Introduction to image storage in Pixaria

Where are images stored

Images in Pixaria Gallery are stored in your web server's filesystem in a dedicated image storage directory within the Pixaria installation directory. This directory can be changed to a different location via the admin control panel.

Image storage on the server file system

By default, image files are saved on the server in a directory called 'resources/library/'.

If you want to add a large number of images to Pixaria Gallery all in one go, you can do so quickly and easily by creating a directory of images on your computer and uploading them to your site by FTP. The directory and images you create should be uploaded into the 'resources/incoming' folder and once in place, you will be able to import them from the library control panel. Details of how to do this are included further on in this chapter.

Image storage within Pixaria Gallery's admin interface

Pixaria Gallery offers a number of methods for managing images you upload to your site. To understand how the software does this, it's best to start by explaining some of the terms used.

Introduction to the Pixaria Gallery Library

Firstly, the Pixaria Gallery library is the term used to describe the primary table in the database that contains information about images on your website. This information includes items such as the location of the image file on the server filesystem, the caption and date of the image and various other metadata including EXIF and IPTC headers and the image price if it has one.

Image groups

At a higher level than the library are constructs called groups which include galleries and lightboxes.

Galleries

Galleries are a type of group and can contain an unlimited number of images from your library. Galleries can contain multiple instances of the same image and can also contain other galleries. Galleries within galleries are called nested galleries.

Lightboxes

Lightboxes can be thought of as private galleries which users can make for themselves once they have registered on your website. Any user can create up to ten separate lightboxes each of which can contain an unlimited number of images.

Users are able to manage their lightboxes from the 'My Account' link when they're logged in.

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Created: Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Last edited: Monday, May 21, 2007