After adding a query counter and looking at some queries and code I found out how to improve the behaviour given. The thing that created most of the queries (>60%) was the recursive function isPublished(). But this function is needed to successfully tell if an image is published or not. So what to do? Use caching!

The cache did a good job, but could not reduce the number of queries the way I wanted it to be. So I tried harder on optimising queries, loops and object creation.

Finally I could gain a reduction of about 93% of the queries made when it was not optimised at all. This is great, you know, because an image gallery should not eat that much server performance.

Well, go to my installation of fotoalbum if you’d like to see it in action. If you like it, then you can also get a copy of it! If something fails then please report it to the fotoalbum page so I can help you or at least fix the problem.

Changes

There are no new features except the support for themes. If you know Smarty then you’ll be able to create new themes easily. If you don’t know Smarty, then go and get a look – it’s pretty simple and straight forward to use.

I removed the fotoalbum logo from the background at the bottom right because it made scrolling very slow. Instead I created a bar with information on the current view (albums, album, image, search) and added the logo there. This information bar replaces the information div on various places (not on all places though, because the image view needs to display much more information than available in the information bar).

Download

As usual I’ll give you a download link to the new version of fotoalbum and the corresponding fotoalbum wordpress plugin. If you need help give me some feedback.

Changes

• added a configuration screen
• using objects in templates
• removing the m:n relation between images and album
• made changes in templates, classes and others to map the new relation
• an image is now an image without any more information than whats in the database. It has no more pointers in it
• an album now holds all additional information about pages, next/prev image, limits, and so on
• a date editor has been added to help people with the date of images and albums
• many bugfixes

Download

You can get the latest version by browsing the archive or you can get it directly from here:

• fotoalbum r1122 for the fotoalbum
• fotoalbum WordPress plugin for the WordPress plugin.

Overview

This plugin is described in detail at the WordPress fotoalbum Plugin page. You’ll find the syntax, some more examples and a FAQ there. An example of using the fotoalbum Plugin by displaying an album is followed.

Example

My Friends Lena and Michi were on the I-Wolf concert at the pe_zwei in Klagenfurt. Michi had his faboulous Canon EOS 20D with him and took some great shots from the location and – whats more interesting – from I-Wolf and company. Because it was very dark he had to use a flash (Canon Speedlite 580EX) to lighten the room, which nevertheless creates high quality fotos. Let’s have a look.

This is the code I used to display the following album images.

Templates

The main goal was to use templates. Templates are kind of easy: you can imagine it as a simple html-page with a template language where you need it (like when you want to have a variable title or you want to iterate through guestbook entries). I like templates, I often work with them and I really think you should use them wherever you can. So let’s use templates.

Mambo, HTML and CSS

Another thing that came to my mind was using it with Mambo. This is not as easy as I thought because with Mambo you can’t use your own stylesheet and have correct html code. And I wanted it to validate as strict HTML 4.01. With Cascading Style Sheets. Which should also validate. This is a problem not solved so far (except when using the Mambo wrapper).

Sessions and Databases

Using sessions and a database today is kind of “state of the art”. I wouldn’t want to work without these nowadays, these mechanisms are really handy and make a programmers live easier.

Tables or divs?

When I came to designing I thought about a layout for displaying thumbnails – how much columns, should I use slow tables or fast divs? It uses divs, as you might have thought. But – which is really great I believe – it has no fixed columns. This means if you resize your browser window the thumbnails wrap to fit width. That way you – as the user – can control how much images you want to be displayed on screen. No more large white space between images – no more expanding websites where you have to scroll vertically (though there are mice out there that are able to do that). Isn’t that great?

View fotoalbum

I hope you got curious :) If so, then visit my beta version of fotoalbum. Tell me if you like it through the contact form in the menu or download fotoalbum to test it on your own. Have fun!