This guide will go through the options available in the AWSOM PixGallery Admin Options/Settings area. To get to this page click either the admin “Options” link (for WordPress 2.3.3 and earlier versions) or the “Settings” link (for WordPress 2.5.x and later) and then click the “Pixgallery” link.

Custom Folder Images

PixGallery now has the ability to display custom images for gallery folders. To utilize this feature simply place an image (of type .png, .gif, or .jpg) within any folder and call it “pxggalleryimage” (so pxggalleryimage.jpg is an example). This will then be used by PixGallery as the image for that folder on the thumbnail page. You can place a custom folder image in every folder, and of any image type you want. These images will be hidden and not be displayed in your thumbnail page as their own image nor will they appear on the full size image page.

Global WordPress Effects

Globally manage image size for all images in WordPress (even those not in a gallery)(0 = disabled):
PixGallery can actual operate on every image in your site, including ones not in a gallery. If you want PixGallery globally to force all of the images of your site in posts and pages to have a maximum height and width you can set this parameter to do that, otherwise set both to 0 to disable this function. Please note 2 things about this function: 1) all of your images must be set to 777 file permissions. 2) this function literally resizes your image files themselves and rewrites them so the originals are altered. This function is designed to save time for people placing large megapixel files online from their cameras without having to bother using Photoshop or other techniques to resize them first.

Turn off Scanning for images in Posts? (Pages will still be checked) :
This setting determines if PixGallery will scan your Posts for the above resize function, or to show regular galleries. Most users should leave this setting on “No” (as in, it should still scan posts). This setting was created for people who are using plugins to ad external images to their posts (typically advertising plugins, or in some cases plugins that integrate places like Photobucket or other image sharing services)–The short answer is PixGallery expects to be able to get info on any image in your site, so images on other servers cause PixGallery to time out or slow down the loading of your page because it can’t get their info.

Next up is the Gallery Layout/CSS area:

Number of columns per gallery page (0 = unlimited)
This option selects how pictures will appear across your archive on the page. If you select 0 then all of your images (no matter how many) will stretch across the page in one long row (and probably blow up your WordPress Theme).

Number of rows per gallery page (0 = unlimited)
This option selects how many rows down the page your archive will stretch. If you set this to 0 your image archive will all be on one page and continue on until all images are shown, if you set it to a number and there are more images than the combined column and row amount (so 3 across 3 down is 9 images per page and you have 12 images), your archive will have multiple pages of archives with links to move through the pages.

How do you want PixGallery to sort your images on the Thumbnail page? (NOTE: On some servers the Last File and First File sorting types may be reversed due to the way the server is set up, if the images are not sorting the way you expect, try reversing the sort type. Alphabetical is unaffected by this and will work fine on all server types)
This sets the sorting order of your archive. Last file and First File can be reversed in how they operate because Windows and Linux servers natively sort files in opposite ways by default–so to achieve the Last File sort you may need to select First File in some cases. Numerical sort is based on supplying your images and galleries with “Position in Gallery” numbers in their captions which will then determine where they are displayed in your gallery view.

Do you want to add Custom CSS to your Gallery?
This feature allows the admin to add custom CSS to their overall gallery to better match the look of the gallery to their theme. Any CSS that works with the HTML div tag will work. This entry affects the overall HTML div that covers the entire gallery.

Next up is the Gallery Images area:

Maximum small thumbnail image size (0 = no max)
This determines how large Pixgallery will make your thumbnails for the archive view. If you set both parameters to 0 then it will use the native size for the image in the archive view.

Maximum image size for viewing full size images within the WordPress page
Pixgallery actually has three sizes of images, the thumbnail archive view (the previous option), the single image view (which is what this option determines) and the full size view. When you click a thumbnail and go to the single image view of that image you are technically looking at it’s “Large Thumbnail”. If you click the image again it will pop up the full size image in it’s own window. If your images are really big (bigger than your WordPress Theme can show), you can set these parameters so that you have a bigger image for people to see within your page but still scaled down enough to not break your theme. The best usage of this parameter is to set the width to the maximum amount that won’t break your theme while leaving the height set to 0.

Make thumbnails all squared
Normally Pixgallery creates thumbnails as scaled down versions of your images, so the thumbnails of different sized images will not all be the same size (though constrained by your maximum small thumbnail option settings above). This option allows you to force Pixgallery to make all of the thumbnails into squares of the same size. This will of course cut off some details from some images and focus on the center of the image.

Would you like Pixgallery to Watermark your Images Automatically?
This new feature allows you to set if Pixgallery will automatically create watermarked images for you to display in your galleries. Please note your original images are NOT altered by this setting. The watermarked images are copies that are made in your cache folder and then displayed in place of your original images. To change watermarks or add them to an existing gallery you must delete your existing images in your cache folder by clicking the “Delete All Cache Files” button on the Write–>Pixgallery Image Captions page–Pixgallery will then recreate them based on your new settings. You can choose to have the images marked with text (which uses your blogs URL set in WordPress) or you can provide an image to overlay–place the image file in the awsompixgallery/images folder and call it “watermark.png” or “watermark.gif” depending on which setting you choose. (an example set of files is provided there, overwrite the files with your own).

Image Information Display Options

ComicPress Theme Support: Do you want to automatically add a link below your images to the news post(s) that corresponds to that image? (requires images to be named according to ComicPress y/m/d format)
If you are using the ComicPress theme for WordPress you can set this option to on to have Pixgallery add a link under your image to the news post that accompanied this image. So, if you name your image 2007-04-07 Pixgallery would add a link to that day’s post.

Pixgallery Show Image View Count:
This setting turns on or off the display of the view counts of your images. To have this work you need to have a caption set up in the database for every image you want to track. Images without captions are not tracked. This toggles the display to the visitor, you can always view the image counts of images by reviewing their captions from the Write->PixGallery Image Captions page.

Remove _ (underscores) from file name in Image and thumbnail view? (EXAMPLE: my_image_name.gif would appear as “my image name” as opposed to “my_image_name”)
This option cleans up file names so they look better in the archive and single image view. Since most web servers don’t like file names with spaces in them you typically have to name files with _ instead of spaces, this options removes them and puts the spaces in.

Do you want to add Captions to your images? (use the Pixgallery Captions area under the Admin “Manage” tab to input your captions)
This turns on or off the display of your custom captions under images. Normally you’d probably want to turn this on.

Do you want to add the Display of EXIF data to your images?
This Option determines if Pixgallery automatically reads EXIF data from your images and displays it on the Single Image page under the image. This is mostly useful for Photo blogs, though some EXIF data does get encoded when using Image programs like Photoshop.

Do you want to add the Display of IPTC data to your images?
This Option determines if Pixgallery displays embedded IPTC data for your images on the Single Image page under the image. This is useful for people who use photos from photo services or newspapers that have embedded caption, copyright, and writer/photographer credits in IPTC form.

Image/Gallery Effects

PixGallery’s Built In Javascript Image Display method (special effect when Image/Thumbnail is clicked)
Remember what I said about the Large Thumbnail being an intermediate image, well this option determines how the potentially bigger image will appear if you click the single image view. If you select “No Javascript” then clicking the image will load a new page and show just the image by itself. If you select “Display in New floating window” then a pop up window will appear with the full size image. If you select “Lightbox Effect Overlay” then a “lightbox type” effect will occur with the full size image displayed above your webpage.

If “No Javascript” is selected, do you want full size images to open in a new window instead of within the same window?
If you are not using the Lightbox or new floating Window javascript features listed in the previous setting you can choose to have Pixgallery open your images in a new window instead of in the same window.

What do you want to happen when someone clicks on an image on it’s own page?
Some people have asked for the “click the image to move to the next image in the gallery” behavior, this setting sets that if you want. Otherwise you see the image in it’s own window if you click it.

If you want to use a 3rd party javascript plugin and turn off the built in system, set the following setting to “custom” and input the custom rel code needed to add the effect to your images in the following box.
Pixgallery now allow you to use 3rd party image effects by setting this setting to “custom” and inputting the rel code that the effect uses. For example the plugin “Lightbox 2” uses the rel code “lightbox”.

To have the popup occur when clicking on the thumbnail images rather than when clicking on the large images check off this option. Thumbnail popup
This cuts out the middleman of going to the large thumbnail view from the small thumbnail page, and just does the previous option effect immediately. Note that enabling this will mean that the AWSOM mod captions and news post links will not appear since only the image itself displays in these views.

Navigation/Page Display Elements

ShareThis Integration or Sharing Links: Would you like Pixgallery to Automatically integrate with ShareThis?
Many people use the “ShareThis” plugin to allow their visitors to easily share their posts/pages–now you can set it so PixGallery automatically integrates with this plugin to make it’s own links for galleries and images. If you don’t have ShareThis installed, PixGallery will add links to galleries and images that make it easier for people to get the path to link themselves to your gallery or image.

Pixgallery Limit Pagination Links for Thumbnail View
This setting lets you limit the number of page links that get displayed under the thumbnail view when you have a very large set of pages in your gallery.

Do you want to limit the number of Thumbnails displayed on the index page for a gallery (set to 0 to disable this feature)?
This feature is designed to replicate the look of many review sites that show a few thumbnails of an entire gallery in their post on their index. So instead of having 20 images show their thumbnails you can show 3 if you want. The full post viewed on the single.php page or archive page would then show the full gallery. Underneath the limited thumbnails is also displayed a link to “see the entire gallery”.

Would you like to turn off titles and link text under Thumbnails?
This setting goes somewhat with the above setting. It allows you to remove the name and links from underneath thumbnails to provide a cleaner look to the thumbnail view. It allows for tighter grouping of the images. This does not affect the single view of the images though, which will still have their names and captions displayed if they are set.

Do you want to display Previous/Next Links under your Images as well as above them?
You can now optionally add the next/previous arrows below your images as well as display them above your images.

Pixgallery Individual Comments: set to yes to turn on the individual commenting system.
This setting turns on the individual commenting system in Pixgallery. If you enable this setting, any comments placed on a page/post with a gallery will have the comments “sticky” to the image or gallery being viewed when the comment is placed. These comments are then only shown on those pages. Please note: any comments entered on a gallery previous to turning on this setting will no longer be displayed at all–they have no associated image or gallery.

Would you like to hide the display of the Sidebar on Image Gallery Large Thumbnail Pages (only works with Themes that call sidebar.php as the sidebar)?
This setting will (in most themes) hide the sidebar display on the large thumbnail page to give you more room to display the larger image. If your theme does not use #sidebar as it’s designation for it’s sidebar div this won’t work.

Would you like to hide the display of the Breadcrumb in galleries and image pages?
This setting removes the “Breadcrumb” path shown above galleries and images. Some people want their view to be less cluttered so I added this option to enable a simpler view to the page.

Would you like to have a Folder icon Added To your Galleries in the Thumbnail view?
Since PixGallery can have subfolders as well as images shown side by side, it can be difficult for visitors to know what is or isn’t an image. This setting enables the display of a small icon next to subfolders so visitors immediately know that the thumbnail will link to a subgallery. The subsetting box for this option allows you to supply your own image (put this image file in the awsom-customizations folder in wp-content/uploads/) so just put the name of the file in the box and PixGallery will use that image instead.

RSS and Header SEO Options

Would you like to have Pixgallery add your Image/Gallery Name to the Title Tag in the header of your site when viewing an image/gallery?
Many people have asked for the ability to have their image/gallery names added to the WordPress page header title area (the part of your web browser that says what page in your site you’re on). This setting turn that on, and determines if it simply shows the name of your gallery/image, or replicates the breadcrumb path–and if this comes before or after the WordPress page/post title (or even replaces this title entirely). You will probably need to play with this setting a bit, as well as possibly make some changes to your theme to get the look/feel the way you want it.

Would you like to have Pixgallery add your Image/Gallery Tags as Keywords to the header of your site when viewing an image/gallery?
This setting adds to your “Keywords” Meta tag for your site to add your image/gallery tags (the ones you input on the gallery/image captions entry page in the admin area) to the page when viewing an image/gallery.

Would you like to have RSS feeds for all of your Galleries?
PixGallery can now make RSS feeds for all of your Galleries. This setting turns this feature on/off.

Would you like to have a link to the RSS feed appear under the Gallery on the page?
Normally PixGallery adds an RSS feed link to your browser automatically (so in Firefox for example it will be shown in the URL bar for you to select). If you want to specifically have a link shown on the page (under the image/gallery being viewed) turn this setting to “Yes”.

What do you want the RSS to Link to (default is to view in WordPress page):
There are 2 ways to have PixGallery create RSS links–Directly to the image, or to the WordPress page for the image. For the most part you’d probably want to show your actual site (i.e. the WordPress page), but in some cases you may just want to show only the image itself.

How Often Do you want to update your Feeds? (default is every 24 hours, make time shorter only if you are constantly adding new images):
This setting determines how often PixGallery refreshes your RSS link files. If you are constantly adding new images then you can lower the timeframe so these images get shown in your RSS feed faster. Unless you literally add images all the time though leave this to the highest timeframe to minimize the load on your server.

Do You Want To Make Your Feeds Into Photo Feeds?
Normally RSS feeds only have links displayed. “Photo Feeds” actually embed the image within the RSS feed itself. Not all RSS feed viewers can display these images, but it doesn’t normally hurt to leave this setting set to Yes.

Number of Items in the RSS feed (Default is 10):
How many images do you want to have in your RSS feed? Most feeds use 10, but you can have as many or as few as you want.

What do name do you want to use for the “Creator” field (typically this is the Artist, Company or Owners name):
RSS feeds can have a “Creator” field defined. This is optional. Put whatever name you want in this box.

What entry do you want for the “Rights” field (Your copyright statement goes here):
This is a global “Rights” statement. If you like Creative Commons or another type of license place that declaration in this box to have it added to your Feed.

Now to the AWSOM Plugin options:

Administrative Options:

Disable Admin Area Scanning:
In rare cases some other plugins can cause PixGallery to display errors in the admin area of WordPress when you add a new gallery to a post/page. If you have an error that pops up in the admin view turn this setting to “No” to fix it.

Pixgallery Legacy Mode support: Set this to yes if you are upgrading from a previous version and still need to update your image captions to new system. Not needed for new installs.
If you have already added captions for images using an older version of Pixgallery ( < 4.5.0) then you should turn this setting on until you have had a chance to update all of your captions to the new system. The new system uniquely identifies images by their file system location as opposed to their name. You can update your images easily by viewing them on the single image view page and clicking the "Edit Image Caption" link, which will populate their file system information for you. You can then update the caption and it will then be ready for the new system. Once you've converted all of your captions you should turn this setting to No. Pixgallery Debug/Admin Mode: Set this to yes if you want to see more advanced information and get Debug info when logged in as Admin.
This setting allows the admin to view extra information in regard to their gallery set up to help in fixing issues with image or gallery display. The information is only visible to admins. Additionally it also shows the sort order number of each image to help in ordering your gallery using the numerical sort option in image captions. (Position in Gallery) If you select the subsetting “Advanced (edit mode)” you can actually edit the name, numerical sort position, and caption of images from the front end of your site if your are logged in. This can really speed up editing and setting sort order. This can make your theme look a little weird to you when logged in though (because of the entry boxes being displayed), but is only visible to admins, not regular visitors.

Would you like to use the advanced Visual Editor to edit your Image and Gallery Captions?
This setting determines if you input your Image and Gallery captions using the Visual Editor or the HTML code editor.

Would you like to turn on Absolute Linking Path support?
This setting is designed to compensate in certain cases where your WordPress install is in a sub folder and you also are using Fancy Permalinks. In these cases Pixgallery can get confused about where to look for your images. If you have a situation where thumbnails or full size images are not appearing correctly under the above conditions turn this setting on. In rare cases some server setting for just Fancy Permalinks might need this setting enabled.

Would you like Support AWSOM Pixgallery by adding a credit to AWSOM.org in your footer?
You can choose to help AWSOM.org by turning this feature on. It places a small text link in your footer that tells the world that you are using the AWSOM system of plugins to power your galleries. It’s not required but greatly appreciated :) It requires your footer to have the wp_footer theme call in it in order to be displayed.

Last, the Cache Path settings:

Relative path to your cache directory which has write permissions. This directory is used to store the thumbnail images that are created.
UPDATED SETTING INFORMATION: This is where you tell Pixgallery where to place the thumbnails that it automatically creates for you. This path is based on the root of your website, so a folder on the top level called cache would be input as cache/. You also need to set the permissions of this folder to 777. In some cases you may need to play with this setting to get it to work right on your server. Typically you may need to add a / to the beginning of your setting (i.e. /cache/) or remove all / (i.e. cache). Only play with this if your thumbnails or full size images aren’t properly being displayed. Also note the “Absolute Linking” setting above, which may also help in these cases.

If you would like to switch to and create the default cache folder click the “Create Default Cache” button.
If you see this option this means (most likely) that you are upgrading from a previous version of AWSOM Pixgallery. The new version now allows for the automatic creation of a default cache folder in your uploads folder in wp-content. If you want to switch to this folder for your cache click the “Create Default Cache” button. You do NOT have to do this if your previous cache folder is set up properly and working, it’s just an option. If it says “Default Cache File Already Created.” here then the default cache has already been created for your install.