News from Piwigo.com, online photo gallery software
Many users have activated plugin Autosize (approximately 10% of you, which means one of the favorite plugins). Unfortunately this plugin is incompatible with several other plugins and themes. Autosize is not available on Piwigo.com for Piwigo 2.5. In order to replace it, we need the help of beta-testers for the new plugin Automatic Size. See details on Piwigo.org forum.
New plugin Automatic Size adds an option in the size selection box.
Plugin Birthdate gives people age on each photo. Since Piwigo knows the date of the photo and if you tag the photo with people name, Piwigo only needs to know the people birthdate to display their age on photo. Plugin Birthdate let you define the birthdate of any tag.
Plugin Birthdate: add a birthdate
Plugin Birthdate: on administration side you can see the list of defined birthdates
Plugin Birthdate: on the page of the photo, next to each tag Piwigo displays the age
Depending on the age, Piwigo will display seconds or minutes or hours… or years. If you have a family photo gallery, you will certainly appreciate to immediately know the age of kids on each photo!
Plugin LMT, License Manager Tool, is not compatible with Piwigo 2.5 yet. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can replace it with plugin Copyrights and plugin Perso Footer.
Plugin Copyrights lets you define licenses and apply them on photos. This plugin is much simpler than LMT because it relies on standard administration screens: Batch Manager gets new filter and new action, and you can also change the copyright on the photo edition screen.
Plugin Copyrights for Piwigo let you create licenses and apply them on your photos.
Plugin Perso Footer lets you add a piece of text in your footer. Very simple.
Create a custom footer on all your pages with Piwigo plugin Perso Footer
Plugins Google+1 and TweetThis are no longer supported and are replaced by the new plugin Social Buttons. The idea is to have all your social media buttons merged into a single plugin. Social Buttons currently manages 5 social networks: Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr.
New plugin Social Buttons let you share pages on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr.
Plugins Google+1 and TweetThis are not available on Piwigo 2.5. For a faster upgrade of your photo gallery to Piwigo 2.5, deactivate these plugins. Let’s also say that FacebookPlug is not compatible yet with Piwigo 2.5, so if you’re only interested in the “like” button feature, replace it with Social Buttons too.
As usual each time a major new version of Piwigo is released (version 2.5 this time) many Piwigo.com users ask how to upgrade. It’s nice to see how motivated you are! But you will have to be patient. As said on blog post Piwigo 2.4 and upgrade on Piwigo.com :
On Piwigo.com, you don’t manage updates, so it’s useless to try by yourself. The update to Piwigo 2.4 will be applied automatically without any action from you.
Version 2.5 is a much smaller step than version 2.4 was. It means that plugins and themes are simpler to adapt and that upgrades will occur sooner. I hope first photo galleries will be upgraded in less than 2 weeks.
New on Piwigo 2.5: as long as your thumbnail is not ready, we display a default icon.
Once your gallery is upgraded to version 2.5, you are notified by email with a summary of changes. The main advice to have your Piwigo upgraded to 2.5 as soon as possible: deactivate plugins you don’t really use.
Theme Simple has been updated to version 4. It applies to derivated themes Simple Grey, Simple Black, Simple White and Simple Sunset. The main changes are on the page of the photo as you can see on the 2 following screenshots, comparing version 3 and version 4.
On theme Simple version 3, no icon in the top-right corner and previous/next thumbnails are vertically displayed.
On theme Simple version 4, icons and different display for previous/next thumbnails.
As you can see, changes are not big, visually speaking. Actually changes are huge, technically speaking. We use the same HTML templates as in default theme Elegant, and it makes the theme much simpler to maintain and we avoid a few bugs that were complicated to fix until now (such as distorted photo on very small screens).
Close-up on icons: we have integrated icons from theme Elegant on Piwigo 2.5
If you encounter any specific customization issue with this new version of theme Simple, please contact Piwigo.com support.
For upcoming Valentine’s Day (next Thursday) February 14, 2013, Piwigo.com multiplies referral bonus by 3: for all subscriptions validated this day, referrer and referred user get a 3 months bonus instead of 1.
As a reminder, the referral programm is explained on blog post Referral Program.
Here is an example of referrer with 6 referred users!
Piwigo 2.4 has been released 2 months ago. Approximately 70% of Piwigo.com galleries are now running on this new version, including all new installations. They can take advantage of new features and new plugins such as GuestBook, Header Manager or Batch Downloader (I will write specific post for each of them).
Multiple size is a new feature on Piwigo 2.4
This week, more galleries can be updated because we have installed plugin Embedded Videos (replacing GVideo) and themes Gally-Graphite and Gally-Grum Dark 2. The plugin Autosize is not ready yet for Piwigo 2.4, and many galleries are using it. Considering the major changes in Piwigo 2.4 for photo sizes, Autosize needs extra testing. If you want your gallery to be updated sooner to version 2.4, you should deactivate plugin Autosize.
The read-only mode is now over. It took much more time than expected (17 hours approximately, including a whole night if you’re in America or Europe). We’re really sorry about that and this is why we have added 3 days on all subscriptions and trial periods.
Next time, if the hardware takes too long to recover, we won’t use the “read-only” option on the spare servers: the spare servers will be fully functional, including administration and photo upload.
Happy upload!
In 1 hour, Piwigo.com will activate its “read-only” mode: you won’t be able to use your administration panel and upload photos, but the visitors can still browse the gallery. During the few hours of the “read-only” period, we will redirect visitors to the spare server while hardware operations are performed. Then we will go back to main server and switch off the read-only mode.
On Wednesday July 25th 2012, 4AM UTC, important system upgrade on Piwigo.com servers. The downtime should last 1 hour, maybe less.
Don’t know your timezone compared to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)?
Happy summer time!
Update: the downtime has lasted 1 hour, as expected. Everything went fine. MySQL server was a little slow at startup, but now running very fast.
A few users of Piwigo.com have also subscribed to the newsletter on Piwigo.org and of course, since last friday they know about Piwigo 2.4 availability. Several of you have already asked us how to update their gallery.
On Piwigo.com, you don’t manage updates, so it’s useless to try by yourself. The update to Piwigo 2.4 will be applied automatically without any action from you. The next question is “when?”. Here follow a few details about how Piwigo is updated on Piwigo.com.
First we must slightly adapt and test Piwigo for Piwigo.com architecture. You must understand that on a given server, thousands independant galleries are installed but they are all running on the very same source code. This is what we call a “massively multisite” Piwigo.
Then we install Piwigo 2.4 on Piwigo.com and we start to switch galleries, one by one. Of course updates are automatic. What makes your gallery updated earlier or later? It mainly depends on the extensions you use. Indeed even if Piwigo 2.4 was released two days ago, most of the extensions are not compatible with 2.4 yet.
Progressively extensions are made compatible with Piwigo 2.4 and we install them on Piwigo.com. The upgrade script detects the extensions you use and if all the extensions are available on Piwigo 2.4, then it upgrades your gallery. Maybe it would be good that you deactivate all the extensions you don’t really use, if you want to upgrade as soon as possible.
Now you understand the process we use, but it doesn’t really answer your question “when?”!. Let’s go back in time and see how fast was the upgrade to Piwigo 2.3 on Piwigo.com: the first galleries were upgraded after 3 weeks and the latest after 8 weeks. Considering that version 2.4 brings much more changes than version 2.3, it would be a real performance if we finish with the same delay.
Once your gallery is upgraded to version 2.4, you are notified by email with a summary of changes. To sum up: be patient, Piwigo 2.4 and its major changes are coming soon on your gallery!
Following our roadmap, a new major version of Piwigo every 6 months, version 2.4 is now ready for beta-tests. The stable version is planned for April and then plugins and themes will be updated for compatibility. If you want to know all details about version 2.4, read Piwigo 2.4.0RC1 announcement.
Here follows a list of the biggest changes you’ll find in Piwigo 2.4:
Piwigo 2.4: when visitors browse your gallery with a smartphone like iPhone or Android, Piwigo automatically loads the mobile theme.
Before Piwigo 2.4 stable is available, we propose you to beta-test it. Either you simply browse the Piwigo 2.4 beta-test demo, or we create a complete 2.4 installation for you with administration panel available, just ask!
Small update on theme Simple today. This update brings bug fixing such as centering photo on slideshow but also a new display option. On the albums page, it is now possible to display album title and description under the album thumbnail and not only next to the album thumbnail.
Piwigo and theme Simple: album description can be displayed under the album thumbnail
Piwigo and theme Simple: by default description is displayed next to the album thumbnail
To configure theme Simple, open screen [Administration > Configuration > Themes] and click on the “Configuration” link in the Simple box.
Link to configure your theme in the administration
This update automatically implies bug fixing and new option on child themes Simple White and Simple Black.
A new plugin is available on your screen [Administration > Plugins > Manage]: GThumb+. This plugin modifies the design of the thumbnails page. All thumbnails have the same height, except the first one which takes 2 lines.
Piwigo and GThumb+ plugin in action, all thumbnails have the same height except the first one.
Plugin GThumb+ doesn’t modify your existing thumbnails, it just creates new and specific thumbnails for its own use. GThumb+ is compatible with all themes.
