Is the Media Gallery add-on redundant?

[Sim]

As mentioned - it completely depends on your niche as to whether it would be used much.

On PropertyChat, we get the occasional upload to the gallery - most frequently it's used when people want to upload bulk images of a renovation that would clutter up a discussion thread. Otherwise, people just tend to attach images to posts because it's usually supplementing a discussion rather than about the images themselves.

However, on ZooChat - we have over 500,000 images from zoos around the world in our gallery (and 3,255 gallery categories to hold them all!!!!!). We also get a lot of discussion happening in media comments (to the point where I'm working on an addon to upgrade comments to be genuine discussion threads!).

We have very strict rules about what can and cannot be posted on ZooChat - and an active moderation team who monitor the media being uploaded. The gallery is probably the most popular feature on the site.

Your niche is everything.

 

[beerForo]

Your niche is everything.

It's part of it, yes. Not everything.

 

[Mikethemix]

I'm using Media Gallery on my forums, I would say totally depending on your forum niche.

MG has become a highly valued element of our car club's private forum. It now hosts over 10,000 images and more are being added daily as members upload their own collections. I am worried that suggestions for MG improvements seem to get little attention.

 

[Mikethemix]

Correct. Youtube and other companies do this much better, embedding is the best solution.

I stopped using media galleries years ago. They're just a waste of time and resources. Attached embedding and such in posts is used all the time though, where when I had media galleries, it was barely used because there was no real purpose for it.

I totally agree regarding videos. We encourage embedding YouTube hosted videos. However, I disagree regarding the Media Gallery vs Forum. We are using both in our old car forum, to great effect. Media Gallery provides a superb structured place to hold images. The Forum provides a structured place for discussions, specialist technical support and archive documents etc
We need both. Thanks to XF for a superb platform.

 

[Faust]

MG has become a highly valued element of our car club's private forum. It now hosts over 10,000 images and more are being added daily as members upload their own collections. I am worried that suggestions for MG improvements seem to get little attention.

unfortunately you are right. There seems very little attention or improvement on this addon, especially that is core XF. MG is vital for my forum, without it, there is no point me having the forum. Hope @Chris D and developers can focus more on MG addon,.

 

[Nicolas FR]

I hope too. Widgets from MG are so are so uninviting... no hover info, widget titles don't point to the displayed category, no great display or sorting possibilities...

 

[beerForo]

When I moved my video gallery to the forum, it was suddenly popular. I use a Suggestion type forum so members can vote up videos and the members like it vs. gallery. I just had to customize the up icon for the niche and do a few other minor things and it works as a video forum that videos can be voted on for popularity. The issue is not the features of the gallery it is its poor integration with the activity of the forum, which lies in forum posts. Hoping for a more social activity feed so we can have that integration,