XF 2.3 I want to create a specific area on my site where people can upload photos
- Thread starter Pepe2012
- Start date
ENF
Well-known member
No, that would be the Media Gallery addon. as shown here: https://xenforo.com/community/media/
Resource Manager & XF Media Gallery are separate addons you can buy in your customer area.
smallwheels
Well-known member
You should however be aware that said
is pretty horrible. It is dated, has a horrible user experience and ui, lacks even the most basic features and i.e. creating an album where other people can upload to in a useful way is awkward. Furthermore you cannot i.e. sort photos inside of an album, you cannot choose the title image, the order of the pictures is somewhat random when you batch-upload, adding descriptions to pictures is a nightmare etc. etc..
In short: Media Gallery sounds attractive but it is a really horrible yet expensive piece of software in practice and therefor also lacks acceptance by forum users (for very good reasons). Unfortunately, development of this official, but really embarrassing add on has stalled for years and even worse: there is no alternative add on for the purpose. Depending from your concrete use case you may be better off simply using normal threads instead. Media Gallery clearly does not live up to expectations and is not fit for purpose either. I would not buy it again and clearly cannot recommend it based on my experience with it.
ENF
Well-known member
But you didn't offer any alternatives?
At the most basic form, we use it to upload media (photos) and it works. Everything else mentioned are 'nice to have' but it doesn't stop people from using it. Nothing against your complaints, just saying that it does allow photo uploads and it allows personal albums for those who want it.
smallwheels
Well-known member
Sure, but given the request of the OP there is a high probabilty that it won't make him happy. I had four typical usecases in mind when I bought and installed the MG add on:
1. Collective albums for events, where various users could upload their photos to
2. Collective albums for certain topics where forum users could add photso which could then be arranged in a useful order by a mod or admin
3. Individual/personal albums where you could present pictures and "tell a story" (which again needs the possiblity to reorder th pictures along with easy possiblity for captions and to choose a cover photo)
4. Easy to access repository of pictures to use in forum posts (which needs proper browse and search functionality, at best directly from the post editor, as well as proper embedding of pictures into posts)
I don't consider these use cases overly fancy or special, but rather pretty basic. However: Exactly none of these use cases is fulfilled in an at least somewhat acceptable way. The fact that the UI and UX of the Media Gallery add on is on top of that utterly cumbersome does not make it better. Upon probably hundreds of other issues it even lacks basic things like a drag and drop upload - in 2025. It is really a shambolic product in almost every aspect imaginable in my eyes and as a consequence my forum users barely use it.
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smallwheels
Well-known member
Where?
Did you work with it intensively in front- and backend? Apart from that: The advertizing claim "There's at least one Media Gallery on the market that is worse than our's" wouldn't be very convincing in my eyes. 
XenForo shines in many areas, the MG is one of it's (very) dark sides IMHO. If it was free I still would no like it, for 70$ it is not exactly a cheap add on - and a huge disappointment.While it technically does what is advertized...
... it does it in such a rudimentary and cumbersome way like an old Lada performs a a car - possibly worse. Based on the advertizing claims and the general quality level of XenForo I had never expected such a horrible implementation and really felt fooled after having installed and used it.
smallwheels
Well-known member
@Pepe2012 : Other than that: There are loads of threads about the Gallery add on. One of the more recent ones about the Gallery Add On in general is this:
but there are dozens of threads about various aspects and, being an official XF add on whole subforums on here devoted to it.
As the huge photo-site dpreview.com switched their forums to XF recently there is some hope that the Gallery would finally get an overhaul (despite there are no indications for it).
but there are dozens of threads about various aspects and, being an official XF add on whole subforums on here devoted to it.
As the huge photo-site dpreview.com switched their forums to XF recently there is some hope that the Gallery would finally get an overhaul (despite there are no indications for it).
StarArmy
Well-known member
I think XFMG inability to autogenerate thumbnails for videos (and MP3s that already contain metadata album covers) is terrible and needs to be fixed as soon as possible. I think it's dumb that you can't update media with newer revisions. It's also missing the ability to pin or sort medias. But as a general image gallery it gets the job done for my site.
Wing
Well-known member
Here’s how it looks on my site: https://www.v303rdfightergroup.com/index.php?media/