Symphony.

Hi,

first of all: I like it I like it I like it! Although I only tinkered a little bit with 1.7 and my knowledge of XSLT could be better, I can see that Symphony 2 is a leap forward! As far as I can see I like the new structure, it's far more (I don't know if you say that in english) modular and reusable than that of 1.7. (Not that 1.7 was infelxible... ;-))

But there is one thing I miss: I was building a website for my band with symphony as 2 came out, so I decided to switch. In 1.7, I had a section gigs where you could upload several pictures taken at the gig or related to it. In 2, this seems not to be possible. I created a new section with a custom field "File upload", but when I publish in that section I am only allowed to upload one single picture.

Why is that? or am I getting something wrong?

Regards, thanks for symphony 2!!

booker

One way to do it: Create a Section called "Gigs." Create another section called "Photos." In the Photos section, create a Section Link Field called "Gig" and link it to the Gigs section. This allows you to create Photos through Gigs. You can then associate any number of photos with a gig.

I'm going to chime in because this section linking didn't seem very intuitive to me and it took a few minutes to figure out.

When you link the "Photos" section to the "Gigs" section, you will then get an extra column in the entry list, on the right side, in the "Gigs" section under the "Publish" menu. You will then see a number of images linked to each post. Click on that number to go to the "Photos" associated with that Gig and create a new one.

It seems, to me anyway, a bit of a round-about way to associate images with a post. I hope a future update to Symphony adds a custom field so a "Gigs" entry can upload ( or select from already uploaded images ) "Photos" to link. It would make things a lot simpler.

I'm loving the section linking because you can create an images section and include all kinds of extra info with the image, like captions, credits, location and so on. That away, the data that belongs with the photo is attached to it.

I don't get it. I created a section "Photos" and created a section link to "Gigs". If I've got it right, there had to be this extra column just like the extra "Image"-column that the "Articles" section has. But there was no column.

I then tried to link the "Image"-section to the "Gigs"-section, just by ctrl-leftklicking on the "Gigs"-entry in the drop down list. But still no "Image"-column for "Gigs"...

Then I removed the "Gigs"-linking from the "Image"-section with the effect that now the "Images"-column even disappeared in the "Article"-section! Is this broken??

And I think it can get a little annoying when you have to upload a lot of pictures to have one single entry per picture.

The other thing I don't quite get is: Can you link the same picture to different section entries or even to different entries in different sections?

I reinstalled rev 4, I guess I messed with the update. Now everything works fine with the "Images"-column... But I still find this section-linking a little bit hard to use. I think it fits for other usage scenarios, but the problems I have with mine (quick upload of 10-15 pictures, relating to a single entry in a section) still remain. For example, if I wanted to upload five images related to an article I'd have to do the following:

1: Go to publish, create an article. There is no possiblity to upload the images as part of the creation, so creation of an article containing more than one image is split up into several steps on several screens. It's easy to loose track about the images. Where do I upload the images again? Not in the creation screen...

2: Go to publish -> articles, remember how to upload images, click on the corresponding number in the images-column. There is no hint here that this is the only way to upload images; it is not quite obvious how to do that.

3: Create new image. If you created the image, there is no way to create another one from this screen.
You have again to go publish -> articles and click on the number-link, so

4: Repeat steps 2-3 to upload the remaining pictures.

So creating an article containing several images can be really annoying. I like the possibility to provide information about the uploaded file wich comes in handy if you want to upload just a few files. But I know my bandmembers, and they won't provide this information anyway... For them, the old method of uploading several images would have been far more convinient: Hit on "Browse", upload the image, and if you want another one being uploaded simply click on "Browse" again!

I also discovered that when if you've uploaded an image and linked it to a certain entry, you can't link that image to another entry in the same or any other section. So if you published an image within a certain article, you can't publish this picture in another article again! No reuse of my precious pictures! It won't even let me upload that picture again, which is allright because it's already there. So the only chance to use the same image within several articles is to rename it.

The best thing to do is use a different method of attaching images to an article, given what you are trying to accomplish.

• Multiple images per entry
• Multiple entries using the same images

It would be better for you to create an Images section to contain all your images, creating fields for the metadata you would like attached to your image.

• Title (text input)
• Caption (textarea)
• Image (file upload)

Then, for your entries section, create a select box custom field called "Images" and select the Images section and the Title field from the "Dynamic Options" select menu. Click on the checkbox to "Allow selection of multiple options".

Upload your images into the Images section. Attach images to your entries by selecting images by file name from the select box.

This is a very good idea. Never thought of that... Thanks for your help!

The only problem I see with that is that this is only convenient when you don't have too much files. When you have lots of pictures (which I hope there will be, we play great gigs!) the drop down box will get very, very long. But I guess you can't have both, lots of files and file reusability, without some inconveniencies.

In my opinion, the file upload would belong in the same place where you would create the whole entry. The uploaded file belongs to the entry. So why separate? This place is the publish -> whatever -> "create new"-screen. This is the most consistent I can think of. And this could be only achieved by a multiple upload field. Which I miss since 1.7. Sniff...

I think the point is that there are many ways to go about doing this in the core. If you require additional functionality with a field, Symphony 2 allows you to create and implement a new field via an extension.

The Map Location Field illustrates this power.

Symphony 2 surprises me every time...awesome!

Wow! Thanks for the tip, bauhouse. :-)

Glad that helped.

@booker, I've also wanted to figure out how to deal with large collections of images.

The only problem I see with that is that this is only convenient when you don't have too much files.

It's been stated previously that there are no plans to build select box filtering into the Symphony core. However, that does not mean that it should not be possible to build your own admin page or front end page with filtering built in. This is currently possible with Symphony 1.7 and the Author Registration Campfire Services. Use the Front End Entry CS and map the fields to those that exist in your section, but use XSL to filter the select box options by a URL parameter. You can then limit the available options in the images select box.

I've done something similar in my DesignAdmin application and it works well for limiting the Projects list to only those that are related to a specific Client.

I haven't tried it in Symphony 2 yet, but I can't imagine why this wouldn't be possible.

Thanks for your help, bauhouse!

I like the idea of using an image section for metadata and other info, as well as the image. Be nice though if we could see the image we are adding via the interface - almost like a thumbnail list of images.

@bauhouse (and anyone else : ]) I have set up the method you wrote about - I selected the image “titles” within the section containing the select box with dynamic options, but when I view the xml in the page I only see:

<item handle="cut-copy">cut copy</item>

This is the title I assigned it. That is all; no image information. Am I executing the method correctly? Thanks in advance!

@ashrimplin - have you considered using Nils’ Medithek extension?

Or the Subsection Manager?

Yo guys, I am going to look into both of them. Thanks for the advice! I definitely need more experience with the plethora of extensions Symphony has. Thanks again!