Posted by kostajh on February 22, 2009 at 2:23am
Hi all,
I am working on converting an existing news site to Drupal 6. There are some really nice write ups on this group and suggestions that have helped out on the way. I think the only thing I am not sure of at this point is the best image solution for the site.
Right now I am using Wysiwyg with TinyMCE installed. I need something that makes inserting inline images simple and the formatting consistent (i.e. text wrap option needs to work well). I have limited experience using various combinations of imagefield, imagecache, IMCE, and Image Assist. Eventually this site will contain thousands of images. What is the most reliable module to go with at this time?
Comments
Poke...
I too am wondering what the response will be, posting to track this thread.
reuse
If you want to be able to reuse images in multiple articles or multiple contexts, images-as-nodes that are then nodereferenced in your article are the best option in my opinion. You can create a content type for images that contains exactly the information you need (author, copyright, byline, ...) and it'll all be saved in a structured way rather than just as one big caption. It's the "enterprise" solution. That doesn't mean it's the best one in all cases though.
If you really want fine-grained control over where in your article the images should appear (e.g. not just wrapped along the text but inserted at various points where the author thinks it's most fitting) using a wysiwyg solution will be more practical though, and you'll have less or no custom theming and programming to do.
I have no suggestions on the wysiwyg front. As far as images-as-nodes go: I've used image+image_attach and it's okay, but it seems like more and more people are migrating to imagefield+imagecache, and hence there are more nifty features and gadgets available for imagefield.
reuse images - "enterprise" solution
Thank you for advice!
I figured out this is what we need.
We have local news site with 36 000 images (photo) and 150 000 articles.
Now looking for acceptable way to migrate to drupal.
Is there any approach to load multiple images at once and associate with node through gallery - create gallery, upload images and create nodes?
I have found node_images, media modules - are they usable in that case?
And, suppose editor want to attach nodes with images from different galleries - how can I provide custom view for editor, so he can select gallery, set filter (date,tags) and select images from thumbnails, not from node names or similar?
Do I have to write my own module? May be there exist one?
For reuse option image HAVE TO be easy reused: easy find, easy add.
How do you do this?
I have created new topic http://groups.drupal.org/node/20756
now waiting for reply in any.
Can you explain how you do this?
I really like what you did with your school's site and in reading through these posts think your approach is probably the best way to handle images for stories. But, I am new to Drupal and not that familiar with how to utilize nodereferece to link images and story nodes. If it's not too much trouble, could you explain with detail how this is done?
Thank you,
Joe
I would recommend using
I would recommend using image field along with a custom Article CCK and positioning the images explicitly in template file. Use <a href="http://drupal.org/project/imagecache>image cache to resize and use them along with the teaser.
A Gallery could be created using a custom Gallery CCK using image field and Views! Associate Taxonomy with the Gallery CCK to categorize the Gallery.
Netlink Technologies Ltd
http://shyamala-drupal.blogspot.com/
Shyamala
Unimity Solutions
Hello, thanks for this
Hello, thanks for this recommendation. Imagefield & imagecache is what I had been leaning towards and folks comments here were helpful in deciding.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "positioning the images explicitly in template file"? Which template file exactly, and how would this be done?
thanks!
node-TYPE.tpl.php
You'll need to create a custom content type, of course, and a corresponding node template. If your custom content type is "editorial," your node template file would be node-editorial.tpl.php. The devel module makes it easy for you to see what's available in the $node object. You'll need to write some conditional PHP, and potentially iterate across an array of image attachments.
But how
I am also in agreement, but I have a slight problem. When a user is creating a custom article and uses the imagefield CCK, how can I allow the user to search for an existing image? (rather than uploading a new one?).
You say I could great a Gallery using views? how would I do this?
Any help on that would be much appreciated as I've been searching for some while on this and not getting anywhere.
Formatted, slideshow, lightbox
Example:
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-02-24/story/tweaking_the_han...
CCK embedded image field. Derivative images are created using imagecache.
Click through the slideshow to see how it sequences; click on an image to make it pop up.
This approach seems to require the least workload in production.
Our Approach
The Cornell Daily Sun has used the Image assist module to insert images inline, but I don't know if I would recommend the approach. The main thing Image assist does is it allows you to use existing Image nodes (or to create a new Image node on the fly) for articles. It places a tag into the node body with all the relevant information (such as the nid of the image), and then a Drupal filter will convert that tag into the proper HTML for the image.
The main thing I like is that there's a separate image node somewhere that gets included in the article, but I don't like the whole idea of the inline tag, and neither does our incoming Web Editor, Scott. To some extent, I think there's a lot of value in keeping the text and images separate. It's better to have a separate image field and then use some Drupal theming to place the image in the correct spot in the article.
Meta Data and Images
A good rule of the thumb in this case would be: Do you want to have easily manageable meta-data for images?
If you do, then having images as nodes is a good choice, since you can browse them, tag them and easily add fields to them (think: photographer, place, time, various info...).
If you just need to attach images to your nodes AS META DATA (i.e., the images themselves are meta data), then imagefield and Co. is probably the best suited solution for you.
Some additional information
While doing some searching on this subject, I found this useful link: http://drupal.org/node/325688
From the article:
"Generally, people associate Image module with this images-as-nodes paradigm, and in fact Image requires that all of the images it handles are each represented by a unique node. However, it is possible to take full advantage of all the above benefits with any image-handling module. For example, using Imagefield, you could create a custom content type that contains one CCK imagefield, and configure that field to "contain" (refer to) only a single file. However, note that this custom CCK node type would not be compatible with Image module or its add-ons, and should be named something other than "Image" to avoid confusion."
I'm in the planning stages of a social website and am having to plan how I want to store the images. I want the images to be classified using several taxonomies (type, location etc), have comments enable, and that they be readily accessible (i.e. re-used) in other parts of the site. This would indicate that images as nodes would meet my requirements, but I don't see how images as nodes differ from a CCK image content type that uses Imagefield (assuming only 1 image is allowed in Imagefield).
What is the best practice for my use case. I'm new to Drupal so forgive me if I'm missing something obvious!
Cheers,
Matt
Instead of replying here I ended up writing a new post
http://drupal.org/node/1098348