Hello all,

I have a client who wants to be able to have a separate proofing area that only shows the proof albums that are password protected without showing the non-protected albums. This way a client can select his/her album from the proofing section and then enter the password to view it.

Ideally, she would also prefer that the proof albums be hidden in the main gallery.

I think the filtering of the albums could probably be done with an if-else statement (to check whether the album is password-protected or not), but I'm not sure where to try that or what functions to call in it.

Has anyone else found an efficient solution for this that doesn't require modification of core files? Thanks in advance for your time and assistance!

VH

Two possibilities:

1. Make two toplevel albums where one contains the protected albums and one the unprotected.
2. Use tags for the protected and unprotected albums and create two dynamic albums where one contains the protected albums and one the unprotected ones.

Info about dynamic albums: http://www.zenphoto.org/2008/09/how-to-use-the-dynamic-albums-feature/

I just wanted to add to the questions, if you create one of these dynamic albums, with lets say the tag "mountain" and in there are 10 photos. Are new photos going to be added to that folder if they are tagged as well with the tag "mountain" later on.

Even easier, tag the album itself and not the images!

well lets say Landscape Photos are spread around the gallery, say more then one user has a landscape folder in his own folder. Would that work?

If the these albums or the images are tagged with one unique tag that you want to sort I thinks so since that album is dynamic. Please just try a little around, we of course do not test all possibilities ourselves..:-)

That seems easy enough. I'll give the dynamic albums a try and report back if I have any issues.

Thanks for your help Acrylian!

Okay, I tagged each current album with either "portfolio" or "proofs." I then did the searches and created a dynamic album for each one. However, when I am not logged in, the dynamic album "Client Proofs" will not display the albums that have passwords. To see them, I must log in.

Here's an abridged version of how I envision the user's flow:

1.) User arrives at site.

2.) When user clicks on "Galleries" link in main navigation, the Portfolio dynamic album (the one that contains the unprotected albums) is displayed.
a.) User selects portfolio album he/she wants to view.

3.) When user clicks on "Proofing" link in main navigation, the Client Proofs dynamic album (the one with the password-protected albums) is displayed.
a.) User selects his/her proof album by scanning for his/her name on the album.

Is it possible to have the Client Proofs dynamic album show the albums (even when not logged in) but with the lock image?

The way you describe it you actually don't need dynamic albums at all. You could just have a top level album for the portfolio and the proofing. Within the proofing one normal protected albums then would be. That should work.

I am not sure if that works and why that does not work. Sure that the protected albums are published? Dynamic albums are a complicated matter and I actually haven't tried that. Maybe you found a bug, but sadly sbillard who is the architect of that feature and will know more details than me is absent for about a week.

Thanks for your reply acrylian.

I can definitely set it up the way you just described. My only concern would be how to make sure that the albums added by my client through the admin interface will be displayed in the correct place on the front-end.

With the dynamic albums, I was going to have her tag each album with either "proofs" or "portfolio" and, to my understanding, the new albums would automatically be added to the respective dynamic album.

Wait, I think I just figured it out. I guess instead of having her tag the albums, I should just have her add the new albums as sub-albums of either "portfolio" or "proofs," right?

Yes, far more hassle free and probably not harder to teach than tagging...:-)

Thanks for your help!