Hi acrylian,
Thank you very much for your answer. I don't blame you for not remembering about this old version...
I suppose that your proposed plugin might be too much for my purpose. The gallery can be accessed by logged in users only and upload of image and creating albums is restricted to admins.
It was charming to avoid the user-IP and using their ID instead.
Therefore I intend not to work with
$ip = getUserIP();
but with
$ip = sanitize($_SESSION['GalleryUser'], 0);
as well in the rating.php and the update.php as well.
var_dump($ip) shows that the user-ID is existing but it seems that the update.php doesn't get it.
Whereas the original database entry (including IP) looks like
a:1:{s:14:"XX.YYY.ZZZ.193";i:5;}
my actual entry (trying to use the user-ID) looks like
a:1:{s:0:"";i:5;}
Any help would really much appreciated as the gallery is really amazing and most welcome in my forum.