For MT 3 users. MT4 users go here.
It is easy posting a single entry into your spanking new Photo Gallery blog. Just a few mouse clicks and your picture is for all the world to view. But what if you have lots and lots of pictures?
This is a continuing article on how to install, configure Photo Gallery plug-in version 1.7 on Movable Type 3.3
Photo Gallery plug-in automates the installation of Douglas Bowman's custom templates.
You can do a mass import of the photos into Movable Type. But first you will need two more additional tools and a template Picasa , PSpad and Picasa export template
Picasa is used to generate the thumbnails and more importantly the import file required by Movable Type to link the thumbnails and actual pictures together.
According to Movable Type documentation, to do a mass import, each line in the import file should end with a LF, Unix style. If you are like me, together with about 80% of the PC users out there, that are using Microsoft Windows, you will need to change the DOS standard end of line marker CR/LF.
PSPad's one click formatting from DOS format to Unix, makes it a snap.
To summarise the steps to do a mass import, using Picasa, select the required pictures, Use the "Export as HTML Page" function to create thumbnails and import file. Use PSPad to re-format the import file for Movable Type to read properly.
FTP the pictures in images and thumbnail folders into where your photo gallery is located. Put the import file into the Movable Type Import folder. Run the import function and if it is successful the filenames should be listed out individually on import screen.
I recommend FileZilla as a FTP client. Just set the transfer mode to "auto".
Troubleshooting
1. The category name is always the your local harddisk foldername where your pictures located in. This is taken from the field AlbumName. The category name also forms part of the path to your galleries. You may have to create the categories before FTP. You can change the loop.htm file to upload to a specific folder, but I have not tested this.
2. The date of the entry comes from the hardcoded date in loop.htm. Picasa's date format (May 2005) is not compatible with Movable Type's (01/31/2002 03:31:05 PM). If you want to try something, Picasa's date field tag is <%albumDate%>.
3. From Picasa's default templates, listed below are the tags.
<%albumName%>
<%albumDate%>
<%albumCaption%>
<%albumItemCount%>
<%itemName%>.
<%itemCaption%>
<%itemThumbnailImage%>
<%itemThumbnailHeight%>
<%itemThumbnailWidth%>
<%itemLargeImage%>