Piwigo 15 release: what’s new?

Claire Michard on November 19, 2024

You won’t have missed it: Piwigo version 15 was released on October 22, 2024, and is now deployed on all piwigo.com accounts! Improved user management, system activities, overhauled batch management: this article reviews the main new features of this version.

Table of contents

User management: lots of new features for administrators

We know that some of you manage hundreds of users in your Piwigo. Sometimes you need to create new users on a regular basis, or manage users who create their account from your web gallery. With Piwigo 15, we’ve thought of you and made some major improvements to user management. We hope you enjoy it.

Sort users by name or creation date

It’s something many of you have been waiting for, especially if you manage many users in your Piwigo: with one click, you can now sort the list of users by name or creation date, in ascending or descending order, by clicking on the column heading.

New user creation window

Previously, when you had to create a user in administration, you had no access to any options for customizing his account: you then had to modify the user to change his status, his confidentiality level, assign him a group…

Now you can do all this in one go in the user creation window.

New password policy

Until now, when creating a new user, you had to generate their password, which was sent to them by email. We’ve completely changed this process to a more standard and secure system.

With Piwigo 15, once a user has been created, an email is automatically sent to them with a link to create their password before their first connection. If Piwigo ever fails to send the email (yes, this communication channel is far from 100% reliable), an administrator can regenerate a password initialization link and send it to the user by any means. And it is still possible for the administrator to choose another user’s password.

Redesign of the user modification window

The user modification form gets a new design. Clearer, simpler, easier for plugins to add features thanks to tabs.

Ability to change the main Piwigo user

You can now change Piwigo’s main user from the administration. Until now, the only way was to edit the ‘webmaster_id’ parameter in the local configuration. Only one webmaster can be chosen as the main user. It is represented in the list by a crown-shaped icon.

Improved filters in the user list

In the user list, the number of users corresponding to a filter is now displayed, and filters without results are deactivated.

New feature: system activities

Users with webmaster status will see a new tab appear in Piwigo’s Maintenance menu: the System Activities tab. A useful screen for monitoring all “technical” activities on your Piwigo: plugin installation, updates, maintenance operations…

Batch management: what’s new

Batch management unit mode redesign

Are you familiar with the batch manager, which lets you make mass modifications to a selection of files in your Piwigo? Then you probably know the “unit mode” option: a tab that lets you edit the information on each file in your selection independently.

We have completely redesigned this screen to improve its design and ergonomics.

More room for the image, optimized space, more information and actions available for each photo… And what’s more, active filters are kept at the top of the screen and can be modified at any time.

Batch manager unit mode in Piwigo 14
Batch manager unit mode in Piwigo 15

Assign a selection to several albums at once

With batch management, you can now associate your photo selection with several albums in a single action.

New PDF reader

With Piwigo 15, PDF files will open directly in your gallery, using your browser’s PDF reader. For the moment, this only works on the Modus and Bootstrap Darkoom themes.

New search engine features

New filters are available in the gallery search engine. You can now filter photos by rating, file size, ratio (portrait, landscape, square), height, width and creation date.

If you filter photos by date of creation, you can now choose a custom date range, which can be a year, a month, a day, or a combination of all three. Smart icons help you define the right filters.

The search engine has also been significantly improved. You can now change the value of a filter at any time, without having to start a new search.

For example, if you have already applied the filter “Added by: John” filter, you can replace the selection with ”Added by: Paul”. And if you have another filter active, such as “File format: MP4”, you’ll only see users who have added MP4 files in the “Added by” filter. It’s a real step forward in terms of user experience, and we hope you enjoy it.

Other Piwigo 15 news

  • The album selection tool has been improved, making it much quicker and easier to associate a photo with several albums. And you can do it right from the add photos page.
  • Optimized album list: the album manager loads in milliseconds, regardless of the number of albums in your Piwigo.
  • The album search function is available directly in the album list, without having to go to a dedicated tab.
  • More details on each new feature in the Piwigo 15 release note.

So, what do you think? We hope you like all these new features!

How to organize team work with Piwigo?

Claire Michard on November 16, 2021

team work piwigo user management

Over the years, Piwigo has integrated many features that allow you to collaborate with your team or partners, in an efficient and secure way. However, some of these features are still unknown to our customers! That’s why we have decided to focus on user management in this article.

Read More

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!