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Offline Between Sept 25th and October 11th

Please note that between the 25th of September and the 11th of October, I will be on vacation and generally not in a position to respond to e-mail enquiries and forum postings. I will be periodically checking my incoming e-mails for new purchases and hope to be able to respond to messages within 24-48 hours but I can't guarantee this.

Pixaria 2.7.2 Now Available

I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of Pixaria Gallery version 2.7.2 which although largely a maintenance release, adds a couple of much requested changes including simpler navigation in the admin area and the return of the database export/backup utility.

I've also tweaked the front end language selection menu so that the current language is shown using a flag icon in the navigation toolbar. This makes it easier for users to pick an alternative language if they don't understand the default user interface language.

The update is available free to all registered users of Pixaria Gallery 2.0 and above by e-mailing info@pixaria.com. Full details of the changes in this update can be found in the change log and notes.

Pixaria 2.7.1 Now Available

Just a quick posting to let everyone know that Pixaria Gallery 2.7.1 is now available. This update includes a couple of new features the most important of which is that front end users can now pick their preferred user interface language from available Pixaria localisations. This new feature can be enabled by site administrators from the General Settings control panel under the languages tab.

The update also includes a number of minor tweaks and bug fixes for which big thanks go to Matthias Zehnder for help with identifying issues, submitting bug reports and creating patches.

Full details of all the changes in this update can be found in the release notes and file change log. As usual, all registered users of Pixaria Gallery can obtain a free copy of the new version by e-mailing info@pixaria.com.

How to Keep WordPress Secure

Over at WordPress.com Matt Mullenweg discusses the recent and still ongoing worm attack on WordPress blogs all around the web.

His point here is a simple one, upgrading can be a pain but fixing a broken site is far, far more difficult. The take home message for Pixaria users is the same, always keep an eye out for security notices about Pixaria and upgrade when an announcement is made in the blog.

Roadmap for Customisation

As I mentioned in my article about managing expectations yesterday, my primary goal for Pixaria Gallery 3.0 is better customisability. For different people, this term has different meanings so I think it's helpful to explain what customisability means when discussing web application package such as Pixaria Gallery.

From a programmer's perspective, the simplest way of providing customisability for a PHP script like Pixaria is to provide support for themes by using a template engine. In the case of Pixaria, I made a decision a few years back to use the third party Smarty library which has the advantage of separating PHP from HTML and makes doing customisations a little simpler for people who don't know how to write PHP code. In this way, the various template files used to create the user interface of the Pixaria software can be packaged up into distinct themes which the user can modify to customise the appearance of the software.

A more complex approach (for the software developer) is to provide support for non-programmatic customisation by making as many appearance and user interface options as possible into settings that can be modified in the administration controls.

From an end user perspective, the benefits of this second approach are massive as most common types of modifications such as changing fonts and colours can then be done without having to know any CSS or HTML. The difficulty with this approach however is that making a user interface customisable in the admin area has the potential to make customisation more complicated for people who prefer to work directly on the software code.

The problem then is how to balance the needs of non technical users who don't know how to (or simply don't want to) modify code and those who demand absolute flexibility to modify every aspect of their site's appearance and behaviour. Solving this question is one of my main goals for Pixaria Gallery 3.0 and which is where I hope to finally achieve a number of things that until now have not worked out quite as planned.

The four key goals for Pixaria Gallery 3.0 will be:

1. Provide more than one theme for users.
2. Provide the capability to edit selected fonts, colours and images in the admin controls.
3. Make the front-end style sheet (CSS) as simple as it can possibly be without sacrificing functionality.
4. Maintain backwards compatibility.

To tackle these design goals, the front end user interface in Pixaria Gallery 3.0 will be based on two superficially identical themes one of which will support customisation in the admin area and the other of which will not. By separating the theme which can be customised in the admin controls from the one that cannot, it should be possible to satisfy the requirements of both technically capable users and those with limited experience with CSS, HTML and the rest.

At the same as this work is done, I will also be taking the opportunity to rewrite much of the HTML and all of the CSS for the front end to make it simpler. As is often the way, Pixaria has accumulated its fair share of old and hard to maintain code over the years and it's well overdue a clean up to get rid of this.

I hope that the work I will be doing to make theming, customisation and appearance modifications simpler means that people will be keen to make use of the planned capabilities but I recognise there can be a significant amount of work involved in this and so I will be aiming for the ambitious goal of full backwards compatibility with existing themes where possible.

As always, I welcome feedback on these ideas but at the present time, it's important to note that my main priorities are the store improvements planned for versions 2.8 and 2.9.

Managing expectations

As the only person working on Pixaria it can be a difficult job to manage the expectations of people used to working with products created by software companies with big development budgets and large teams. With an ever growing installed base of users, the number of requests I receive for changes and new features is also increasing and it can be hard to manage people's expectations in relation to Pixaria's ongoing development.

Since Pixaria was created the stock photography market has changed quite significantly. Sites like iStockPhoto and Getty Images have continued to grab market share and a wealth of new micro-stock sites have increased competition still more. With all of this activity, there is an increasing amount of pressure on me to improve Pixaria to make it easier for independent photographers to operate independently and still make some money. The key to this is Pixaria's e-commerce capabilities and this area is the one where I get the most requests (and even demands) for progression of features and capabilities.

For the lay person, the practicalities of selling images and other products may appear to be quite simple but the reality is far removed from this because of the sheer variety of ways in which online transactions can take place. To illustrate the point, let's consider payment gateways.

In the last 12 months, I've had a large number of requests for the addition of new payment gateways to Pixaria to expand on the 2Checkout and PayPal support which is already included. Adding payment gateways would be an obvious way to increase the number of potential users of Pixaria but there are many technical issues which make this less simple than it would appear at face value.

The first big hurdle is that majority of payment gateways operate only in one or two countries such as iDEAL which is based in the Netherlands or Authorize.net which is US only. In some cases, gateways cannot easily be tested by users outside their country of origin and in others, the language barrier and lack of available documentation makes implementation impractical. In the case of Google Checkout, a popular request, the Pixaria website must have an SSL security certificate for 'https' transactions which means increased complexity in the set up process for the site administrator and more things to go wrong once it's up and running.

At the same time as requests are coming in for additional payment gateways, I also get frequent requests for other e-commerce features all of which have their own issues and questions to be resolved. These include features such as coupons, vouchers, payment credits, multiple tax rates, physical products, per gallery pricing, per user pricing, multiple image download sizes and region based taxes among many others.

Some of these which appear quite simple such as coupons are in fact quite complex. In implementing coupons, it's necessary to consider such factors as how many times a coupon can be used, whether or not coupons have an expiry date, when should the discount be applied (at checkout or while still in the cart), what happens if a user applies the coupon code but never completes the purchase, what happens in the event of a refund and many other minor implementation details. The simple solution to this would be not to try and implement all of the details and advanced features at once but this can backfire when I implement a basic version of something prompting complaints that it's too simple and doesn't include the level of fine control they require.

All of this brings be back to the beginning which is my ongoing goal to manage everyone's expectations. The reality continues to be that Pixaria Gallery is something I work on on my own and in my spare time. As much as I'd love to devote more time to working on it, I simply cannot while I have a day job to look after as well. Because of this, I think it's important to reiterate my commitment to ongoing development and improvement of Pixaria Gallery but also that I can't do everything at once.

The development pipeline for the next three 'point' releases of Pixaria has been devised with this in mind. Versions 2.8 and 2.9 will focus exclusively on the store and e-commerce features and I'm aiming to implement as many of the most requested features as possible. Version 3.0 is going to deal only with the front end look and feel and customisation capabilities hopefully making it easier to modify the look of Pixaria and provide more themes.

By building on the recent improvements in the admin area's image management tools and taking a more conservative approach to releases, I fully expect that Pixaria will become a better product for everyone and that it will do so without giving me a nervous breakdown! As always, I enjoy getting feedback so if you want to share your thoughts on any of the issues raised here, let me know.