Piwigo 12 is coming and needs some beta testers!

Claire Michard on July 5, 2021

piwigo beta 12

After the release of Piwigo 11 in January 2021, the team is not standing still. We are working on the next version (which will be released this summer), and we have decided to involve our users very early in the release process. Discover in this blog post the new features and why not, join the beta testers!

Demo webinars

For the first time, we offered to some of our customers the opportunity to participate in webinars presenting this new version. We wanted to get feedback before the release of this version.

The feedback has been positive, which is good news. We have noted some very interesting remarks, which we will try to integrate into the roadmap of this new version.

For example, following a suggestion from a customer, we will add, from the user manager, a reminder of the definition of the different profiles (webmaster, administrator, visitor…).

Call for beta testers

After these first presentations, we will enter the beta-testing phase. And this is where we need you, Piwigo users!

via GIPHY

Anyone can give a little bit of their time to test this version before its official release.

Being a beta tester is the best way to help us release a new, functional, bug-free version. But it also allows you to get involved and contribute to a Piwigo that really meets your needs!

If you would like to volunteer, send us an email at contact@piwigo.com : we will then give you early access to v12, so you can test it and give us your feedback. Of course, this will not impact your Piwigo account!

PS: if you are able to deploy Piwigo by yourself, feel free to download Piwigo 12.0.0beta1 right here.

What’s new in Piwigo 12 ?

Piwigo 11 was a major release, with many new features. We decided to speed up the release of new versions: Piwigo 12 has fewer new features than Piwigo 11, but each of them is important.

User Manager Redesign

The user management screen has been completely redesigned, in line with the new group manager that you discovered in Piwigo 11.

The design of this page is more modern and colorful.

user manager piwigo 12

In addition, you can choose between different views: a default list; a compact mode that displays a maximum number of users on the same page; and a tile mode that displays users in the form of large tiles.

Compact view
Tile view

Modifying your users in bulk will become much more intuitive: a selection mode has been introduced, which makes this page usable from a tactile interface. This new mode also allows you to see the list of selected users before choosing an action (deletion, assignment to a group…).

Advanced filtering has been added: it will make it easier to search for users when you have a lot of them in your Piwigo. You can filter users by status, privacy level, group and creation date.

Another small improvement: the “guest” user (which corresponds to the anonymous visitors of your photo gallery, when it is public), is now managed separately from the “real” users. This helps to avoid handling errors.

Finally, the user edition screen is also getting a makeover.

Users activity log

A new screen appears in Piwigo 012: the User Activity Log.

It allows you to see the actions performed in the Piwigo administration, by each user: add / delete / modify an album, a file, a user…

This screen lists the history of activities and allows you to filter them (by user and by period).

Following feedback from customers during a webinar presentation demo, we have added the possibility to export these activities to a CSV file that can be used with a spreadsheet program (Excel, Libre Office…).

Redesign of the plugin manager

The plugin manager already had a facelift in Piwigo 11, but it evolves again with v12.

Until now, activated and deactivated plugins were displayed separately.

When you activated a new plugin, the screen reloaded, and you had to search in the list for the newly activated plugin, in order to access its settings. This was not very practical, especially for photo libraries with many plugins.

With v12, the way it works changes. To activate or deactivate a plugin, you just need to click on a button, and then you can directly modify its settings.

Optimization of file upload for large galleries

We have optimized the batch file addition to be more efficient, especially on large photo libraries (more than 100,000 files). Some of our customers know that adding 100 or 1000 files at once to a Piwigo can slow down the server when the gallery already contains a very large volume of photos. Starting with version 12, this should not be a problem anymore.

So, what do you think of these news? Are you eager to discover Piwigo 12? Send an email to contact@piwigo.com to become a beta tester!

Results of the Piwigo survey

Claire Michard on September 28, 2020

survey piwigo

In January, we asked Piwigo users to answer a survey. Our goal was to get to know better the community members, their uses and expectations.

We sent out the questionnaire at the end of January 2020 in French and English, and in March we sent out the German version.

The questionnaire was sent via Piwigo newsletters in the 3 languages, but it was also distributed on the piwigo.org website, on the piwigo.com blog and on social networks.

We were pleasantly surprised by the quantity and quality of the answers.

A total of 1116 people responded.

Only 10% of the people who responded to this survey are customers on piwigo.com. The others host their Piwigo gallery themselves. This makes sense because these people make up the majority of subscribers to the Piwigo newsletter, and because Piwigo is first and foremost a free and open source project.

The results of the survey are available in the form of an infographics that you will find at the end of this blog post; but we also tried to find out if there were any notable differences between the answers of the customers on piwigo.com and those of the users who host their Piwigo themselves.

Here are the main differences we observed!

Geographical distribution

While the French account for 33% of respondents overall, they represent 68% of piwigo.com customers who responded to the survey!

Why choose Piwigo

To the question “why did you choose Piwigo”, (3 possible answers) the piwigo.com customers chose 3 answers among the 10 proposals:

  • For its low price (50%)
  • For its ease of use (41%)
  • For the richness of the features (38%)

It was found that French customers also largely chose Piwigo for its French origin.

Before Piwigo

Half of the customers who filled the survey indicated that they used physical media (CDs, USB keys, hard drive…) to store and share their photos before setting up Piwigo.

Preferred features

We noticed while reading the survey results that many customers are not aware of the extent of Piwigo’s possibilities. 

Here are a few features that are not well known but that you might be interested in:

  • The ability to manage video and PDF files (for companies only)
  • The creation of shareable selections
  • The possibility for non-administrators to add photos on Piwigo
  • The presentation of photos on a map 

And now, the information that pleased us the most: 100% of piwigo.com customers said that they would be willing to recommend Piwigo to someone they know!

For more information on the results of this survey, look at the infographic below and read the announcement on the piwigo.org forum !

piwigo survey

Add a filter bar to your photo gallery

Claire Michard on June 9, 2020

plugin filter bar piwigo

You want to offer your visitors an user friendly interface to navigate through your photo gallery? With the Tag Groups plugin, you can add multiple filters to your Piwigo photo library.

Warning

This plugin is not available to customers who have subscribed to an “Individual” offer on piwigo.com.

Reminder: how tags work with Piwigo

If your Piwigo photo library contains a lot of media, you’ve probably decided to organize them with tags, or keywords.

Tags allow you to qualify your photos according to your own classification criteria: this can be colors, image formats, places, themes or any other useful information to easily find photos that have something in common.

A photo can have an infinite number of tags, and you can combine tags to refine your search.

The tag search is available from the “Related tags” menu item of your photo library (that you can activate with the “Menu Tags” plugin), or from a tag cloud that can be displayed on a page of your gallery.

tag cloud piwigo

Example of tag cloud

Thus, the tags are complementary to the albums.

Let’s take the example of the photo library of the Archeological Museum Archéa.

The photos of this photo library are organized in albums: Exhibitions, Collections… Each album is also organized in sub-albums: in the Exhibitions album, there is one sub-album per exhibition.

But if you’re looking for photos that match a finer criterion, that’s where the tags will prove themselves useful. You can find in one click all the photos tagged “Middle-Ages”, “Necropolis”, or “Merovingians”, whatever their album.

What if I want all the pictures of Merovingian necropolises?

Don’t worry: I just have to combine the two tags “Necropolis”, and “Merovingian”, as you can see on the example below.

search multi tags piwigo

This operation is very simple and convenient, but the tags are all mixed together. 

For an even better organisation, and an easier search, a new plugin is available on your Piwigo photo library.

Set up a filtering search bar with The Tag Groups plugin

This plugin allows you to use tags to set up a filtering search bar on your photo gallery.

How does it work?

You now have the ability to regroup the tags by family, with the new notion of “tag group”. 

The tags “blue”, “pink”, “green” can be associated with a “color” group. To do this, simply add a prefix in the tag name. Thus, by naming a tag “color:blue”, you will have the tag “blue” belonging to the “color” group.

You can see below a page that lists the tags of a Piwigo gallery, grouped by tag group.

word cloud tags piwigo

If we go on with the Archéa Museum example, we could imagine that the tags “High Middle Ages”, “Classical Middle Ages”, “Gallo-Roman Antiquity” and “Merovingian” would be classified in the “Period” group.

And the tags “ceramics”, “ornaments”, “furniture”, “tools”, “religious practices” etc. could be classified in the “Objects” group.

We could thus set up in the gallery a search engine with filters by period, and by type of object, with drop-down lists as in the example below.

tag groups plugin piwigo
Photo library on which the Tag Groups plugin has been installed

On the above example, (click on the image to enlarge it if necessary), you can see that we first filtered the pictures to show only the “Tulip” type flowers.

You can then refine the selection by color with the “Color” filter. It lists all tags of type “Color”, but only those that are present on photos that also have the tag “Tulip” are clickable.

filter bar multi criteria piwigo

If I select the “Purple” color, the selection only shows me files with the “Tulip” tag AND the “Purple” tag.

filter bar multi criteria piwigo

If you wish to test by yourself, you can view a demo by clicking on this link.

We hope you like this new feature!  Would you like to implement it on your Piwigo gallery?

If so, you have two options :

  • If you host your Piwigo yourself, download the Tag Groups plugin
  • If you are a customer of a hosting offer with Piwigo.com, please contact support. Indeed, you can’t (yet) activate the Tag Groups plugin yourself. Warning! This plugin is only available for customers who subscribed to an Enterprise offer.

Covid19: extended trial period for companies

Claire Michard on March 18, 2020

They are exceptional circumstances calling for exceptional measures. Until the end of the lockdown phase, we have decided to double the trial period on Piwigo.com, for companies. Here are the reasons that led us to make this decision.

First of all, the Piwigo team hopes that you are all well and in a good mood in these unusual times. We at Piwigo are used to working at home, and the remote communication tools hold no secrets for us. But let’s be honest, the latest events have turned our lives upside down…

Working from home in containment period…

And in the last few days, we noticed an unusual phenomenon: several companies that were testing Piwigo contacted us to ask us to extend their trial period. The trial period for Piwigo is usually 30 days, which is normally enough to test Piwigo software and make an opinion.

But these days, many professionals have seen their work processes turned upside down. Priorities are changing, people have to start working remotely, they need to replace colleagues who are on sick leave… The decision-making process is slower and, overall, everything takes a little longer.

And at the same time, it’s an ideal time to focus on substantive projects, such as setting up an online photo library to replace external hard drives, shared network directories and USB sticks! Because now they are stuck at home, people realize how much they need reliable tools to work and collaborate from anywhere.

That is why we have decided to temporarily increase the trial period for companies to 60 days instead of 30 days. 

If you are a company (or public sector, or non profit) and are currently on trial, you will receive an email informing you of the extension of your free trial. This is normally applied automatically.

If you’re a private individual, you’re not concerned: we assumed that it doesn’t make any difference to you since you use Piwigo in your spare time anyway. 

In any case, we advise you all to take advantage of the lockdown period to take the time to organize and sort your photos! It’s a very useful activity that is often postponed, so now that you are stuck at home, you can get on with it 🙂

Good luck to you all, and take care! 🥰️

You haven’t tested Piwigo yet?

Try Piwigo for free!

Start the free trial

Piwigo 2020 survey

Claire Michard on February 7, 2020

To start the year off on the right foot, we have decided to invite you, members of the Piwigo community, to have your say.

We need to get to know you better and understand why you are loyal to Piwigo, and how we can make it even better.

It will only take a few minutes to complete this survey, but it will really help us!

We hope that many of you will participate. And as we value transparency, we will communicate the results of the survey.

Answer the survey

New Piwigo mobile application for Android

Claire Michard on October 29, 2019

piwigo android app

We announced it in our latest blog post: for several months now, we have been working hard to finally release a new version of the Piwigo application for Android.

Good news: that’s it, the application is available! 🥳

This mobile app is the result of a collaborative effort between Phil Bayfield, an English contributor who relaunched the Android application project a few years ago, Raphael Mack, our German Android lead developer, and Valentin Baizeau, a French intern at Piwigo for several months.

Let’s hear Valentin presenting his work in person:

“ My role is to take part in the developpement of the android application. For this first version, we focused on the user experience, by listening to the users requests about what features were priorities for our app. It is now possible to view in full screen your photos by tapping on them for instance, and it is also possible to create new albums and add some photos to them. The idea is to gradually develop new features to be able to offer the same possibilities as the iOS app.”

Valentin, student at EPITECH Nantes and intern at Piwigo.

We are very happy and proud to present this new application that will allow you to:

  • Connect to Piwigo from your Android smartphone
  • Display your albums
  • Navigate through your photos and display them in full screen
  • Create new albums
  • Upload photos to your Piwigo from your Android smartphone

Don’t wait any longer to download the application and give us your feedback!

télécharger piwigo android

If you wish, you can also download the application from the alternative F-Droid directory.

Discover some screenshots below:

piwigo android albums
piwigo android photos