And just to add to what John already said -- ttljournal allows you to use images from both public and unlisted galleries (as long as you set External Links to YES).
In order to get to the unlisted gallery images we use the most secure method available to us at this time -- OAuth protocol.
Why is it so secure? It's because:
"[it] allows users to authorize apps or services to use their SmugMug account without having to provide their SmugMug username or password".
What this all means to you? Very simple -- you never have to give us your SmugMug username/password, instead you sign-in to your SmugMug account and authorize ttljournal Read-Only access to your galleries. And if one day you decide that you no longer need ttljournal, you simply sign-in to your SmugMug account and revoke the Read-Only privilege. You have full control.
That's just one aspect of the secure model. The other is already implemented by the great SmugMug API. Here's how -- in order to use it one must request a permission from SmugMug in a form of API Key -- this way SmugMug can always tell who and how touched their data and if they feel the API is not being used the right way they can immediately revoke that permission rendering the external application useless.
And just to add to what John already said -- ttljournal allows you to use images from both public and unlisted galleries (as long as you set External Links to YES).
In order to get to the unlisted gallery images we use the most secure method available to us at this time -- OAuth protocol.
Why is it so secure? It's because:
"[it] allows users to authorize apps or services to use their SmugMug account without having to provide their SmugMug username or password".
What this all means to you? Very simple -- you never have to give us your SmugMug username/password, instead you sign-in to your SmugMug account and authorize ttljournal Read-Only access to your galleries. And if one day you decide that you no longer need ttljournal, you simply sign-in to your SmugMug account and revoke the Read-Only privilege. You have full control.
That's just one aspect of the secure model. The other is already implemented by the great SmugMug API. Here's how -- in order to use it one must request a permission from SmugMug in a form of API Key -- this way SmugMug can always tell who and how touched their data and if they feel the API is not being used the right way they can immediately revoke that permission rendering the external application useless.
All in all -- you are covered on all fronts!
HTH,
- Vitaliy
Thank you (both John and Vitaliy)
Your explanations significantly reduced my angst about trying ttljournal...tried it this morning with positive results!
Will it be possible to integrate the ttljournal application with a keyword search across an individual SmugMug site? I'd love to be able to perform a keyword search across all my galleries capturing, let's say, 100 images all at once. Then using the ttljournal hover/select capability I'd want to select, let's say, just a dozen individual images from the 100 to produce my "best of the best" virtual gallery. Then I'd use the ttljournal arrange tool and caption edit capability that you've already implemented to fine tune the "finished" virtual gallery.
Thanks for checking ttlournal papajay! And I am glad you liked it
And thanks for the cool idea with the keyword search -- yes it's possible and I'll get on working on it
- Vitaliy
That's great news indeed! As long as you're at it (...and fully recognizing the risk of asking for the moon only to end-up with swiss cheese)...
Feature Request #2.
Can virtual galleries made using ttljournal somehow be force-fed into SmugMug's beautiful full screen slideshow? Another WOW! feature, IMHO.
Feature Request #3.
Lastly (is there really EVER at "lastly" when it comes to feature requests?) , can a utility (with the appropriate permissions, of course) be constructed that would allow the SmugMug owner to download the virtual gallery of originals, intact, back to a local hard drive?
The idea here is to enable one to turn virtual files into real files on one's home computer in order to add music, text, custom transitions, etc. using whatever slideshow software he/she might have on the home computer, and then burn a DVD. The finished result could be then played by anyone without a computer, but with a DVD player and a television, monitor, or projector. (Think of the typical funeral home, or church, or retirement home, or assisted living facility...they don't all have computers, but they all have DVD players and televisions or projectors..."old folks" don't get out much, and often don't use computers, BUT LOVE to see PICTURES and SLIDESHOWS).
Feature Request #2.
Can virtual galleries made using ttljournal somehow be force-fed into SmugMug's beautiful full screen slideshow? Another WOW! feature, IMHO.
Feature Request #3.
can a utility (with the appropriate permissions, of course) be constructed that would allow the SmugMug owner to download the virtual gallery of originals, intact, back to a local hard drive?
That's an interesting proposition ... I'll research this further.
Thanks for checking ttlournal papajay! And I am glad you liked it
And thanks for the cool idea with the keyword search -- yes it's possible and I'll get on working on it
- Vitaliy
"Keyword search" functionality has been added! You can now search images by their SmugMug keywords. This functionality relies on ttljournal cache -- we don't contact SmugMug to reduce load on both of our servers.
To get your Images cached and ready for "keyword search" make sure to click on individual Gallery/Album link in the ttljournal "NEW GALLERY" page prior to using the search functionality. If you ever update image Keywords on SmugMug just click "Update Cache" link next to "Cached On" (for that specific Album) and we'll pull all new Keywords from SmugMug.
Thanks for the "keyword search" idea papajay!
- Vitaliy
"Keyword search" functionality has been added! You can now search images by their SmugMug keywords. This functionality relies on ttljournal cache -- we don't contact SmugMug to reduce load on both of our servers.
To get your Images cached and ready for "keyword search" make sure to click on individual Gallery/Album link in the ttljournal "NEW GALLERY" page prior to using the search functionality. If you ever update image Keywords on SmugMug just click "Update Cache" link next to "Cached On" (for that specific Album) and we'll pull all new Keywords from SmugMug.
Thanks for the "keyword search" idea papajay!
- Vitaliy
Impressive!...and in, what??...only two or three DAYS development time?? All I can say is, WOW!! (just wish I'd set all my galleries with the External Links preference set to YES...I've got some cleanup to do now):cry .
Thanks, Vitaliy. Rather remarkable accomplishment, if you ask me. Have wanted this capability for a long time. I certainly look forward to the day when it is totally integrated and seamless within SmugMug (to take advantage of the fullscreen slideshow, etc.).
Impressive!...and in, what??...only two or three DAYS development time?? All I can say is, WOW!! (just wish I'd set all my galleries with the External Links preference set to YES...I've got some cleanup to do now):cry .
Thanks, Vitaliy. Rather remarkable accomplishment, if you ask me. Have wanted this capability for a long time. I certainly look forward to the day when it is totally integrated and seamless within SmugMug (to take advantage of the fullscreen slideshow, etc.).
Thanks papajay! Glad you liked it!
Regarding the integration with SmugMug ... it just occurred to me that we can do this today even though the Virtual Gallery definition is stored on ttljournal. Here's how:
We only need to address two issues here:
1) Allow external links from ttljournal so we can display images on ttljournal while you are building the virtual gallery.
2) Feed Virtual Gallery metadata (list of images and captions) back to SmugMug so you can display the Virtual Gallery on your SmugMug site and enjoy all of the wonderful things SmugMug already offers.
From our side (ttljournal) -- I just talked to my partner and we are all for it , so if SmugMug gurus tell us what format they want us to feed the Virtual Gallery metadata to them we'll do it!
And from SmugMug side they could do the following:
a) adjust their permission logic to allow ttljournal.com to hot link images of those users that have added ttljournal to their permission list in the control panel. This will allow SmugMug users to build Virtual Gallery using images that have external links set to NO.
b) write logic which will allow SmugMug users to create a special kind of gallery where instead of uploading images they'll specify ttljournal's Virtual Gallery ID. Internally, SmugMug will then call our engine's API passing this ID and we'll feed the list of images and their captions to them. Voila! Your ttljournal's Virtual Gallery will be displayed right in your SmugMug site!
This is a 30000ft view of the solution but I think it's very much doable.
Regarding the integration with SmugMug ... it just occurred to me that we can do this today even though the Virtual Gallery definition is stored on ttljournal. Here's how:
We only need to address two issues here:
1) Allow external links from ttljournal so we can display images on ttljournal while you are building the virtual gallery.
2) Feed Virtual Gallery metadata (list of images and captions) back to SmugMug so you can display the Virtual Gallery on your SmugMug site and enjoy all of the wonderful things SmugMug already offers.
From our side (ttljournal) -- I just talked to my partner and we are all for it , so if SmugMug gurus tell us what format they want us to feed the Virtual Gallery metadata to them we'll do it!
And from SmugMug side they could do the following:
a) adjust their permission logic to allow ttljournal.com to hot link images of those users that have added ttljournal to their permission list in the control panel. This will allow SmugMug users to build Virtual Gallery using images that have external links set to NO.
b) write logic which will allow SmugMug users to create a special kind of gallery where instead of uploading images they'll specify ttljournal's Virtual Gallery ID. Internally, SmugMug will then call our engine's API passing this ID and we'll feed the list of images and their captions to them. Voila! Your ttljournal's Virtual Gallery will be displayed right in your SmugMug site!
This is a 30000ft view of the solution but I think it's very much doable.
- Vitaliy
I've been "out of touch" for a few days. This all sounds intriguing. Does Smug communicate with you wrt your bullet points ("yes we can", "no we can't", "yes we will", "no we won't") through Dgrin alone, or do you have another point of contact since you're an authorized API developer?
I've been "out of touch" for a few days. This all sounds intriguing. Does Smug communicate with you wrt your bullet points ("yes we can", "no we can't", "yes we will", "no we won't") through Dgrin alone, or do you have another point of contact since you're an authorized API developer?
papajay,
I have not heard back from anyone at SmugMug regarding this and I have not had any communications with them outside of this forum (which has been one way so far).
SmugMug, we are here (ttljournal) to make it work -- just let us know how . And if it requires to open another communication channel please PM the details.
I have not heard back from anyone at SmugMug regarding this and I have not had any communications with them outside of this forum (which has been one way so far).
SmugMug, we are here (ttljournal) to make it work -- just let us know how . And if it requires to open another communication channel please PM the details.
Regards,
- Vitaliy
I'm hoping (tongue-sorta-in-cheek) that the reason you haven't had anything but a unidirectional communication with Smuggy is that they are busily working on releasing a full-blown Virtual Gallery functionality of their own. .
Since my early results with ttljournal were somewhat hampered by the fact that I did not have all my galleries set to External Links = Yes, I tried to remedy that. I downloaded SmugBrowser so I could mass update my gallery settings, and was able to reset my External Links to YES across my entire site .
But when I returned to ttljournal, updating the cache as described only updates the keyword cache itself, it appears, and does not go back and pick up the fact that the external links setting was changed (therefore, no new searchable keywords were added to the cached results). So while a particular keyword search using Smug search picks up 208 occurrences, the ttljournal search only picks up about 20 or so.
I'm guessing the easiest thing to do would be to open a brand new ttljournal account (which should recognize the external links=YES setting for all of my galleries as of now). Other options?
But when I returned to ttljournal, updating the cache as described only updates the keyword cache itself, it appears, and does not go back and pick up the fact that the external links setting was changed (therefore, no new searchable keywords were added to the cached results). So while a particular keyword search using Smug search picks up 208 occurrences, the ttljournal search only picks up about 20 or so.
I'm guessing the easiest thing to do would be to open a brand new ttljournal account (which should recognize the external links=YES setting for all of my galleries as of now). Other options?
Thanks.
papajay,
We cache the images even if the External Links are set to "NO" -- it's just that they can't be displayed on our pages, but we should be able to find them by key-word search.
You don't have to create new TTLJournal account to update the image cache. I suspect the reason you are not seeing the correct search results is because we haven't cached all of your album images yet.
There are two types of caching we do:
1) album names cache
2) album images cache
The 1) is cached right after you provide us with your smugmug nikname or authorize Read-Only access to your SmugMug account via their control panel.
The 2) is done gradually, every time you click on an album, we cache all of it's images. The reason we don't cache all images from all albums all at once is because SmugMug's API sometimes takes too long to respond. I've seen delays of up to 40 seconds. Imagine if you had 300 albums you'd be waiting for 200 minutes before you could do anything. That's the worse case scenario, but it can happen. And for this reason we only cache images of those albums that you've shown interest in (you clicked on the album at least once through ttljournal "NEW GALLERY" page).
The easy way to find out which album images are cached is to search for some non-existent Key-Word that you know for sure will not return any search results. When that happens, we'll display a list of albums we searched and the time we cached their images.
To reiterate -- to cache album images and enable key-word searching for that particular album just click on the album link at least once in the "NEW GALLERY" page so that the images are displayed in the bottom pane. Once it's done we'll be able to search those images.
If you have some albums who's images are cached and you still can't find them by keywords please give me an example and I'll look into it.
We cache the images even if the External Links are set to "NO" -- it's just that they can't be displayed on our pages, but we should be able to find them by key-word search.
You don't have to create new TTLJournal account to update the image cache. I suspect the reason you are not seeing the correct search results is because we haven't cached all of your album images yet.
There are two types of caching we do:
1) album names cache
2) album images cache
The 1) is cached right after you provide us with your smugmug nikname or authorize Read-Only access to your SmugMug account via their control panel.
The 2) is done gradually, every time you click on an album, we cache all of it's images. The reason we don't cache all images from all albums all at once is because SmugMug's API sometimes takes too long to respond. I've seen delays of up to 40 seconds. Imagine if you had 300 albums you'd be waiting for 200 minutes before you could do anything. That's the worse case scenario, but it can happen. And for this reason we only cache images of those albums that you've shown interest in (you clicked on the album at least once through ttljournal "NEW GALLERY" page).
The easy way to find out which album images are cached is to search for some non-existent Key-Word that you know for sure will not return any search results. When that happens, we'll display a list of albums we searched and the time we cached their images.
To reiterate -- to cache album images and enable key-word searching for that particular album just click on the album link at least once in the "NEW GALLERY" page so that the images are displayed in the bottom pane. Once it's done we'll be able to search those images.
If you have some albums who's images are cached and you still can't find them by keywords please give me an example and I'll look into it.
Please don't hesitate, if you need any help!
Regards,
- Vitaliy
Why do you cache images at all? Why not just generate HTML pages with image links direct from Smugmug?
Why do you cache images at all? Why not just generate HTML pages with image links direct from Smugmug?
The short answer is Scalability and Functionality.
The long one is this:
1) Scalability -- on average, we fetch a set of cached images in 0.03 second, if we were to always get it from SmugMug API instead, that would inhibit our scalability dramatically not to mention we'd be putting unnecessary strain on both of our infrastructures.
2) Functionality -- our functionality has grown beyond the initial "just throw an html page with bunch of images together" idea and it continues to grow thanks to all the feedback I am getting via this forum. It would be impossible to continue this trend if we hadn't designed our data-model in such a way that we have pretty much everything that SmugMug has in terms of image metadata.
For instance, lets take key-word searching -- we deploy a full blown text search on image keywords and I am very confident we do a very good job at it, perhaps better than SmugMug . This would be impossible if we didn't have our local image metadata cache.
The short answer is Scalability and Functionality.
The long one is this:
1) Scalability -- on average, we fetch a set of cached images in 0.03 second, if we were to always get it from SmugMug API instead, that would inhibit our scalability dramatically not to mention we'd be putting unnecessary strain on both of our infrastructures.
2) Functionality -- our functionality has grown beyond the initial "just throw an html page with bunch of images together" idea and it continues to grow thanks to all the feedback I am getting via this forum. It would be impossible to continue this trend if we hadn't designed our data-model in such a way that we have pretty much everything that SmugMug has in terms of image metadata.
For instance, lets take key-word searching -- we deploy a full blown text search on image keywords and I am very confident we do a very good job at it, perhaps better than SmugMug . This would be impossible if we didn't have our local image metadata cache.
HTH,
- Vitaliy
That would explain caching the image URLs and metadata (which I would expect you to do), but not caching the images. You said "caching images" in a previous post. Are you really caching the actual images themselves?
OK, that makes sense. You said "cache images" here which confused me.
Now that I look at it -- it can sure sound confusing, sorry about that, it's a balancing act to write code all day and then try to put what you've done in plain English without using too much tech-jargon
To reiterate for everyone involved -- we only cache information about the images (aka metadata), that includes: image URLs, Keywords, Size, Position and Caption. The images themselves stay securely tucked away at SmugMug . That's why you need to enable External Links in order to view your images on ttljournal page.
To reiterate -- to cache album images and enable key-word searching for that particular album just click on the album link at least once in the "NEW GALLERY" page so that the images are displayed in the bottom pane. Once it's done we'll be able to search those images.
Here's a screen shoot of the "NEW GALLERY" page image pane and details about the metadata cache:
The easy way to find out which album images are cached is to search for some non-existent Key-Word that you know for sure will not return any search results. When that happens, we'll display a list of albums we searched and the time we cached their images.
And here's the screen shoot of what happens when we don't find any search results (we show you a list of all albums who's image-metadata cache we searched):
Here's a screen shoot of the "NEW GALLERY" page image pane and details about the metadata cache:
And here's the screen shoot of what happens when we don't find any search results (we show you a list of all albums who's image-metadata cache we searched):
HTH!
- Vitaliy
Vitaliy...I "clicked" on each of my galleries in TTLJournal as you suggested (a rather laborious process that begs for automation of some sort). The end result appears to have achieved the desired objective...keyword search results/counts in TTLJournal went up significantly.
I'm still a bit fuzzy as to how I'd readily identify a smugmug gallery (or multiple gallieries) I might have inadvertantly forgotten to keyword or update ttl cache, though.
Maybe that should be a question for Smug...with potentially hundreds of galleries, how would one readily identify which ones were lacking keywords without clicking inidividually on each gallery's thumbnail? Can a report of some kind be exported to a csv or xls file showing column headings = gallery; image file #; keyword 1, 2, 3, etc.??? A gallery without keywords would stick out like a sore thumb in an Excel spreadsheet format.
Vitaliy...I "clicked" on each of my galleries in TTLJournal as you suggested (a rather laborious process that begs for automation of some sort). The end result appears to have achieved the desired objective...keyword search results/counts in TTLJournal went up significantly.
papajay,
I now better understand what you are trying to do with VGs and I agree that it would be a huge help for you to have the process of caching image metadata of ALL albums automated. I already have a very good idea of how to make it work -- I'll get on working on it.
I'm still a bit fuzzy as to how I'd readily identify a smugmug gallery (or multiple gallieries) I might have inadvertantly forgotten to keyword or update ttl cache, though.
Once ttljournal's automated caching process is built -- you'll just click a button (even close your browser afterwords) and we'll do all the work in the background -- it'll be transparent to you -- next thing you know all your image metadata is cached and up-to-date with SmugMug.
I now better understand what you are trying to do with VGs and I agree that it would be a huge help for you to have the process of caching image metadata of ALL albums automated. I already have a very good idea of how to make it work -- I'll get on working on it.
Once ttljournal's automated caching process is built -- you'll just click a button (even close your browser afterwords) and we'll do all the work in the background -- it'll be transparent to you -- next thing you know all your image metadata is cached and up-to-date with SmugMug.
- Vitaliy
The "Bulk Caching" feature is done -- just press a button and we'll sync up all of your albums and their image metadata in a matter of minutes which will allow you to utilize our powerful full text search functionality.
Here's how it works:
1) On the NEW GALLERY page Click on "View Cache":
2) The "View Cache" link takes you to "Image Metadata Cache" page where you get a report of all albums for which we have already collected image metadata. Click on "Start Bulk Cache" if you see something is missing:
3) We place your request in the queue and give an option to monitor it's progress by pressing "Refresh Screen" button:
4) Press "Refresh Screen" to get updated progress report (in this case it already completed):
Let me know if you have any issues! Thanks to papajay for this great feature request -- it was a tricky one to implement but I really like how it came out in the end.
Virtual Gallery functionality with TTLJournal works great!
For any of you SmugMuggers/Dgrinners who religiously use keywords for your SmugMug photos, and have pined for virtual gallery functionality, you really ought to try using the API app www.ttljournal.com .
You can use keyword search across your entire SmugMug site (ALL galleries), then:
select from the search results only the photos you want to include in the virtual gallery.
re-caption any or all of the images in the virtual gallery without changing your original SmugMug captions.
You can optionally display or hide your keywords.
You can use your keywords as a reference while re-captioning
re-arrange, if you like, the order of appearance in the virtual gallery.
Add a "story" (or gallery description) for the virtual gallery...again, without having any impact on your SmugMug gallery or galleries.
You can link from the TTLJournal immediately back to an individual photo in your SmugMug gallery (and if you are logged-in on SmugMug at the time, you can edit the photo immediately if you desire, and then go back to the TTLJournal virtual gallery)
The default view in the "Virtual Gallery" is a two-pane display... a single large image that plays as a slide show in one pane, and a scrollable vertical thumbnail view in an adjacent pane.
But you can also mouse-click on the first thumbnail (and then again on the large image) to get a larger version of the single photo against an almost black background. It's not a slideshow view, but you can manually advance through the gallery with the right arrow keys (or the "N" for NEXT and "P" for PREVIOUS keys on you keyboard.
Take it from one very impressed Smugger...this app is already very COOL(and getting better almost on a daily basis!). Here's a sample Virtual Gallery I put together from my site in a matter of a few minutes and with relative ease:
Thanks for the feedback -- I really appreciate it! The following features that you referenced are on the very next to-do list:
- Ability to add more photos to an existing gallery
- Sorting
UPDATE: The above features have been implemented (all on the same screen "Arrange Images"):
We've also added a "Story" feature -- you can now write and attach a story to your Virtual Gallery and we even support Bbcode markup to make it easy for you with the formatting! Here's what it looks like in the "Edit" mode:
Welcome aboard wslam! And please don't hesitate to let us know if you need any help, or if you need any new functionality to make ttljournal more useful to you. You can request for help either via this thread, PM, email to me or we have a new ttljournal support site:
... the comments functionality is the very next on the to-do list.
Apparently the to-do list was getting longer and longer , but finally, the comments functionality is done .
TTLJournal now supports blog-style comments on virtual gallery pages for both gallery and image level.
Some of the cool things we were able to do with comments are these:
1) We don't require your visitors to sign-up for TTLJournal account in order to post a comment on your virtual gallery -- all they have to provide is their name/email (we use their email to pull their gravatar's avatar image)
2) And we think we figured out a way to prevent SPAM without having to annoy your visitors with Captcha.
3) Our comments support BBCode markup and "Smilies"
Thanks again for all the support and encouragement -- it really help us keep going with ttljournal because you think it's valuable!
Comments
Thanks John!
And just to add to what John already said -- ttljournal allows you to use images from both public and unlisted galleries (as long as you set External Links to YES).
In order to get to the unlisted gallery images we use the most secure method available to us at this time -- OAuth protocol.
Why is it so secure? It's because:
read more about it on SmugMug wiki page
What this all means to you? Very simple -- you never have to give us your SmugMug username/password, instead you sign-in to your SmugMug account and authorize ttljournal Read-Only access to your galleries. And if one day you decide that you no longer need ttljournal, you simply sign-in to your SmugMug account and revoke the Read-Only privilege. You have full control.
That's just one aspect of the secure model. The other is already implemented by the great SmugMug API. Here's how -- in order to use it one must request a permission from SmugMug in a form of API Key -- this way SmugMug can always tell who and how touched their data and if they feel the API is not being used the right way they can immediately revoke that permission rendering the external application useless.
All in all -- you are covered on all fronts!
HTH,
- Vitaliy
Thank you (both John and Vitaliy)
Your explanations significantly reduced my angst about trying ttljournal...tried it this morning with positive results!
Will it be possible to integrate the ttljournal application with a keyword search across an individual SmugMug site? I'd love to be able to perform a keyword search across all my galleries capturing, let's say, 100 images all at once. Then using the ttljournal hover/select capability I'd want to select, let's say, just a dozen individual images from the 100 to produce my "best of the best" virtual gallery. Then I'd use the ttljournal arrange tool and caption edit capability that you've already implemented to fine tune the "finished" virtual gallery.
That would be awesome!
And thanks for the cool idea with the keyword search -- yes it's possible and I'll get on working on it
- Vitaliy
That's great news indeed! As long as you're at it (...and fully recognizing the risk of asking for the moon only to end-up with swiss cheese)...
Feature Request #2.
Can virtual galleries made using ttljournal somehow be force-fed into SmugMug's beautiful full screen slideshow? Another WOW! feature, IMHO.
Feature Request #3.
Lastly (is there really EVER at "lastly" when it comes to feature requests?) , can a utility (with the appropriate permissions, of course) be constructed that would allow the SmugMug owner to download the virtual gallery of originals, intact, back to a local hard drive?
The idea here is to enable one to turn virtual files into real files on one's home computer in order to add music, text, custom transitions, etc. using whatever slideshow software he/she might have on the home computer, and then burn a DVD. The finished result could be then played by anyone without a computer, but with a DVD player and a television, monitor, or projector. (Think of the typical funeral home, or church, or retirement home, or assisted living facility...they don't all have computers, but they all have DVD players and televisions or projectors..."old folks" don't get out much, and often don't use computers, BUT LOVE to see PICTURES and SLIDESHOWS).
That's an interesting proposition ... I'll research this further.
Thank you for the suggestions!
- Vitaliy
To get your Images cached and ready for "keyword search" make sure to click on individual Gallery/Album link in the ttljournal "NEW GALLERY" page prior to using the search functionality. If you ever update image Keywords on SmugMug just click "Update Cache" link next to "Cached On" (for that specific Album) and we'll pull all new Keywords from SmugMug.
Thanks for the "keyword search" idea papajay!
- Vitaliy
Impressive!...and in, what??...only two or three DAYS development time??
Thanks, Vitaliy. Rather remarkable accomplishment, if you ask me. Have wanted this capability for a long time. I certainly look forward to the day when it is totally integrated and seamless within SmugMug (to take advantage of the fullscreen slideshow, etc.).
Thanks papajay! Glad you liked it!
Regarding the integration with SmugMug ... it just occurred to me that we can do this today even though the Virtual Gallery definition is stored on ttljournal. Here's how:
We only need to address two issues here:
1) Allow external links from ttljournal so we can display images on ttljournal while you are building the virtual gallery.
2) Feed Virtual Gallery metadata (list of images and captions) back to SmugMug so you can display the Virtual Gallery on your SmugMug site and enjoy all of the wonderful things SmugMug already offers.
From our side (ttljournal) -- I just talked to my partner and we are all for it
And from SmugMug side they could do the following:
a) adjust their permission logic to allow ttljournal.com to hot link images of those users that have added ttljournal to their permission list in the control panel. This will allow SmugMug users to build Virtual Gallery using images that have external links set to NO.
b) write logic which will allow SmugMug users to create a special kind of gallery where instead of uploading images they'll specify ttljournal's Virtual Gallery ID. Internally, SmugMug will then call our engine's API passing this ID and we'll feed the list of images and their captions to them. Voila! Your ttljournal's Virtual Gallery will be displayed right in your SmugMug site!
This is a 30000ft view of the solution but I think it's very much doable.
- Vitaliy
I've been "out of touch" for a few days. This all sounds intriguing. Does Smug communicate with you wrt your bullet points ("yes we can", "no we can't", "yes we will", "no we won't") through Dgrin alone, or do you have another point of contact since you're an authorized API developer?
I have not heard back from anyone at SmugMug regarding this and I have not had any communications with them outside of this forum (which has been one way so far).
SmugMug, we are here (ttljournal) to make it work -- just let us know how
Regards,
- Vitaliy
I'm hoping (tongue-sorta-in-cheek) that the reason you haven't had anything but a unidirectional communication with Smuggy is that they are busily working on releasing a full-blown Virtual Gallery functionality of their own.
Since my early results with ttljournal were somewhat hampered by the fact that I did not have all my galleries set to External Links = Yes, I tried to remedy that. I downloaded SmugBrowser so I could mass update my gallery settings, and was able to reset my External Links to YES across my entire site
But when I returned to ttljournal, updating the cache as described only updates the keyword cache itself, it appears, and does not go back and pick up the fact that the external links setting was changed (therefore, no new searchable keywords were added to the cached results). So while a particular keyword search using Smug search picks up 208 occurrences, the ttljournal search only picks up about 20 or so.
I'm guessing the easiest thing to do would be to open a brand new ttljournal account (which should recognize the external links=YES setting for all of my galleries as of now). Other options?
Thanks.
We cache the images even if the External Links are set to "NO" -- it's just that they can't be displayed on our pages, but we should be able to find them by key-word search.
You don't have to create new TTLJournal account to update the image cache. I suspect the reason you are not seeing the correct search results is because we haven't cached all of your album images yet.
There are two types of caching we do:
1) album names cache
2) album images cache
The 1) is cached right after you provide us with your smugmug nikname or authorize Read-Only access to your SmugMug account via their control panel.
The 2) is done gradually, every time you click on an album, we cache all of it's images. The reason we don't cache all images from all albums all at once is because SmugMug's API sometimes takes too long to respond. I've seen delays of up to 40 seconds. Imagine if you had 300 albums you'd be waiting for 200 minutes before you could do anything. That's the worse case scenario, but it can happen. And for this reason we only cache images of those albums that you've shown interest in (you clicked on the album at least once through ttljournal "NEW GALLERY" page).
The easy way to find out which album images are cached is to search for some non-existent Key-Word that you know for sure will not return any search results. When that happens, we'll display a list of albums we searched and the time we cached their images.
To reiterate -- to cache album images and enable key-word searching for that particular album just click on the album link at least once in the "NEW GALLERY" page so that the images are displayed in the bottom pane. Once it's done we'll be able to search those images.
If you have some albums who's images are cached and you still can't find them by keywords please give me an example and I'll look into it.
Please don't hesitate, if you need any help!
Regards,
- Vitaliy
Why do you cache images at all? Why not just generate HTML pages with image links direct from Smugmug?
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The short answer is Scalability and Functionality.
The long one is this:
1) Scalability -- on average, we fetch a set of cached images in 0.03 second, if we were to always get it from SmugMug API instead, that would inhibit our scalability dramatically not to mention we'd be putting unnecessary strain on both of our infrastructures.
2) Functionality -- our functionality has grown beyond the initial "just throw an html page with bunch of images together" idea and it continues to grow thanks to all the feedback I am getting via this forum. It would be impossible to continue this trend if we hadn't designed our data-model in such a way that we have pretty much everything that SmugMug has in terms of image metadata.
For instance, lets take key-word searching -- we deploy a full blown text search on image keywords and I am very confident we do a very good job at it, perhaps better than SmugMug
HTH,
- Vitaliy
That would explain caching the image URLs and metadata (which I would expect you to do), but not caching the images. You said "caching images" in a previous post. Are you really caching the actual images themselves?
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To reiterate for everyone involved -- we only cache information about the images (aka metadata), that includes: image URLs, Keywords, Size, Position and Caption. The images themselves stay securely tucked away at SmugMug
HTH,
- Vitaliy
And here's the screen shoot of what happens when we don't find any search results (we show you a list of all albums who's image-metadata cache we searched):
HTH!
- Vitaliy
Vitaliy...I "clicked" on each of my galleries in TTLJournal as you suggested (a rather laborious process that begs for automation of some sort). The end result appears to have achieved the desired objective...keyword search results/counts in TTLJournal went up significantly.
I'm still a bit fuzzy as to how I'd readily identify a smugmug gallery (or multiple gallieries) I might have inadvertantly forgotten to keyword or update ttl cache, though.
Maybe that should be a question for Smug...with potentially hundreds of galleries, how would one readily identify which ones were lacking keywords without clicking inidividually on each gallery's thumbnail? Can a report of some kind be exported to a csv or xls file showing column headings = gallery; image file #; keyword 1, 2, 3, etc.??? A gallery without keywords would stick out like a sore thumb in an Excel spreadsheet format.
I now better understand what you are trying to do with VGs and I agree that it would be a huge help for you to have the process of caching image metadata of ALL albums automated. I already have a very good idea of how to make it work -- I'll get on working on it.
Once ttljournal's automated caching process is built -- you'll just click a button (even close your browser afterwords) and we'll do all the work in the background -- it'll be transparent to you -- next thing you know all your image metadata is cached and up-to-date with SmugMug.
- Vitaliy
Sorry: SmugMug API Error (5) for method smugmug.images.get: system error (Error Code: 5) (PHPSmug Code: 5)
What does that mean?
Sorry about that wslam -- it should be fixed now. You are the first ttljournal user to blow past the 1000 albums mark! Glad to have you on board!
Welcome and let us know if you need any help!
Regards,
- Vitaliy
The "Bulk Caching" feature is done -- just press a button and we'll sync up all of your albums and their image metadata in a matter of minutes which will allow you to utilize our powerful full text search functionality.
Here's how it works:
1) On the NEW GALLERY page Click on "View Cache":
2) The "View Cache" link takes you to "Image Metadata Cache" page where you get a report of all albums for which we have already collected image metadata. Click on "Start Bulk Cache" if you see something is missing:
3) We place your request in the queue and give an option to monitor it's progress by pressing "Refresh Screen" button:
4) Press "Refresh Screen" to get updated progress report (in this case it already completed):
Let me know if you have any issues! Thanks to papajay for this great feature request -- it was a tricky one to implement but I really like how it came out in the end.
PS: For security considerations the "Bulk Cache" functionality is limited to SmugMug users which were created using ttljournal's "Private Option" (aka OAuth protocol).
For any of you SmugMuggers/Dgrinners who religiously use keywords for your SmugMug photos, and have pined for virtual gallery functionality, you really ought to try using the API app www.ttljournal.com .
You can use keyword search across your entire SmugMug site (ALL galleries), then:
- select from the search results only the photos you want to include in the virtual gallery.
- re-caption any or all of the images in the virtual gallery without changing your original SmugMug captions.
- You can optionally display or hide your keywords.
- You can use your keywords as a reference while re-captioning
- re-arrange, if you like, the order of appearance in the virtual gallery.
- Add a "story" (or gallery description) for the virtual gallery...again, without having any impact on your SmugMug gallery or galleries.
- You can link from the TTLJournal immediately back to an individual photo in your SmugMug gallery (and if you are logged-in on SmugMug at the time, you can edit the photo immediately if you desire, and then go back to the TTLJournal virtual gallery)
The default view in the "Virtual Gallery" is a two-pane display... a single large image that plays as a slide show in one pane, and a scrollable vertical thumbnail view in an adjacent pane.But you can also mouse-click on the first thumbnail (and then again on the large image) to get a larger version of the single photo against an almost black background. It's not a slideshow view, but you can manually advance through the gallery with the right arrow keys (or the "N" for NEXT and "P" for PREVIOUS keys on you keyboard.
Take it from one very impressed Smugger...this app is already very COOL(and getting better almost on a daily basis!).
http://www.ttljournal.com/g/2028-first-and-foremost.html
We've also added a "Story" feature -- you can now write and attach a story to your Virtual Gallery and we even support Bbcode markup to make it easy for you with the formatting! Here's what it looks like in the "Edit" mode:
and the finished "story" is here
haha really?! I do have 113GB on Smugmug!
Apparently the to-do list was getting longer and longer
TTLJournal now supports blog-style comments on virtual gallery pages for both gallery and image level.
Some of the cool things we were able to do with comments are these:
1) We don't require your visitors to sign-up for TTLJournal account in order to post a comment on your virtual gallery -- all they have to provide is their name/email (we use their email to pull their gravatar's avatar image)
2) And we think we figured out a way to prevent SPAM without having to annoy your visitors with Captcha.
3) Our comments support BBCode markup and "Smilies"
Thanks again for all the support and encouragement -- it really help us keep going with ttljournal because you think it's valuable!