New Image Gallery Features!

Category per-page, Mutiple Image Uploader, PayPal shopping cart and item options!

We've been busy here at Montague WebWorks adding new features to the Photo Gallery function of the RocketFusion software. These features are now available on your website!

1. Adding Photo Gallery Categories to Site Pages

One of our customers, Hale Custom Signs, has many, many, many photos on their website. They really use the photo gallery function agressively, and Greg Auben, the person who manages their website, asked if we could automate the process of getting specific photo gallery categories onto each page, as well as maybe have those gallery categories show up as sub-menu items in the navigation.

The answer, of course, was yes.

You now have the ability to very easily assign any photo gallery categories to any page on your website. Simply edit the page in question, and click the Functions on this Page link. Notice the new check list item for each Photo Gallery Category, as well as File Category. Check the boxes for any categories you wish and they will now show up at the bottom of the page!

Simple!

This is the first step into the new site organizating method: site pages, each of which may include one or more function. More coming soon...

 

2. Multiple Image Uploader

Another new feature in the Photo Gallery is the multiple image uploader. Just click on the button labeled "Multiple Uploader" while looking at the list of all photo gallery categories (see sample image, above) and you will be sent to a page with a Java-based applet (your browser may ask you to approve the applet the first time).

You can now open up a file explorer on your computer, multiple select the image files you want to upload, and then click the big green Up Arrow to send them off. The website will automatically title each image using the filename, and will make all the thumbnails for you. When the upload is done the website loads the Manage Images page for that category. You can now adjust the titles of your images, add thubnail descriptions, select images to show up in your homepage slideshow, add item cost if you're using the gallery as a PayPal shopping cart, etc.

This is SUCH a better way to get your images on the website. You can even choose to have all the images automatically appear on the site instead of having to approve each image individually afterwards. Easy!

 

3. New PayPal features

And speaking of PayPal, our new customer Garden Hands, by Tony Palumbo of the Green Emporium, wanted to sell his garden sculptures on a RocketFusion website using the simple cart the photo gallery provides. But he wanted a full cart, not just a bunch of "buy it now" buttons. After doing some research we found that PayPal had recently made full-cart integration much easier. They also now support an item quantity field, and an options field.

This means RocketFusion can now be used for a wider range of e-commerce purposes!

To enable PayPal on your website, simply go to Admin > Control Panel and enter in your PayPal account email address in the email_PayPal field. You will now notice new fields when editing your images in the Photo Gallery, such as PPamount, PPshipping, PPoptions, etc.

To enable the full-cart feature in your Photo Gallery, simply go to Admin > Control Panel and set yn_Use_PayPal_Cart to "yes." Setting it to "no" will revert the button to "Buy it Now."

To use the options feature for an item, simple edit an individual photo/item that is for sale, and add the options to the new "Options" field, one option per line. For example (see the sample image, above):

Gold Sun
Green Sun

When the customer clicks the "Add to Cart" button they will be sent to PayPal's standard shopping cart page, where they can change item quantities as well as remove items, and click the "continue shopping" link to return to your website.

We will continue adding more PayPal features to the RocketFusion software as time goes by.

If you have any questions, please just give us a call!

-Mik