It is a similar dilemma.
Actually here's my story...
I have read postings similar to this. For my situation I have set up a website for a photographer.
He has Weddings, Family Portraits, Senior Portraits and the like.
What I am trying to do is create individual customer albums but not set it up like personal or private galleries. Meaning no User Categories. Why?
Because it's too much for what the photographer is looking for. He just wants the customer to have their own album to view, not be able to things like modify or delete or create new albums on their own. So no administrative access on the part of the customer as well as not letting them be able to upload. True you can just set up user galleries and true alot of this you can shut off when you set up a group, but what about when you try to create a new user album? Well to do that you must first create the user and assign him/her to a group. Then log in as them to create the album. Then when you do log in as them there is that "Admin mode" available that you don't want the user to have but you need as the administrator to create the album in the first place. Yes, you can alter your theme and comment out some of the fields as in commenting out the Administrator menu, but that means that you will have to have two themes available-one for the user and one for you the administrator. The administrator theme would not have the admin fields commented out but the user theme would. But that can be a drag because you always have to make sure you as the administrator always use the right theme and it's not really a good way to possibly have a user end up using or finding your administrator theme.
So here's my solution. In the way I am going to describe it will set it up to allow the administrator true administrative rights to his users, while also allowing the setup of private albums should you want to as well or sometime down the road.
1) Log in to your gallery as the administrator.
2) Go to users group
3) Create a user group for your customers who don't mind their albums being shown in public, we'll call that "Public Album". These customers will not require a login name or password.
4) Then create individual private user groups that only allow viewing by that individual private user.
In other words say you have a user named Steve Mitchell.
You would then go in and create a group called Mitchell.
In my case I would make that Mitchell group allow to post comments and whatever else but set the "Public Album" to not post comments so no passerby can do so. I leave in my configuration setup that anyone can send e-cards but that's ok since only the albums that are in that public group will be able to. The Mitchell or private group can as well but only someone who is a member of it (it will make sense in a sec-read on)
I also don't allow for ratings as well, but again that is your preference.
What is important here is that every private user is entirely a private group.The reason for this? Well when you create an album as the administrator you can do just that! Be the administrator!
5) Create the album as the administrator and set in the albums properties to be viewed by that particular user group or in this case the group named Mitchell.
6) Now create the user. In this case it will be Steve Mitchell. For the users properties I make him a member of the user group Mitchell and nothing else. And of course he has a password...
So now Steve Mitchell is a member of the user group Mitchell.
And only the albums that can be viewed in the Mitchell group can be seen by Steve Mitchell and no one else because no one else will be in that group.So that solves the problem of having Steve Mitchell or a customer who wants a private album the choice to have one and not have to deal with him having administrative rights and such. Remember I just want the users to be able to view there photos publicly or privately and nothing else. I also use Casper's awesome PayPal mod so customer's can order their prints, man I gotta make a site like this for me too-lol!
If at some point I want to create a third type of customer that has administrative access I would then create a user gallery. Perhaps the photographer I am doing this web site for might want that should he want to let customers upload their own photos at some point. All in all the good thing about doing it this way is that there is less hacking to allow something like that to possibly happen someday.
Now here is my problem...When Steve Mitchell logs in to his album he is not taken to it. He is logged in and all, but he is not brought to directly to his album or rather to the albums that he is a group member of. If there were someway to alter the login so when a customer does log in they are taken to the albums they are a group member of....? If that could be figured out I bet many people out here using Coppermine would really find that extremely beneficial. I know there are many out here that are in the same situation. I have been trying to alter and play with the login, but still no luck....so you read this far, any ideas?
Thanks,
dondo521
by the way I promise to edit this down to a more concise tutorial should a solution to the login problem be found. Again I bet there are alot of people in my shoes...
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Topic: Logging in to an album that matches the group you are a member of? (Read 5093 times)