Hi, I have a collection site with 21,000 JPG images organized into 2,000 groupings. The JPGs in each grouping varies from 1 to 150. The groupings may be sub-divided. I am trying to set all the images up in a Warehouse arrangement so the main site is more manageable and it operates faster on more devices. I have upgraded to RW8. It appears that most of the options for using warehoused images is using some stack. I have been experimenting with Pro Gallery2 and others. I have some questions:
I think the latest version of PHP is 7.3.5. The latest version that is available on the control panel of my host company (HostMySite) is 5.6. I have read in other posts that not having the latest version of PHP may not work with some stacks. Is this a critical issue that I need to sort out with the hosting Co.?
The users access the images by one of the grouping names. Is there a way that I could load up all the image in a certain category without entering all the individual addresses ? Even if I have to include each individual address , is there a way to group them in a folder or something that would allow one group to be displayed together?
I understand the theory of warehousing images but come up short when trying to apply stacks to come out with the images in the desired grouping and arrangement. Could someone go through the process step by step?
i.e. php, 5.6 was end of life quite a while ago, insist that your host gets you to 7.1 minimum.
2./3. I would check the galley3? Stack by @instacks I think it has the ability to load folders of images into a gallery. Hopefully Jannis will comment.
@puzzbill As has already been said, you probably need PHP at 7.2 or more. Ask your hosting company about how to update to a newer version.
Probably the 2 best stacks for what you want is ProGalery by stacks4stacks or Gallery 3 by instacks. In both cases you can designate a folder for the stack to read. Then it will display all the images in that one folder. So by using your grouping names all will be fine.
It sounds like you have not warehoused before. The “regular” way would be to use an FTP app like Transmit. However, in your case it may be useful to take advantage of another stack by @instacks named Repository. Essentially it works like an FTP app but is super simple to use for warehousing.
So I would visit Stacks4Stacks to check out ProGallery, and instacks to check out Gallery3 and Repository.
You haven’t stated this, but in your case optimizing your images in terms of size will be of critical importance. You probably don’t want any one image to be more than 300k in size. So you may need to bulk optimize or resize your images before starting down this path.