TTG Highslide Gallery and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro 1.9 are now available. The 1.9 update is pretty heft, and so this article is a combination update announcement and tutorial, meant to illuminate the new features in the update, mostly to the Pro version of the gallery. Amongst these features are highly requested features such as a new proprietary shopping cart that operates without online transactions, the ability to set pricing per individual item, links to download alternate renditions of images and more. A full list of changes will appear at the end of this article. In the meantime, let’s get into the meaty stuff.
Opening the .lrwebengine package
First, a brief review on how to go about opening the .lrwebengine package, as this will be necessary to what follows.
The web engine exists as a “package” with the extention .lrwebengine. On Windows systems, this package acts as a folder; to open it, double-click the package.
On Mac systems, Ctrl-click the package and select “Show Package Contents” from the resulting menu. This will open the package as a folder in a Finder window.
The Favicon
TTG Highslide Gallery and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro now include a favicon, which will appear in web browsers beside your gallery address, in the browser title bar and in browser tabs, as pictured.
There is only one favicon included, so you have no choices. However, if you would like to replace the favicon with one of your own design, this is easily done. First, Google a tutorial on how to create favicons, such as this one. Then open the .lrwebengine package as described above, and replace the included favicon.ico file with your own. You will find it located in the resources/images/ folder.
Download Image Links
TTG Highslide Gallery and TTG Highslide Gallery Pro now include options to provide download links for your images. The pictured controls may be found in the Color Palette control pane. By default, the image download links are disabled.
Please note, visitors may still download images from your gallery using the conventional methods, even with this feature disabled. This feature has nothing to do with image security, but simply allows you to setup links for downloading images. These links may be used to point to additional image renditions other than those on display, such as hi-res image files stored in a separate folder. This is not an e-commerce option, and cannot be used to sell digital downloads of images.
To enabled the download links, set the Method selection to “Link in Caption”. The download link will then appear in the large-rendition image caption, as pictured below.
Download Image link
By default, the download link points to the same image used by the gallery for large-rendition viewing (i.e. the same image shown in the Highslide overlay). If you wish for these links to point at separate renditions, then you must export these images from your library; the web engine will not create them for you.
For example, if you wish you provide hi-res image downloads, then you should export images of your desired quality from the Library module. Place these images into a folder of their own; in this example, we will name the folder ‘hires_images’. In the Download Image options, set the Image Location to “hires_images/”. After exporting your gallery, copy the hires_images folder into your exported gallery folder. Providing you’ve followed proper file-naming conventions for your exported hi-res images, the download links will now point to the images in the ‘hires_images’ folder.
Using the “Open Image in a New Window” check-box, you can have those links open images into a separate window; leaving it disabled will cause images to open into the parent window. You may also change the download link text using the “Link Text” field, if you’d like to translate your links into another language for example.
Global Pricing vs. Individual Item Pricing
Until now, TTG Highslide Gallery Pro has supported only global pricing, meaning that prices were uniform for all images in your gallery. The 1.9 update introduces individual item pricing, allowing you to set separate prices for each image in your gallery via IPTC metadata.
The options for the Shopping Cart Product Array, pictured, are located in the Appearance control pane and apply to the PayPal and FoxyCart shopping carts, as well as to the new transactionless shopping cart described later in this article.
Please note that individual item pricing is not available when using the Fotomoto integration features; Fotomoto pricing should instead be setup in your Fotomoto account.
By default, Item Pricing is set to “Global”. Global prices should be setup using the product array options under Shopping Cart Product Array.
To price items individually, set the Item Pricing option to “Per Item (set in metadata)”. When using Per Item prices, do not fill in the product array, as it will not be used. For each item in your gallery, go to the Library module and enter a price into an empty IPTC metadata field in the Metadata pane. Prices should be in the same metadata field for each image. Enter only raw numbers into metadata fields; do not include a currency symbol — 10 and 10.00 are both acceptable values; $10 is not.
Back in the Web module, access the Image Info pane. Make sure the check-box for “Shopping Cart Individual Pricing” is enabled, then set the IPTC metadata source for your prices. You may also set the “Shopping Cart Individual Description” which will appear beneath each item in your gallery. I recommend setting this as Custom Text, such as “Fine Art Print” rather than setting this from metadata, though the choice is yours. “Shopping Cart Item Name” will be shown on the invoice and is probably best set to Filename. See these options pictured below.
When setting up your cart with individual pricing, do not neglect to visit the options for Shopping Cart Appearance, and you may also utilize the Shopping Cart Secondary Array if desired.
In Global pricing mode, you may set as many as ten product options in the Shopping Cart Product Array settings; when using individual pricing, these options will not be available, and you may have only one product option. You may use the secondary array to provide additional options, however.
The Transactionless Shopping Cart
By popular request, for the 1.9 update to TTG Highslide Gallery Pro I have commissioned a good friend wise in the ways of PHP to construct a proprietary shopping cart that allows orders to be placed from your gallery without requiring an online transaction. The cart system he has created is nothing short of spectacular, highly configurable and fully translatable into foreign languages.
Before continuing, take the cart for a test-drive in the demonstration gallery.
Configuration is easy, but not necessarily intuitive. First, locate the pictured control in the Appearance control pane, and enable the “Enable Cart” check-box. This done, you may proceed to configure your cart using the Shopping Cart Appearance, Shopping Cart Product Array and Shopping Cart Secondary Array options. You may also choose to use the individual pricing options explained above.
But wait, there’s more! As you should have seen in the demonstration gallery, the cart includes several additional pages: the cart, the checkout page and the thank you page. These pages cannot be previewed in Lightroom (sad, I know). These pages borrow styling instructions from other areas of the gallery in order to maintain a design consistent with your gallery. The look of these pages comes from a combination of the settings for Gallery Description (Site Info pane), Selection Gallery Setup (Appearance pane) and Shopping Cart Appearance (Appearance pane). Even if you are not using these items in your gallery, it’s a good idea to turn them on, setup their appearance to match your gallery design, then turn them off again. This will ensure your cart pages match the design of your gallery.
It should be noted that the Transactionless Cart cannot be used simultaneously with the Selection Gallery, PayPal, FoxyCart or Fotomoto features.
You now know how to turn the cart on, configure its appearance and setup its product array. That’s all there is to do in Lightroom, but there’s still some configuration to be done outside.
You will need to crack open the .lrwebengine package, as described above. Dig into the cart folder and open the config.php file in a text-editor. Here is where you will setup the innards of your cart, including your email address, company name, checkout form, thank you message and more. It’s also where you may choose to translate your cart into another language. The file is marked-up with comments explaining how each item should be configured.
The image below shows a snippet of the config.php file.
To setup your cart, you will need to replace the values between the single-quotation-marks for each setting. For example, for TITLE you would replace the bit that reads “Your Company” with the name of your company. In most cases, CART_ID can be left as is. For SITE_EMAIL, you would replace the dummy email address with your own real address, etc. Make your way through the config.php file, making changes where indicated. At some point, I will release a tutorial video demonstrating this in full. In the meantime, it shouldn’t be too difficult to sort out.
With your config.php file setup, you may then restart Lightroom and export your gallery and cart. Because the cart is PHP, it will need to be run from a PHP-enabled web-server. It will not operate from your local desktop.
Coda
And that, in a rather large nutshell, is the 1.9 update. It’s meaty, as you can see. There are several other minor changes, fixes and improvements, detailed below.
Regarding the constantly promised TTG Highslide Gallery Pro Video Manual, I am sorry not to have begun posting the videos yet. I had intended to begin posting last week, but was abruptly called in to work full-time at one of the local commercial photo studios. I’ve been there every day for the last two weeks and will be working through the weekend as well; next week, I’m full time on location with another photographer. From Dec. 2-18, I have had / will have no days off. In my little spare time, I have been creating the new Simpleviewer engine and related updates, and working to finished up this 1.9 update to the Highslide galleries which has been nearly two months in development. With all of these revisions to my schedule, I am now hoping to being posting the videos during or immediately following the holidays. Whenever they finally hit the site, videos for all of the above 1.9 features will be included. So, please bear with me, and thank you for your patience.
Of the following changes, those in bold-face apply only to TTG Highslide Gallery PRO. The others apply to both the Pro and Standard editions of the Highslide galleries.
- v1.9 ( 2009-12-11 )
- New proprietary shopping cart system, without online transactions. Requires PHP.
- Added “Download Image” links; not an e-commerce option.
- PayPal language codes now supported.
- Added individual item pricing for PayPal / FoxyCart shopping carts; set item prices for each image in metadata, then access via Image Info pane.
- Added a favicon.
- Slideshow mode dimming slider now has a minimum value of 0 and a maximum of 100, owing to new underlying math that allows these values to work.
- Fixed a newly discovered bug affecting background-color of North/South Inline Slideshow layouts.
- New color controls for shopping cart drop-lists.
- Revised value ranges for thumbnail size and fixed width header sliders.
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! No need to say more
Matthew – This is a wonderful update. Thank you.
I have a question regarding the option for downloading images. I’m thrilled about this option being included but wondering why there is no ability to tie this to a purchase option? Is this a hard option to offer? I’m no programmer / coder so I make no assumptions about it’s simplicity. It’s a feature I would so love to take advantage of as I have many customers wanting to purchase a downloadable copy of images.
Very pleased with the updates and certainly wouldn’t want my challenge above to be construed otherwise. These updates are a welcome addition to a very useful and affordable tool for Lightroom users. I applaud your continued development efforts.
WOW!
More than half of my customers are too young to have a credit card or PayPal account! So, for the last season, I choose the “Client Select” option. The drawback was that I had to tell a size, paper and price in the header of the galleries asking to instruct me in the comment box if they wanted anytning different. Then I had to communicate the final price and take arrangement for payment.
But having all the options in PayPal mode is much simpler and I started to make a test gallery this week for customers to test and report if they can ask mom or dad and live with it or if they prefer the previous method…
Looks like that with this new Ver1.9, I get the best of both worlds! Did you make it “just for me” Matthew?
Thanks
Does the individual pricing support multiple prices for different size prints? From the way I read the text above it doesn’t look like it does.
Thanks, looking forward to making my TTG purchase soon.
@Denis Pagé (LRF)
Of course, Denis. You and everyone else.
I’m glad you approve of the updates.
@Scott Blackman
Actually, it’s a very complicated thing to do, as it would require a database to keep track of images, and a large amount of scripting to process orders, link orders to image, send URLs for images, obscure locations for images not purchased so that one cannot simply append a new file name to their purchased URL, etc. As I understand such things to work, this is well beyond the capabilities of Lightroom to produce.
@Steve Joerger
Global pricing supports up to ten options for orders, and can be used to specify prices for different print sizes.
Individual item pricing replaces this, however, and accepts only a single price. You might use the Secondary Product Array to create price modifiers, though. For example, you might set your base price as $10, then in the secondary array specify size options such as 4×6 + $5, 8×10 + $10, etc.
It’s a workaround, but it should work.
Hello Matt!
Using the transactionless cart, once uploaded to the server, when I click “Add to Cart” under an image I get the following. I have no idea of what I missed…
———————————————-
500 Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@MySiteName.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
———————————————-
OK. Wait… This may have to do with …/cart/config.php so I will look more closely at it tonight (EST) and let you know.
A stupid question but how do I download this 1.9 release as I have just purchased the 1.8 on 12/9. Thanks!
Nope! I redone the config.php from fresh original just in case but it is not the culprit. Where do I go from here?
Checking my template line by line and reading the above instructions a dozen times, what I noticed is that I don’t get any “cart, checkout nor thank you pages” (html) generated. I unchecked “Enable Selection Gallery” just prior to export thinking it is the way it should be done.
@LisaC
You can download the update using the same URL you received at time of purchase.
@Denis Pagé (LRF)
If you’re using the transactionless cart, then Fotomoto, PayPal, FoxyCart and Selection Gallery features must be turned OFF.
If you still have problems, you’ll need to post your gallery to the web and give me a URL so that I can see it.
Of course all other modules were off prior to export to
http://foot-o-graphie.com/galleries/testpanier/
TTG Pages is used in this sheme and all other galleries are in the Selection Gallery mode. Just this test one is transactionless cart.
@Denis Pagé (LRF)
Test this: Make a new cart using the default config.sys, in English. I want to test whether the error has to do with the PHP not handling your translation.
I think you nailed it down!
No need to test with the original config.php (not to be confused with config.sys
). Opening my actual translated one in a programmer’s editor was showing different colors for different parts of code. Then, it jumped in my face that (the address) was translated to (l’adresse). Notice the ‘ character? DANGEROUS in PHP as you know. So I will have to study or revise my notes about PHP on how to escape those.
But to confirm, I will test the orininal config.php so we know
Sad news Matthew!
Same “500 Internal server error” is still there when I click add to cart or view cart with the original config.php. So, I completely removed TTG HGP from Lightroom and reinstalled as if I just buyed it for the first time. Then started Lightroom selected another gallerie to clear things and TTG HGP with some images selected. I accepted the licence agreement and kept the lorem ipsum and your default prices just enabling transactionless cart after unchecking selection gallerie. Generated a new one and transfered by FTP to site. Just one thing: I have put config.php in demo mode on last line removing the //.
Where do we go from there?
Mac OS X Leopard, Lightroom 2.5 set to 32 bits french.
@Denis Pagé (LRF)
We are looking into this. Thank you.
@Denis Pagé (LRF)
Can you please post your gallery using the default config.php file and give me a URL? I need to see this.
Same link as above. I erased the gallerie on the site before uploading again as per my last messages.
Hi there,
In Gallery Pro 1.9 there is a problem.
When I export my pages, the Menu Item 2 path is going fault.
It must be export ../../galleryindex.php, and the program export galleryindex.php, so he can’t find the correct page. IL change this in the index.html with an editor.
No need to change the index.html file; the menu target can be changes from the Menu Items section of the Site Info control pane. By default, the value is ../../galleryindex.php, which should work just fine unless you’ve changed it at some point during the gallery creation process.
Hi – there seems to be a javascript issue – even on your own demo. This code is throwing an “object expected” error under IE8:
$(function(){
idplate = new Image();
idplate.src = “./resources/images/idplate.png”;
});
Anyways, love the pro gallery! Thanks.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll get that sorted.
Cheers,
Matt
I have the paypal shopping cart enabled for my gallery, but when you select a price and click add to cart it opens paypal with a return to merchant page with the error – Please enter an amount greater than zero. Is there something I am missing?
You need to disable any items that are not being used. The gallery has five items enabled by default, so if you’re using four for example, then you need to disable the last one. Empty items cause errors.
I setup first (test) Fotomoto site which works with
http://www.exceptionallight.com/client/clydes/
by fails on subdomain of
clydes.exceptionallight.com
Is there a way to set up subdomains to work?
Thanks.
You need to login to your Fotomoto account, visit your settings and add the subdomain to your Alternative Site Addresses.
Hello, I set up a test gallery for the transactionless cart and when i click on add to cart I get an error that says
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /homepages/3/d310122312/htdocs/erb photography/clients/Cea/transactionless cart/cart/ShoppingCart.php on line 5
Can you please tell me what I need to do to fix this?
Please verify that your host is running an up-to-date version of PHP, which would be PHP 5.2+.
My host is running php 5.2+
Can I have a URL please?
http://www.erbphotography.net/clients/Transactionless%20Test%20Gallery/
Thanks. Can you please enable debugging and error reporting by editing the config.php and index.php files as described toward the end of this tutorial.
Please enable the demo mode as well so that we can test email functions with our own addresses.
I have enabled the debugging and error reporting as well as the demo mode
thanks
We’ve had a look at your gallery, but cannot identify the problem. Are you certain that PHP 5 is enabled on your web server? Can you please zip the cart folder and email it to me?
I am using 1and1 as my web server and I spoke with them and they said that php 5.2+ was enabled. What is your email and I will email the folder to you. Thank you for your help with this.