Hi everybody,

I posted this over at the EE forums and have gotten 0 response.

Maybe you can take a look at it and see if I can, in fact, use the Tag module to solve my problem.

I’ve got a bit of tight situation that I’m hoping may have a solution that would save me a ton of work.

I have a site that I programmed using EE. It’s for an architect. Each project has a page (weblog) which is sorted by category into residential, eductaional etc. Additional photos and captions were loaded via the gallery. Each project resides in it’s own category (commercial) and then subcategory (project name) in the photo gallery.

In the website each project had a link to “View the project gallery” When the user clicked on it a pop up window would show up showing the first large image in the project (subcategory). There was the previous and next buttons etc. Worked great. The entire site is done all content uploaded.

(sample: http://www.spearsarchitects.com/index.php/site/project/santa_fe_rape_crisis_center/)

Now they don’t want pop up windows.

Soooo...I’m trying to think of a way to integrate image_full with the project weblog template and get it to show the right subcategory.

Basically the full size image should show where the large image is on the project page, then in the left column, below some content that is pulled from the weblog, I want to show the image caption and have previous and next arrows that would change the image on the right to the next (or previous) image in the project gallery subcategory.

I’ve purchased solspace’s Tag module but I’m not really getting it and after reading through their forum and documentation I’m not sure it will do what I need.

The main reason I’d like to try this is to avoid having to re-enter content, I know it’s not really ideal.

Thanks!

Dana

Dana,

I’d recommend using the Gallery Extended (GX) module

GX allows you to upload photos directly with creating/editing a weblog entry. What happens is you can relate photos to entries, and then display the photos alongside the entry. I will admit though, your situation requires Previous/Next links, and currently (surprisingly) the GX:Entries loop does not have pagination yet (which you would need to manipulate). However, as a workaround, and, in my opinion, a nice way to display the photos, would be to scrap the Previous/Next links and plop all the other photos as thumbnails below the main photo. You could then have each thumbnail clickable to view the full photo in that window.

This is still not quite possible straight out of the box, but you might be able to show the correct photo as the large one based on some conditionals and segments in the URL. I have not tested this yet though. As an alternative, and more elegant solution, you could do this with Javascript or jQuery.

I hope this helps… let me know if you have any further questions

Thanks for your suggestions.

A bit over my head but maybe I’ll find a use for the Tag module I bought for a future project.

Thanks
Dana

danazx - 21 May 2008 02:41 PM

Thanks for your suggestions.

A bit over my head but maybe I’ll find a use for the Tag module I bought for a future project.

Thanks
Dana

Dana,

Do some Googling… there’s some pretty good examples out there… you can almost just copy and paste

Ok, so maybe it’s way over my head.

I’d like to try a different tact which maybe the Tags module is well suited for.

So I’ve already got one blog set up called “Projects” The admin enters all the project info there.

Instead of using the gallery I could make a new weblog that is just “images”. It would just have an entry for one image and it’s caption. The admin would enter numerous images for a project and title them “Civic Cener 1” “Civic Center 2” etc. Then back at the corresponding “Projects” blog publish page there would be a field for them to enter a tag that then tells the template which image entries to load and use the weblog pagination. (I don’t really get how this works but hopefully that makes some sense?)

it would wind up looking like:

http://www.elemental-studio.com/spears/final-projectV2.html

All the info in the left column up to “Project Gallery” comes from the main project page created in the “projects” weblog.

The text and links under the title “Project Gallery” and the large image would come from the multiple image entries for that project. When the person clicks next only the info from the “images” weblog changes.

Am I headed in the right direction?

Thanks!
Dana

Dana,

That sounds like it might work… although the tricky part will be “relating” the entries.

I see two approaches:

Using the Tag Module you could relate the Image Entries to the Projects Entries and use the Tag 2.1 Related Entries loop to achieve this… that would work

Alternatively, you could relate your entries together by using the native EE Related Entries function. It’s pretty clunkly though.
We’ve just developed a Related Entries module which should be out anytime soon. What it does is creates an nice Ajaxy Tab in the Publish/Edit page where you can search and add Entries, much like how the Tag Tab looks
I have to admit, it’s pretty sweet!!

Great, I’ll check through the related entries loop and work on it this weekend.

Thanks for helping me out. I may need more help later but I think figuring this out will help a lot for future projects as I’m always running up against an easy way to have a gallery in a blog that a client who knows a lot less than I do can update easily.

Thanks again! I’ll either have more questions or a progress report this weekend!

I’ve gotten a little farther but I think I’m missing a very basic thing I should understand.

So far I have set up my tag field in my image blog.

(I found a nice little tutorial here: http://howto.fm/e/a/title/Tagging-in-ExpressionEngine/) basically I got to the second sentence of step 9)

Everything I’m looking at is telling me how to show the actual tags (words) related to the entry being viewed. What I want to have happen is that the related image entires are shown automatically. I’ve published 3 images that belong to a specific project. I’ve put “MNM Visitor” in the tag field of each. (it is actually called “tag” just through that word around some more)

So what to I code into the project template to have the correct images show up? And how do I pass the correct tag so that it knows which image weblog entries to show? I tried typing MNM Visitor into the tag browser on the project weblog page but that didn’t work.

Thanks!

Dana,

That tutorial is not for using the Tag Module. It’s designed to show you how you can manipulate the Categories feature to act similar to Tags.
The two are not related in any way, so you’ll never get the two to work together like you’re trying to do.

Here’s what you need to do… using the Tag module, use the TAG TAB in the Publish/Edit page to assign Tags to your Photo entries. Use whatever Tags apply, in this case “MNM Visitor”.
Secondly, create your Main Weblog Entry, and apply the necessary Tags… in this case, make sure you use “MNM Visitor” as well.

The fact that the Main Weblog Entry, and the Photo entries have the same Tag, that will mean that Tag module considers them “related”.
You can now use the Tag:Related Entries loop, and it will pull the entries automatically

Let me know when you get that far

How do I apply the Tags in the Main Weblog Entry? That’s the first place (or 30th..whatever!) I got stuck.

Let’s start off with a basic description that’s a little more narrative the documentation.

There’s the tags tab. It’s got Tag Browser and Tag Field.

On my images weblog I type in MNM Visitor in the Tag Field.

Then on my Project weblog (the main one) I type the same thing in the same place?

So I don’t need to have the extra tag field in image weblog?

Thanks!

danazx - 27 May 2008 11:25 AM

On my images weblog I type in MNM Visitor in the Tag Field.

Correct!

danazx - 27 May 2008 11:25 AM

Then on my Project weblog (the main one) I type the same thing in the same place?

Correct!

danazx - 27 May 2008 11:25 AM

So I don’t need to have the extra tag field in image weblog?

Correct!

Ok, that’s very cool.

Thanks so much!

Now I just have figure out how to get the pagination where I want it...not your department though, I’ll find someone else to hassle!

Thanks again, I’ll be using this a lot, it works much better then what I’ve done before.

Like I said, if you use thumbnails below the main image, you can skip the Pagination issue, and set each thumbnail to load a seperate entry/photo