects they have permission to view. If watermarking is enabled, the downloaded images will contain a watermark.

You can disable the download functionality on the Media Objects - General page in the Site Admin area. While this prevents users from using the built-in functionality to download the media files, note that the fundamental nature of HTML means that if a user can view a media object, they have access to the file. The only way around this limitation is to use DRM, and even DRM doesn’t protect your images.

When viewing a media object, there is a download icon in the toolbar above the object. Clicking this button downloads the file to your browser:

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To download several items in a convenient ZIP archive, select the download ZIP archive button:

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The Download media objects page appears:

Choose the items to download and select the Download button. The selected items will be packaged into a ZIP archive file and sent to you, where you can open or save the file:

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A few important points about downloading objects:

 When downloading images, you can choose to download the thumbnail, compressed, or original images. Only users who have permission to view the original files are able to download them.

 When an album is selected, all of its contents, including child albums, are packaged into the ZIP archive. If this is done on an album with thousands of items, it may take a long time to process and use a lot of bandwidth to send the file to the user.

The Download media objects page can also be opened from two additional places in Gallery Server Pro. There is an item on the Actions menu:

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And there is an icon in the album header area:

Delete objects Deleting a media object removes information about it from the data store and permanently deletes the media file from the hard drive. Also deleted is the thumbnail image and compressed image (if it exists).

For external media objects such as YouTube videos, only the database record and locally stored thumbnail image is deleted. The object that is being referred to (such as the video stored at http://www.youtube.com) is not affected.

You can delete several media objects at once using the Delete objects command, or delete a single media object using the Delete toolbar button. Both techniques are described below.

Note: Deleting an object is permanent! There is no undo command, and once an object is deleted, there is no way to retrieve it.

Delete multiple media objects To delete multiple objects in an album, navigate to the album containing the objects you wish to delete. Choose Delete Objects from the Actions menu and the following page appears.

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Select one or more albums or media objects to delete by checking the associated checkbox. When you are finished, click Delete selected objects. The objects you selected, including the database records and underlying files and/or directories, are permanently deleted. To delete only the database records, select the option ‘Delete only the database records; keep the files/directories’. See the next section for details on this option.

Preserve files and directories When this option is selected, the media files and directories associated with the selected objects are preserved; only the database records and the thumbnail/optimized images are deleted. This can be a convenient way to hide an object without deleting the underlying directory or file.

When this option is selected, the object can be re-imported into the gallery with the synchronize function. You can permanently prevent a file or directory from being imported with one of these tricks:

 Mark the file or directory as hidden with a file utility such as Windows Explorer.

 Edit the NTFS permissions on the IIS application pool identity so that it does not have access to the file or directory.

Delete individual media object To delete a single media object, navigate to a page showing the media object in media object view. Choose the red “X” toolbar button above the media object. A popup window asks for confirmation that the object should be deleted, as shown below. Choose OK and the object is permanently deleted.

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Note: If the current user does not have permission to delete the media object, the Delete toolbar button does not appear.

Delete original files When you add images whose file size is large, Gallery Server Pro automatically creates a compressed version that is bandwidth-friendly and takes up less hard drive space. However, the original is not deleted and is still available through the Show/hide the original media object toolbar button.

Similarly, when the Binary Pack is installed and encoded versions of video and audio files have been created, the original files are preserved.

You can save significant amounts of hard drive space by deleting the original versions of these media objects, keeping only the compressed and thumbnail versions.

Navigate to the album containing the media objects for which you want to delete one or more original files. Click the Delete original files command in the Actions menu. The following screen appears.

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The media objects and albums in the current album are displayed with associated checkboxes. If an item does not have an original version, it will not have a checkbox and the message "Not applicable" appears on the thumbnail. Gallery Server Pro calculates and displays the hard drive space that would be saved if all items were selected.

Select the checkboxes of the items for which you would like to delete the corresponding original files. The thumbnail and compressed versions will not be deleted.

NOTE: The original files will be permanently deleted from the web server! If they are important, make sure you have a copy stored elsewhere.

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Move or copy media objects and albums Media objects and albums can be moved or copied to other albums. When a copy of a media object is made, a copy of the media file is saved to the destination album. The original file remains in the source album. When an album is copied, the directory and its contents are copied.

An example: copying several objects Let’s look at an example. Say we have an album called Photos that contains a couple child albums and several photos. We want to copy one of its albums and a photo to another album called My favorites. We start by navigating to the Photos album. Then we click Copy objects from the Actions menu. A screen like this will appear:

Select the items to copy. In this example, I am choosing to copy the Nature album and a photo of lily pads. When I click Choose these objects, a screen like this appears:

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Note: Only those albums the user has permission to add objects to are shown.

Since I want to move these objects into the My favorites album, I select that album. Then I click Copy objects. The photos are copied and I am redirected to the My favorites album where I can see that – yes – the items were indeed copied.

An example: moving a single object As you browse your media objects, imagine you come across one that you want to move to your My favorites album. The page might look like this:

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Move object button

Copy object button

Click the toolbar button labeled Transfer this object to another album. The following screen appears.

Select the My favorites album, and click Move object. The photo will be moved to the album.

Note: To copy the object instead of move it, click the toolbar button labeled Copy this object to another album.

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Rearrange objects To change the order in which Gallery Server Pro displays objects on a web page, choose Rearrange objects from the Actions menu. The media objects in the current album are displayed as shown below.

Note: The Rearrange objects command on the Actions menu is only enabled when the logged on user has Edit album permission for the current album.

To change the sequence of an object, drag it to the desired location. A rectangular area near the top and bottom of the screen scrolls the window up or down when the mouse hovers over it. Use these areas to drag objects above or below the visible portion of the window. When the user clicks Save changes, the objects will be displayed in album view, again in the right-to-left, then top-to-bottom format.

* Behind the Scenes * Rearranging objects modifies the Sequence field in the database table gs_MediaObject (for media objects) and gs_Album (for albums).

Rotate objects Images can be rotated in intervals of 90 degrees in any direction. You can rotate all the images in an entire album at once, or rotate just a single image. Both techniques are described below.

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Note: Only images can be rotated. Gallery Server Pro does not support rotating videos or other types of objects.

Rotate more than one image To rotate more than one image in the current album, choose Rotate images from the Actions menu. The thumbnails in the current album are displayed with selectable arrow boxes on each of the images’ four sides, as below.

For each image that needs to be rotated, click on the arrow on the side that should be on top. Click Rotate images and thumbnail image, original image, and compressed image (if it exists) for each image you selected will all be rotated as specified.

Note: After the images are rotated, your browser may display the previous image from its cache rather than the newly rotated image. To get the latest version, refresh the page in your browser (pressing F5 or CTRL-F5 works in most browsers).

Note: Rotating is the only function in Gallery Server Pro that modifies the original image file. In some cases, repeatedly rotating an image will degrade the original, so use this function with caution.

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Rotating a single image To rotate a single image from the media object view page, select the Rotate this image toolbar button from the toolbar above the image, as shown below.

A selectable arrow box is added to all four sides of the image, as below.

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Click on the arrow box on the side that should be on top. Click Rotate image and the image will be rotated as requested.

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Note: After the image is rotated, your browser may display the previous image from its cache rather than the newly rotated image. To get the latest version, refresh the page in your browser (pressing F5 or CTRL-F5 works in most browsers).

Watermarking The watermark feature is a powerful tool to help protect images from unwanted duplication or to communicate the source of the image.

Watermarks are rendered dynamically on the image when it is requested by the browser. The original image files are not modified, and no files are stored on the web server with watermarks applied to them. If a user downloads an image using the Download toolbar button above an image, the downloaded image has the same watermark as the image rendered in the browser.

Below is an example of a photo with an image and text watermark.

Gallery Server Pro supports two kinds of watermarks:

 A custom image that is applied to each image. For example, the Gallery Server Pro logo in the image above.  Custom text that is applied to each image. For example, the copyright message in the image above. You can configure one or both of these watermarking techniques. Furthermore, you can control the following attributes of each watermark:

 The source of the watermark image. Use your own image file. If you specify a .gif or .png with transparent pixels, those pixels will remain transparent when rendered on the image surface.

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 The location to apply the watermark on the image. Choose from nine locations, such as TopLeft, MiddleCenter, etc.  The size of the watermark. The size can be relative to the size of the image, such as 50% of the width of the image. For a text watermark, you can optionally specify the font size.  The opacity, from transparent to completely opaque.  For text watermarks, specify the font name and size. Note: The watermark image and/or text applies to all images in the gallery. If you wish to use multiple watermarks, create multiple galleries and configure a unique watermark image in each gallery.

You can specify that certain users do not get the watermark. See the section Configure role-based watermarking below.

Enable watermarking Watermark functionality is configured on the Media Objects - Images page in the Site Admin area. Refer to the Media Objects – Images section for detailed information on the various configuration options.

Configuring role-based watermarking Certain users can be configured to not receive the watermark. This is useful for, say, professional photographers who want to allow users to browse all photos in the gallery. A watermark can be applied to users by default, but paying customers can be placed in a role where watermarks are not rendered on the images. This can be specified at the album level so that certain albums render watermarks for a given user while others do not.

To configure Gallery Server Pro so that all users receive a watermark except for a certain user account, follow these steps.

1. Enable the watermark functionality. This is done on the Media Objects - Images page in the Site Admin area. 2. Configure a role with Do not show watermark on image permission for at least one album. 3. Add a user to this role. (Make sure the user has view access to the desired media objects. Add view permission if necessary to the role you configured in step 2.) Note: Browsers often cache images, so you may need to refresh the browser in order to see the non-watermarked version of an image that previously had a watermark.

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Examples of watermarks Below is a text watermark with the letters “TIS” set to 100% of the image width. Opacity is set to 20%. (TIS stands for Tech Info Systems.)

Here is an example where a custom image has been specified to be 50% of the width of the photo and located in the top left. Opacity is set to 40%.

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Media object metadata When images are added to Gallery Server Pro, any metadata embedded in the file is extracted and saved to the data store. Gallery Server Pro can extract data in any of the following formats: EXIF, XMP, tEXt, IFD, and IPTC.

Viewing metadata When viewing a media object, click the View information about this media object toolbar button that appears above the item, as shown below. A popup window shows all the metadata that has been extracted. This is a read-only list and cannot be edited.

Toggles image metadata

Gallery Server Pro stores each user’s preference for whether or not the Image metadata popup is shown. This preference is persisted across logon sessions.

Bonus: Additional metadata extraction in full trust If Gallery Server Pro detects it is running under full trust, it automatically uses WPF functionality in .NET to extract additional metadata items, such as title, keywords, GPS coordinates, and IPTC data.

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Searching The search functionality in Gallery Server Pro allows one to find all objects that contain the search criteria. The following properties are included in the search:

 Album title and summary

 Media object caption and file name

 Media object metadata, such as camera model, shutter speed, title, etc.

An object is considered a match if all search words match an album or media object. For example, if one searches for desert mountain, only those albums or media objects that contain both desert and mountain are returned. If the search words are contained in quotation marks, such as “desert mountain”, then the phrase must exactly match.

The contents of documents such as PDF files are not searched. Only those objects for which the current user has authorization to view are returned in the search results.

Since the search function includes the metadata extracted from images, you can perform some pretty powerful searches. For example, to see all your photos that were shot at -0.5 step compensation, search for “-0.5 step”. You may have to adjust the text depending on your camera.

To begin a search, click the search icon in the top right of the page. Enter the search term and click the Search button.

Note: If the search icon is not visible, it may have been disabled. The configuration setting is on the Gallery Settings page in the Site Admin area.

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A page with the search results appears. Click the thumbnail to view the item.

Adding or editing a file/MIME type The database table gs_MimeType contains a list of file types that are managed by Gallery Server Pro. This list is exposed through the Media Object Types page in the Site administration console. Each type can be enabled or disabled as desired.

In most cases, this list contains every type of file you may want to add and is already associated with the desired MIME type, but there may be cases where you want to add a new file type or change the MIME type associated with an existing file extension. Since the Media Object Types page does not allow any changes except for enabling or disabling, you may need to edit the data directly in the table.

Note: Changes to the gs_MimeType table affects all galleries.

Note: After editing this table, restart the IIS application pool to force the Gallery Server Pro initialization code to run.

Adding a file extension To add a file type that does not exist in the table gs_MimeType, use your SQL tool to insert a record. For example, perhaps your company uses a custom extension .ks2 for a particular type of text file. This is the SQL you might use:

INSERT INTO [gs_MimeType] ([FileExtension],[MimeTypeValue],[BrowserMimeTypeValue]) VALUES ('.ks2','text/plain', '') Gallery Server Pro 2.6 Administrator’s Guide Page 99 of 267

In most cases the BrowserMimeTypeValue field can be an empty string. This only needs to contain a value when the HTML or script template specifies the {MimeType} replacement parameter and it is inappropriate to send the MIME type (stored in the MimeTypeValue column) to the browser.

Editing the MIME type for a file Each file extension in the table gs_MimeType is mapped to a particular MIME type. You may wish to update the MIME type to change the behavior of Gallery Server Pro.

Example: The .ogg file extension is mapped to the MIME type video/ogg, but it can also refer to an audio file. To force Gallery Server Pro to treat .ogg files as audio files instead of video, update the record in the table:

UPDATE [gs_MimeType] SET [MimeTypeValue]'audio/ogg' WHERE [FileExtension]='.ogg'

Rendering media objects in the browser Note: This section contains advanced information on customizing how Gallery Server Pro generates the HTML for media objects. You should be comfortable with HTML before attempting to modify the generated HTML.

Overview Browsers, by themselves, typically cannot play video, audio, or render many kinds of documents like Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word files. These types of objects require plug-ins which may or may not be installed in your users' browsers.

Note: Browser makers are adding native audio and video support through the use of the HTML 5 video and audio elements. Gallery Server Pro 2.4 adds support for these new elements, although implementation is inconsistent among browsers, making it appropriate only for early-adopter folks at the moment (I write this in December 2010).

Gallery Server Pro is flexible so that administrators can customize the HTML output rendered by Gallery Server. You, as the web site administrator, may feel comfortable having a dependence on a particular plug-in, such as Silverlight or Flash, while others may not. Also, some users might prefer that multimedia files are rendered with