Offer Piwigo.com for Christmas!

Pierrick Le Gall on December 12, 2013

Starting today, offer a Piwigo.com account! We’ve made it super simple:

  1. Choose the subscription plan you want to offer
  2. Confirm the payment
  3. Give your gift code!

This gift code can be used either for a new account or for a renewal.

You know we’re nice at Piwigo.com: if you take 2 years it is 10% off, and 20% for a 3 years subscription! No need to use your calculator:

Offer a Piwigo.com account

Offer a Piwigo.com account

A Piwigo.com account will be an original gift for your friend addicted to photos or for your father who wish to share family photo shots.

Plugin Automatic Size replaces Autosize

Pierrick Le Gall on June 12, 2013

As described on previous post, plugin Autosize had too many problems. Anyway the feature of automatic photo size is an excellent one. Plugin Automatic Size is taking over, with a much simpler code (simpler code = less bug).

Plugin Automatic Size is now available for Piwigo 2.4 and 2.5 on Piwigo.com. Considering many users are still blocked on Piwigo 2.4 because they use Autosize, in the coming days we will change the upgrade script for accounts: if Autosize is activated, it will automatically be deactivated and Automatic Size will be activated. This will allow the upgrade to version 2.5.

Plugin Automatic Size needs beta-testers

Pierrick Le Gall on June 6, 2013

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.

New plugin Automatic Size adds an option in the size selection box.

New plugin Birthdate

Pierrick Le Gall on May 15, 2013

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: first step is to add birthdates

Plugin Birthdate: add a birthdate

Plugin Birthdate: on administration side you can see the list of defined birthdates

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

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 Copyrights + Perso Footer replace LMT

Pierrick Le Gall on April 25, 2013

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 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

Create a custom footer on all your pages with Piwigo plugin Perso Footer

Social Buttons replaces Google+1 and TweetThis

Pierrick Le Gall on April 4, 2013

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.

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.

Piwigo 2.5 on Piwigo.com

Pierrick Le Gall on March 7, 2013

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.

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.

For now, discover changes introduced in Piwigo 2.5.

Theme Simple, version 4

Pierrick Le Gall on February 22, 2013

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.

Theme Simple version 3 for Piwigo

On theme Simple version 3, no icon in the top-right corner and previous/next thumbnails are vertically displayed.

Theme Simple version 4 for Piwigo

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).

Icons for theme Simple version 4

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.

Special Gift for Valentine’s Day

Pierrick Le Gall on February 11, 2013

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!

Here is an example of referrer with 6 referred users!

Progress on Piwigo 2.4 updates

Pierrick Le Gall on September 4, 2012

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

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.

Read-only mode is over

Pierrick Le Gall on August 16, 2012

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!

Planned read-only mode

Pierrick Le Gall on August 15, 2012

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.

System upgrade, expected downtime

Pierrick Le Gall on July 23, 2012

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)?

  • New-York-City, USA = midnight
  • London, UK = 5AM
  • Paris, France = 6AM
  • Berlin, Germany = 6AM

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.