SimpleViewer is a free, customizable Flash image viewing application. SimpleViewer is supported on all Doteasy web hosting plans, including the Doteasy $0 Hosting.

Doteasy Installation Tutorial

A client emailed us the other day asking if there is a way to have SimpleViewer as his website with navigation for the individual photo albums he has uploaded to his website.

Can this be done? Yes.

There are actually a few ways of doing it.

Using a Menu Page Link

One way is to create a menu page link on all albums’ index.html page. Example

This is done by adding the following lines directly before the <div id="flashcontent"> tag on the index.html files:

<div id="header" > <a href="../gallery1/index.html">Gallery 1</a> | <a href="../gallery2/index.html">Gallery 2</a> </div>

Note that if you want the menu page link to show up on all your albums, you will need to add the code on all of the index.html files.

This also means that if you add new albums to your website later on, you will need to manually update the links in each and every index.html file.

Using a Menu Gallery

Another way is to create a SimpleViewer menu gallery and insert <A> tags in the caption to link to individual albums. You will get this:

What did we do?

1. Create individual albums as you normally would.


2. Create a menu gallery as you would for a normal photo album. This menu gallery includes one image from each of the individual albums.


3. Open the gallery.xml file and edit the <caption> lines:
   
   <caption><![CDATA[Description/Gallery Name<br>Click <A href="../galleryname" target="_blank"><u>here</u></A> to view this gallery]]></caption>


4. Upload the contents of this menu gallery album directly to the root directory on the server and test the links by visiting your website.

* Caption text can include a limited set of HTML formatting, including hyperlinks, line breaks, font tags, bold, underline and italics. However, you must wrap HTML formatted text inside a CDATA tag, <![CDATA[....]]>, like the one above.

To add more albums later on, all you need to do is update this menu gallery with the new image and caption.

For more SimpleViewer customization how-to’s: http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/faq.html

Joomla! is a free web content management application. Some people find Joomla! difficult to learn and many have given up to try something else. But the truth is, Joomla is not that difficult once the concepts are grasped.

The easiest way to learn Joomla! is to go through the admin area, item by item, and play with it until you start seeing how everything relates and how to get things set up.

Install Joomla: Doteasy installation tutorial

1. Design your website - Content

To save headaches later on, I strongly recommended spending some time planning the content you want to display and what you want to achieve with your website before you get your hands dirty with Joomla. Do you want a blog? Photo gallery? Forum? Shopping Cart?

2. Joomla! Extensions

Extensions are elements (or applications) that will help you display your content on your website.

There are thousands of extensions available for Joomla!, from blog to gallery, shopping carts, forums and more. Extensions come in three different types: components, modules and plugins (or mambots).

Components are core elements that make up the functionality of your website. Components are linked using menu(s) and are displayed in the main body of your website. Examples include blog, gallery, etc.

Modules are small display items with content that can be displayed anywhere your template permits. Examples include Main Menu, Hit Counter, Polls, etc.

Plugins/Mambots are small, task-oriented functions that add extra functionality to a component. For example, you can use an image viewer plugin to display pictures within your blog entry on Joomla.

Browse the Joomla! Extensions Directory

Use the Joomla installer to install extensions. You do not have to unzip the files prior to uploading, the Joomla installer will take care of all that for you.

3. Joomla! Themes

The standard Joomla installation comes with a couple default themes. If you want something different, you can check out these Joomla theme sites:

• GavickPro
• YouJoomla
• JoomlaArt
• Joomla-Themes.co.uk
• JoomlaShack
• Joomla24
• OSSkins.com
• ThemeBase

4. Find your Module Positions

Now that you have decided on a theme and you have uploaded all the extensions you need, your next step is to place the modules on the website. To do so, you will need to know where each module position is.

There are two ways to find the module positions:

a) One is using the code index.php?tp=1 right after your Joomla URL. If you have installed Joomla in the root directory: http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?tp=1

b) The second way is to use the “Site -> Preview -> Inline with Positions” function in the admin area.

This will give you a screen with all the module positions laid out with the module numbers and names.

Once you have the positions figured out, you can start placing the modules on the positions you want them to be, moving them around until they fit your needs.

More information

General/Beginners Guide
Quick Start: Joomla! v.1.0
Quick Start: Joomla! v 1.5

If you need an email form for your website, you will find a couple suggestions on the Doteasy website:

Doteasy Web Tools
HiQFormMail

There is another simple email form you can check out - MicroContact Form.

You will need to signup with the developer to download the script. However, signup is free.

The script consists of 3 files: microContact.php, style.css and icon.gif

Basic Customization

1. Define your email address

2. Customize the HTML portion

Advanced Customization: Adding more fields (require basic PHP knowledge)

Say you want to add two new fields to the form: contact phone number.

1. Add and define the new error messages:

2. Add new field to the form:

3. Edit the function sendMail to include the new entity

4. Add the following.

Customizing the Appearance

1. Style.css - If you want to change the appearance of the form, you will need to do so via the style.css file.
2. HTML - If you want to add more content to the form page itself, you will need to do so via the HTML portion of the microContact.php file.

Uploading/Installation

Once you have made all the customizations, upload the entire folder onto the server. You can rename the file microContact.php to contact.php or any filename you wish to use.

Coppermine Photo Gallery is a web picture gallery script written in PHP using GD or ImageMagick with a MySQL backend. If you are new to an online photo gallery, Coppermine is a good place to start. It is easy to set-up, easy to manage and feature-rich. Features include template and user management, password-protected albums, automatic thumbnail creation, film strip, e-card feature, full multimedia support, integration with other forum and content management systems, multi-lingual, and more.

However, if you simply want a fast way to show off a handful of photos you took on your last vacation, you might find Coppermine a little over-kill. Some users also find it difficult to customize the gallery layout.

Doteasy Demo: http://doteasydemo.com/coppermine
Official Website: http://coppermine-gallery.net/

Install the script

You can follow the Doteasy installation tutorial: Doteasy Scripts Library

Themes

Coppermine comes with several pre-made themes and changing a theme is quite easy.

1. Login to Coppermine as admin and click on the Themes Settings tab.
2. From the Theme drop-down menu, select the theme you want to use.

You can also download themes from the SiteGround Design Team.

To add a new theme:

1. Download the theme files.
2. Unzip the files and then using a FTP client, upload them to the themes directory in your Coppermine.
3. Login to Coppermine as admin and click on the Themes Settings tab.
4. From the Theme drop-down menu, select the theme you want to use.

Integration using the Bridge Manager:

Coppermine can be integrated with other applications in terms of user management. This is called "bridging". It creates a more seamless end user experience, as your users will only have to register once and their login information will work on both Coppermine as well as the application you bridge with, ie. phpBB.

The Bridge Manager is a new feature in Coppermine version 1.4, it is not available in older versions.

You can use the Bridge Manager to integrate Coppermine with InvisionBoard, MyBB, Phorum, phpBB, Punbb, Simple Machines Forum, vBulletin and Xoops.

Demo: Integrating Coppermine with phpBB

For more information Integration instructions from Coppermine

Note:

1. You must have the application you want to bridge Coppermine with already installed on your webserver, it has to be properly configured and must be up-and-running.
2. Bridging does not integrate your gallery and the application you bridge in terms of visual appearance. This means, if you want a seamless visual integration, you will need to create a custom theme for your gallery that matches the look of the bridge application.

Creating a custom theme
Theme Upgrade documentation

Integrate Coppermine with Wordpress and Joomla/Mambo

There are currently no bridge files for integrating Coppermine with WordPress or with Joomla/Mambo. However, there are a few WordPress plugins that allow you to "fetch" pictures from your Coppermine, and there is a way to work around the Joomla/Mambo integration.

WordPress

• to create a Flickr-like badge
• to display a random picture in sidebar

Joomla/Mambo

Workaround: Integrate Simple Machines with Joomla/Mambo and then integrate Coppermine with Simple Machines.

For more information: Tutorial from Siteground.com

Additional Resources:

FAQ
Documentation
Tutorials
Forum

BoastMachine is a blog application. It is written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database.

Doteasy Demo
BoastMachine Official Website

Use it because:

1. lightweight, simple and easy-to-use
2. multiple blogs and user registration
3. built-in Shoutbox
4. built-in backup/restore
5. you do not need subcategories, plugins or other fancy stuff

Installing the script:

1. Download the BoastMachine script download
2. Install the script. tutorial
   Important: Pay attention to the file permissions in steps 4 and 6!

Customizing the blog:

BoastMachine has several ready-to-go themes available for download. download

After you have downloaded the theme files,

1. Unzip and upload the files to the templates folder in the BoastMachine directory on your FTP account
2. Login to your BoastMachine admin area and activate the theme via Admin > Themes

Customizing the theme:

Customizations are done by tweaking the theme's CSS and PHP files, using the "Template Editor" function in the admin area.

More information on the template files: http://boastology.com/docs/templates

For example, to add the built-in Shoutbox to the blog sidebar:

1. Open the side_menu.php file
2. Add the following lins to where you want the shoutbox to appear:

<div class="menu_item">
   <?php bmc_ShoutBox(); ?>
</div>

And if you want to change the appearance of the shoutbox, you will need to do so via the shoutbox.css file.

Language Packs

BoastMachine offers over 12 different language packs. download

Once you have downloaded and unzipped the file(s), upload them to the /bmc/inc/lang folder in the BoastMachine directory on your FTP server.

Spice it up with Mods!

There are many mods to choose from, from social networking to image gallery. more info

Once you have downloaded and unzipped the file(s), upload them to the BoastMachine directory on your FTP server as per the instructions in the ReadMe.txt file that comes with the mod.

Demo: Coppermine Photo Gallery mod

http://doteasydemo.com/bmachine/mygallery/

Before you begin, you will need to install Coppermine Photo Gallery on to your account on your account. tutorial

Then, after you have installed Coppermine:

1. Download the BoastMachine Coppermine mod. download
2. Open the /bmachine/mygallery/index.php file using a text editor and change the "$path_to_coppermine" and "$gallery_title".

• Change "/gallery" to the directory where you have installed your Coppermine Photo Gallery (the actual application, not the mod files)
• Change the title of the gallery to anything you want

Additional resources:

• BoastMachine's How-To's
• CSS Tutorial from W3Schools