How It Works
Main PageHow Picture Placemat Works
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Components
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Picture Placemat has three main aspects:
- a MySQl Database that holds all the information about each image
- an Apache Web Server that presents the images, information and tools via a web browser
- a handful of BASH CGI scripts which provide the functionality and control
Image Storage
- Picture Placemat supports JPEG image types, this is the standard for digital cameras
- Images are all stored somewhere within a main image directory, usually just below DocumentRoot on the web server
- Inside this main area are directories called "Collections" which represent general catagories for sets of images
- A Collection will typically contain one or more "Albums" which act as a sub-catagory for a smaller set of images
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- Albums, or Collections without any Albums, are known as "Image Sets"
- you do not need to use an Album and can just use a Collection as the only container
- you cannot mix these, so if you have a Collection with its own images, you can not also have an Album within that Collection
- in almost all cases, except maybe for a small static group of images, you should create Albums to help organize your images
- There is an optional, but recommended, innermost directory referred to as an "Images Directory".
- This holds the actual images for the Collection or Album it is inside
- This directory is optional but highly recommended for file system organization
- There is also a similar "Thumbnails Directory" which is automatically created when the Admin Tools are used to create thumbnail images for a Collection/Album
- The Main Image Area, the "Images Directory" and the "Thumbnails Directory" settings can all be viewed in "View System Details"
- these are configured in the initial setup/install
- these should not be changed as they are referenced in the database and in some Admin Tools
- if defined they must be used
- Also managed through the Admin Tools are "Logical Groups" which can link images across different Image Sets
- these are just database tags and not related to the actual image storage
- You may also want to look at:
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Script Interaction
- At the heart of Picture Placemat are about 50 Bash Shell Scripts
- these all work via Apache CGI
- There are primarily two functional types of scripts:
- the main image navigation and search scripts. These are used for viewing, running the slideshow and for searches
- the larger second group are related to the Admin Tools. These include the Admin Help pages. All are under protected access
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