Virtual albums via tagArchive page, printAllTagsAsThumbs

marcov

I'd like to modify the archive.php file to display a thumb along with the tag itself and I am looking for any ideas/pointers on how I might do this.

The reason for this is so that I can create virtual, tag-based albums, that pull together images from the various albums into theme-based albums. In a way, this capability is already present in the tag archive, except the archive does not display a thumb along with each tag.

So all I need to do is remove the dated archive part and somehow get a thumb image to associate with each tag.

I figure one way way to do this would be to modify the archive.php file and create a tagarchive.php page then and modify the printAllTags template function to create a new one - printAllTagsAsThumbs. The tagarchive.php page would display all tags as thumbs with the tag name under the thumb.

The next step would be to get a thumb for each tag, either as a random image for that tag, or the last image with that tag. This is the essential part and I do not yet see a way to do it.

I am not a php coder but I'd like to give it a try. I will post the result if it works out ok.

acrylian

Do you know about the dynamic album feature that lets you create albums from searches and therefore also from tags?

marcov

Yes, I know about the searches and the tags but I don't know though how can I create a "virtual album" page consisting of thumbs for all the tags. What I want to do is display a "virtual gallery" that pulls images from various galleries, based on all the tags I have.
Then, when I click on the tag/thumb, I get the page consisting of ALL the thumbs for the given tag, then I can browse them. I know I can get the same thing indirectly, via the archive and its search links, but it is not the same as giving a page already loaded with all the tags and their thumbs.

I am just trying to be a bit more creative, instead of having the traditional textual tag cloud, I want to also have a tag/thumb cloud, so to speak.

Once I figure this part out, I can do a similar page for the dated archive: one page per year, one thumb per month, sort of like a photo calendar.

sbillard

You need to create a two tier set of dynamic albums.

The lower tier would be a dynamic album for each tag. Tag these albums with a unique identifier--say 'thumbAlbum'.

Then for the top tier create a dynamic album from the search on 'thumbAlbum'. This will give you an album of the dynamic albums.

marcov

I guess the easiest, albeit not too elegant, way to do it is to hard code the tag search link and thumb for each tag in a page, then add a new entry in the template page each time I create a new tag. That would solve the problem, in a way.