I'm implementing a Gallery on my site and I have a LOT of images to upload to it. They're currently on my local drive in a series of nested folders. It seems like a lot of work to upload them via the Gallery functions, creating the necessary folders along the way.

Can I FTP the tree of my local files to the site?
What are the downsides of this?
Are large files compressed only if I upload via Gallery functions?
What's the reason for /.thumbs and /image in the uploads folder?
I have an image in Gallery that I can't even find via FTP. Where is it?

Just looking for clarification of the structures so that I can optimize my use of them, Thanks!

[KK]

Hi,

Can I FTP the tree of my local files to the site?
What are the downsides of this?

The 'gallery' works by uploading images from the local system to the server. While doing so, it also effects all specified processing on the images (e.g. resizing and creating thumbnails). So uploading the tree directly to the server would be incompatible with the way the gallery functions.

Are large files compressed only if I upload via Gallery functions?

Yes and also while uploading images via the 'image' type editable region in normal pages.

What's the reason for /.thumbs and /image in the uploads folder?

The '.thumbs' is used by the KCFinder browser to store the thumbnail it shows in its interface. It creates the thumbnails automatically. The 'image' folder is used by Couch as the root for storing all images uploaded via gallery or 'image' type editable region.

I have an image in Gallery that I can't even find via FTP. Where is it?

If you can see the image in your browser (the admin panel in this case), then the image is certainly present on the server. Use developer console of Chrome or FireFox to see the URL of the image and that will give you its exact location.

Hope this helps.

[trendoman]

Do I need to re-upload images in editable type 'image' on normal pages? I have my images already on server in a certain folder, which is different from 'uploads' folder.

No, if you can paste a correct full path to that image in the input field. But the image processing will NOT be applied and picture will be delivered as-is. If your images are already resized/processed, it can save some time for many images, because copy-paste is faster than 'Browse server' routine. Also note, that such images will not be copied to 'uploads' folder.

download (12).png (54.46 KiB) Viewed 2280 times

So if I have already uploaded a bunch of files/folders to the Gallery via the admin panel. Now I decide I want to create some subfolders and rearrange the gallery. Could I do that via FTP: creating subfolders and then moving the images AND the corresponding thumbs on the server? Or is there an easy way that I can do it in the admin panel?

[trendoman]

The easy way is to re-upload again. I am afraid, the beauty and comfort of gallery template stops right where you need to move a lot of files often. With smaller tasks, at the expense of a 'cup of tea' time re-uploading saves yourself a lot of trouble. If you move files in ftp only, then mysql database still has old locations stored. This is have undesired effects - images become unavailable/missing.

Another way to complete some hefty tasks of everyday managing job is to write a script, which will take uploaded files and sort/distribute them in existing folders according to the plan. This can be done with cms:db_persist tag. Let me know if you need one.