Simple Image Gallery Joomla Plugins

INSTALLATION

After you download the installer for either Joomla! 1.5 or for Joomla! 1.6+, use the Joomla! installer by navigating to:

• Extensions >> Install/Uninstall (for Joomla! 1.5)
• Extensions >> Extension Manager (for Joomla! 1.6 or newer)

…and upload the zip file.

Finally, navigate to Extensions >> Plugin Manager (in both Joomla! 1.5 & 1.6+) and enable/publish the plugin. To edit the plugin parameters, simply click on its name “Simple Image Gallery (by JoomlaWorks)”.

REQUIREMENTS

In order for Simple Image Gallery to function properly, please make sure that your server has PHP’s GD image library installed (common webhosts have GD installed by default). Additionally, your site must meet all requirements as posed by either Joomla! 1.5 or 1.6+.

You also have to make sure that Joomla’s /cache folder is writable, in other words, check that the permissions for this folder are 755 (or 777).

HOW DOES IT WORK?

The concept is simple. You want to add image galleries inside your articles (content items)! By default there is a root folder – it’s the “images/stories” folder. Now create a new folder anywhere inside this root folder, for example let’s say this folder is summer_trip_to_italy and upload there all your images. Go ahead and create a new content item (or open an existing one) and simply insert {gallery}summer_trip_to_italy{/gallery}, where you want your image gallery to appear inside your text. It doesn’t have to be at the end of your article, it can be anywhere you insert it inside your content item. That’s it! Fire up your favorite browser, navigate to the above content item et voila! An image gallery inside your content item!

If you want to create a gallery from subfolders inside the ROOT folder, simply add them like this: {gallery}folder/subfolder/othersubfolder{/gallery}. In other words, write the path to your target folder without any slashes at the beginning or the end of your path (it’s added auto-magically!).

Simple Image Gallery utilizes “Slimbox” (developed by Christophe Beyls), which is a more modern implentation of the famous “Lightbox” script, based on Mootools (1.1/1.2 for Joomla! 1.5) and jQuery (1.4 for Joomla! 1.6+). “Slimbox” generates the nice popups that display the original images in a gallery. The plugin will choose the right JavaScript library based on Joomla! version and more specifically for Joomla! 1.5, based on whether the Mootools Upgrade plugin is enabled or not.

USING SIMPLE IMAGE GALLERY IN K2

K2 is able to display all “content” plugins that are used in its content boxes (introtext/fulltext). Just like any other plugin, you can Simple Image Gallery’s {gallery}…{/gallery} tags within K2’s introtext or fulltext blocks. If you wish to fully utilize the K2 Image Gallery options, you need to upgrade to Simple Image Gallery Pro (which offers many more features compared to this free version).

MVC TEMPLATING: THE POWER TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR GALLERY LAYOUT

The feature trully setting apart most JoomlaWorks plugins from other similar Joomla! plugins is their MVC architecture, currently available in Joomla! for components and modules only. That means you can use HTML and CSS template overrides inside your Joomla! template and completely change the way the plugin elements display on your website!

So you can either choose to use the default gallery styling of the plugin (called “Polaroids”) or simply override it (both the HTML and CSS code) by copying the plugin’s /plugins/content/jw_simpleImageGallery/tmpl folder within your Joomla! template’s /templates/YOURJOOMLATEMPLATE/html folder, as you would with components and modules. Then simply rename the folder /templates/YOURJOOMLATEMPLATE/html/tmpl to /templates/YOURJOOMLATEMPLATE/html/jw_simpleImageGallery. Whatever changes yo do from now on within this folder, will completely override the plugin’s output, exactly as you would with any other MVC component or module.

The above instructions apply to Joomla! 1.5. For Joomla! 1.6+ grab the folder /plugins/content/jw_simpleImageGallery/jw_simpleImageGallery/tmpl. Target folder is the same within your template.

Simple Image Gallery uses one override template (Polaroids) only for displaying your galleries. You can override all files or selected files from the template folder, as you would with any other MVC component or module, with the better exception that Simple Image Gallery overrides CSS files as well! That means if you copy just the main template file into your /templates/YOURJOOMLATEMPLATE/html/jw_simpleImageGallery, then the plugin will override that file but not the CSS files!

Below you can see the file structure of the /tmpl folder inside the plugin:

If you maintain this structure within /templates/YOURJOOMLATEMPLATE/html/jw_simpleImageGallery/Polaroids you can override the entire plugin output!