Media Gallery as Mirror Attachments Only?

arn

Well-known member
Is anyone using the 2.2 XF Media Gallery as an attachment mirror only?

I was thinking of just enabling it strictly as mirroring. Not allowing direct media uploads, comments, etc.. Basically act as an attachment manager and a visual attachment browser.

I'd love to hear if anyone else is using it like this.
arn
 
Me too actually. Never had a media gallery before and my guess is almost no one uses it.
It always felt like it was too segmented away from the main forum. I know some sites do use it and well, but it always made more sense integrated into the attachment system.

I have it installed on a dev site, and it seems like it is possible. But it does seem like a lot of data to sync up. I was hoping to see someone who has done it.
 
That's our problem to. We have over 1.5 mln attachments so syncing would take forever.
And I cannot test that process because I don't have all those attachments in my test environment...
 
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Same here. No attachments on development.

I could do it slowly. Sync up one forum. See how it goes.
 
I'm testing this now.

I've set up Media Gallery, set up categories that mirror our forums and doing the rebuild. The rebuild takes a long time for us (1million users, 800k attachments). But looks pretty good. I've turned of all the Media Gallery features -- no comments, no rating, no likes, no adding media directly.

It really does seem to act like a attachment manager for users. I see some areas for improvement -- but it's not bad out the box.

arn
 
I've set up Media Gallery, set up categories that mirror our forums
Did you just created categories named after your (sub)forums?

Keeping an eye on this. Still think this makes everything simpler which is a good thing.
 
Did you just created categories named after your (sub)forums?

Keeping an eye on this. Still think this makes everything simpler which is a good thing.
You could do it by subject matter. So if you have 5 food forums, and 2 car forums, you could set up Food Pics (all 5 go here), Car Pics (the 2 go here). Etc.
 
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Did you just created categories named after your (sub)forums?

Keeping an eye on this. Still think this makes everything simpler which is a good thing.

Yep. I consolidated some forums that didn't seem as photo-y.

It also makes sense to make more categories to mirror everything before you resync, because it goes through everything. If you then don't want a category to show up, just set it to private and don't give anyone access, and it won't show up.

arn
 
@arn what do you think of this?

i can see it for people who use the media gallery features. To me it seems like it splinters discussion about media. I like to keep it in the forum thread if possibel
 
So will you the turning the "add comment" permission off?
that's my plan to start. I don't really see the Media gallery as a destination, but as a way to discover posts/threads. And also to manage your previous attachments. Maybe that's a narrow view of it, but it seems like a good place to start.
 
Comments get lost in the gallery. It's one of my biggest gripes. It's just too stand-alone unlike Resources. Mirroring is a step in the right direction at least.
 
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@arn Always been on the same wavelength about media galleries. I essentially want to strip it of almost all features (ratings, comments, etc.) and just use it as a catchall (mirroring). Doing what you did has been on my to-do list for a few years. Finally got around to this project today.

Since my forum is about vehicles and traveling, it's very photo heavy. So, in addition to your goal of having a way to manage your own attachments and find discussions via images that look interesting, I also want to use this to create various widgets as forms of visual content in relevant areas.

I appreciate your tips and I'll try to add some of my own as I start learning.
 
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