Easy Application Install (Gallery2) on IXWebhosting

Web hosting company IXwebhosting offer a number of one-click GPL applications that their hosting customers can implement on their websites.

I recently attempted to install Gallery2 using this facility. I had previously installed Gallery2 on my Startlogic web hosting account through its standard installation script.

Unfortunately my experience installing Gallery2 on IXwebhosting was not perfect. I ran into problems relating to file uploads. I had two distinct problems:

- Photos over 2 Megabytes in size were rejected with an "Upload Failed" error message

- File uploads would fail with the following error:

"filename.ext: You may need to set LimitRequestBody 16777216 and memory_limit=64M in /etc/php.ini and /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf on your Gallery server java.net.SocketException: Connection reset"

How I resolved this issue

The 2 megabyte file restriction appears to be a default setting from ixwebhosting which effectively blocks any web-based application from uploading files greater then 2 megabytes in size. (This wont affect you using FTP to upload content to your own site)

In the cgi-bin folder I created a new php.ini configuration file. In this file I added the following text string:

upload_max_filesize = 2048M

The other file upload problem was easily remedied by following the instructions within the error message. I followed the instructions relating to the php.ini file and the issue appears resolved. I added the following two lines to the php.ini file:

LimitRequestBody 16777216 memory_limit=64MB

It is a bit disappointing that this "easy application" required a bit of fiddling with in order to get in to operation under this hosting environment.

When installing on Startlogic the only extra configuration required was actually documented in the installation check of the Gallery2 installer itself.

Google Analytics for Gallery 2

This evening I took the simple steps of adding Google Analytics tracking to my new online photo gallery. I found a simple and straight-forward tutorial on Bharat Mediratta's Gallery site at the following URL:

Google Analytics for Gallery

The process is quite simple in that all that is required is to make a new directory within Gallery, copy an existing configuration file (theme.tpl) into it, and insert the HTML code into the theme.tpl file and save it.

Gallery automatically picks up the the new directory created and uses the tpl within it. The author of the tutorial advises that this process will also survive updates and upgrades to Gallery2.

My Photo Gallery is Reborn!

After the recent problems with my photo gallery due to Startlogic disabling allow_url_fopen functionality, I decided to bite the bullet and have installed Gallery version 2.2. This version does not suffer the same limitations as version 1.5 which I had installed.

Installation was a breeze, with some fantastic instructions provided for full installation. After installation, I successfully imported all of my version 1.5 photo albums into 2.2. This worked well, however it did fail at one stage, which I resolved by individually uploading each album separately.

The main interface looks a lot cleaner. The only initial thing that bothered me was not being able to work out how to upload pictures in bulk! By default, the installation only provided uploading via web browser. This was quickly remedied after I located the plugins facility. A few moments of one-click installation, and the Java Applet I was so fond of in the past was back. I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that there are now more options for uploading, ranging from WebDAV, Windows XP Publishing etc available.

One good new option was the fact if there are no publicly available albums, a user is prompted to log in with credentials. Previous versions of Gallery presented users with a page with no albums on it, confusing many of them.

I also like the fact that albums now display the total number of photos within them, even when they are within a nested sub-album! Everything is looking good so far!