Image handling for church websites / non-technical users

When comparing the two - I came to the same conclusions as you. But in the end I went with IMCE because I wanted to make it as easy as possible for the users to work with the images in the preview of their page - being able to drag it, resize it, change the alignment, etc...

Personally, I decided to go with Image Assist for inline images (when necessary) and Imagefield + Imagecache to handle the "primary" image for a given content type (e.g. useful for when an image is required for the teaser). The lack of Image Assist's preview images wasn't enough for me personally to give up on it and go with IMCE. Neither Image Assist or IMCE win any usability awards in my opinion (both suffer from giving the end user too many options that generally only a site admin should have and usually only confuse a user or even put the power in their hands to ruin the site layout on a page. They both also make finding a previously uploaded image much harder than it could be, and use popup windows instead of floating CSS/javascript windows - bad since some users may have very strict popup blockers, and the popup can also get "lost/misplaced" from the page it is related to if the user gets distracted or isn't good at managing their open windows). I've been working on brainstorming a list of ideas for both on improving their usability. Anyhow you can see my image use in action on www.aguaviva.com

Ideally (aside from Drupal 7's core image handling someday), I'm looking forward to the refinement and completion of the Asset Manager module. It's essentially like Image Assist (and partly based on it), though with a simplified UI, and uses CCK imagefields instead of relying on Image module. It also fixes the shortcoming in Image Assist of using placeholders instead of the actual image in the editor window (and in fact, I'd bet that whatever code handles it can be adapted into an Image Assist patch as well, since it's based on the same underlying code of Image Assist). It's also a bit challenging to install if you don't know your way around Drupal (though I hear an automated setup is planned). I'm looking forward to having all images on the site in a "unified environment" so that I can, for instance, drop an inline image from a Photo Gallery into a page of content (which I can't do right now, since my galleries are CCK + Views based).

I usually have specific slots in my designs for holding images. As such, I don't really want other editors inserting images just anywhere in a node. Therefore, I tend to prefer using Image Field and Imagecache to resize and crop the images to the appropriate size.

Of course, my usual problem is convincing anyone to use images in the first place, so this doesn't tend to be a major issue for me.

Hey Guys...
I blogged about the best method I've found for doing this at: http://mustardseedmedia.com/blog/2007/10/24/adding_inline_images_in_drup...

Hope it can help.

I have been trying to follow your lead, using my test Drupal site.

This is my first pair of module additions, and of course I am stuck ...

I downloaded BUEditor and IMCE to my PC then uploaded them to the /public_html subdirectory for my test site.

Then I clicked on each to uncompress them.

Then I went to Modules to install them but neither appears.

What am I doing wrong, please?

http://firstbaptistchurchsh.com
Pastor David

If /public_html is the directory for your test site, then you should uncompress modules in /public_html/sites/my.testsite.com/modules/ (or /public_html/sites/all/modules/ if you will be using it for multiple sites), not the top of the directory tree. Move it there and reload the modules page and it should show up.

I only just toggled on the Test site and created one test Story.

I do not see either of these:

/public_html/sites/my.testsite.com/modules/
/public_html/sites/all/modules/

I do see these:

/ public_html / sites / modules/ (Current Folder)
/ public_html / sites / default / (Current Folder)

What is this telling me, please?

http://firstbaptistchurchsh.com
Pastor David

I just looked at my production folder firstbaptistchurchsh.com
via File Manager and observed this module folder:

/ public_html / modules /

So I went back to test.firstbaptistchurchsh.com and found the
same thing:

/ public_html / modules /

Is my Drupal not configured correctly or may I proceed from here?

http://firstbaptistchurchsh.com
Pastor David

Wow, this made for quite a learning experience!

May I humbly request that when posting suggestions like this folks assume that the reader is not necessarily an experienced Drupal user and/or a Drupal admin. with lots of self-learning time? Please be more verbiose and leave out no steps.

The following is my attempt to create a draft for later conversion to a Wiki Page that others may find helpful.

NOTE: I am using Drupal 5.3

STEP-BY-STEP MODULE ADDITION INSTRUCTIONS USING BUEditor & IMCE as EXAMPLES:

1. New modules go in: /public_html/sites/modules/ (at least they did on my Test site)

2. Open File Manager in CPanel (if you aren't using CPanel try to translate to however you get to your folders)

3. Select (in CPanel/File Manager click on the file name) of the compressed module (e.g. bueditor-5.x-1.1.tar.gz) and uncompress it.

4. Decompression will create a new subfolder (e.g. bueditor) - open the folder (in CPanel/File Manager click on the folder icon, not the folder name)

5. Edit the module (in CPanel/File Manager click on the module name e.g. bueditor.install) then select "Edit File" (found on the upper right corner of the window)

6. Make your changes and click "Save" just below the text box in which you were just making changes.

7. You may now close File Manager and CPanel if you like.

8. To edit "style.css" settings go to /public_html/themes/ then select the theme you'd like to modify (in CPanel/File Manager click on the folder e.g. garland or bluemarine, or whatever others are there) then scroll down and click on "style.css"

9. Open your Drupal site, log in, select Administer, select Site Building, select Modules, scroll down and see your new modules under "Other" and click the "Enabled" box(es) next to them to make them available.

10. Select "Site Configuration" (left column) then select your module (e.g. IMCE settings) then edit as desired.
    Notes: In this case I added "edit-body" in the "Enable inline ..." box per the generic suggestion in Drupal. I also entered "50" x "50" to the "Thumbnail dimensions" boxes. Be sure to click "Save" at the bottom!

11. To set up permissions so that users may use the new module(s) select (in the left column) User Management then Access Control then scroll down to the new module (e.g. IMCE module) and click the appropriate boxes for that module under the appropriate Users. Be sure to click "Save Configuration" at the bottom.

HELP! In the case of IMCE should one normally check-off permissions for both Access and Administer? I did so.

1. To allow a HTML tag for images to be allowed select (in the left column) Site Configuration then Input Formats. Click "Configure" next to Filtered HTML (this presumes that Filtered HTML is your default Input Format). Click "Configure" again at the top next to "Filtered HTML input format". Scroll down to "Allowed HTML tags:" and add to the other tags in the box (NOTE: This is risky as it allows your permitted users to post images. Be careful which Users you authorize - done elsewhere - to do this.)

WARNING!! I am a Drupal-in-diapers newbie. I have done my best to document every small step and to note where I need clarifications. I welcome fixes to this How-To post before it is converted to a Wiki Page.

I pray that this is valuable to others!

http://firstbaptistchurchsh.com
Pastor David