Photo Spot Help

[1] What is Photo Spot?
[2] What is a data source?
[3] What is a viewer?
[4] How do I create a gallery?
[5] How do I assign galleries to menu items?
[6] Can I change my gallery's parameters dynamically?
[7] Can I see a gallery without using a menu item?

[1] What is Photo Spot?

Photo Spot is an image gallery component for Joomla! especially designed to help programmers and designers make the best out of a web application. In Photo Spot, data sources are differentiated from viewers because programmers should worry only about coding whereas designers should spend time in designing.

[2] What is a data source?

A data source is a mechanism that picks up images. For example one data source is called "Directory" and it makes your gallery pick images from a directory of your choice. Another data source is "Content Articles" which picks the images from your articles.

[3] What is a viewer?

A viewer is a mechanism that displays images. For example there is the "Table Viewer" which displays images in a tabular layout. One of our favorites is the "Custom Design" viewer which shows images in a format -you- designed. The Custom Design Viewer is optimized to work well with the popular graphics tool Adobe Photoshop.

[4] How do I create a gallery?

You just hit the "New Gallery" button and choose a name, a data source and a viewer. That's all. Once your new gallery is created the system allows you to adjust the gallery parameters.

Inside each gallery you will be able to find additional help for your gallery's data source and viewer.

[5] How do I assign galleries to menu items?

Create a menu item the way you would normally do for any other component.

From the various choices under the "Internal Link" menu category choose "Photo Spot".

In the following screen expand the "Parameters (Component)" panel at the right side of the page. You can use this panel to make many different types of links to Photo Spot. The simplest one is to just type in the gallery ID of one of your existing galleries. Alternatively, you can type in the name of the gallery.

[6] Can I change my gallery's parameters dynamically?

You can make many different types of links from the URL address. You can change the parameters of your data source or viewer. You can even change the type of your data source or viewer. But none of these can happened if the gallery does not allow it. So first, you need to go back to your gallery control panel and set suitable value to the "URL Permissions" for your data source and for your viewer. Notice that there is a different "URL Permissions" setting for the data source and a different one for the viewer.

Why is this system so strict? Because the information of your galleries may contain sensitive information and there can be plenty of ways for an unauthorized user to gain access to them.

[7] Can I see a gallery without using a menu item?

Yes you can do that in two ways.

One way is to create a gallery and use the URL variable "gid" for selecting it by its ID, or use the URL variable "gname" for selecting it by its name. This solution can work only if you enable the "Allow loading galleries from the URL address" option from Photo Spot's general settings.

Another way is to create a URL with variables that define the data source, the viewer and their parameters. To set the data source use the "gds" variable. To set the viewer use the "gvw" variable. The code names of the data source the viewer and their parameters are printed in brackets inside their help screens. This solution can work only if you enable the "Allow unmapped galleries" option from Photo Spot's general settings.

Important: If the data in your galleries contain sensitive information both solutions mentioned above can be security hazard.