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Hopefully Ben or Rod can help me on this one. Now getting accustomed to Publisher to produce albums instead of exporting galleries, I am finding that getting this up and running is anything but a smooth operation. The principles are clear and technically most things work fine.
However, my experience with the album management in LR is not very positive as yet.
Having made album1 as I want it, I hoped to be able to copy album1 and edit a few details to save it as album2 and fill it with different images, just as one can with a gallery template. Not so. I cannot find a way to duplicate an album, not even (ever the optimist) being able to locate it in Windows Explorer to edit it as a text file. So one ends up having to complete the 3 pages of albums details all over again. Or is there a way after all?
Having made (and published) four albums under my one publishing instance, I then created an album set and two albums within it. LR starts publishing the structure immediately on the host's server and I start filling these two albums with images. I start to publish the images. But then , you know how it is, you suddenly notice you have made a mistake with a date or spelling, and you correct it in LR. You see folders appearing on the server with wrong dates so you delete them in order to start again. In the meanwhile you make other alterations to your album. Etc etc. UNAWARE that something is going on in the background all the time in some spooler or whatever and images are still uploading or being processed even though the LR progress bar is not always present. Files continue to be uploaded to the server long after you think it must have finished. So the result is a complete jumble and even after deleting albums plus album set and the offending folders from the server, and republishing the album, the contents of the grid, when viewed online, are all mixed up. Some thumbnails occur twice and in the wrong order. I fear some database must be corrupted. But if this happens on my first day, I cannot afford to have it happening twice. The aftermath was even worse, as having altered the default cart in the album settings (I saw I had not altered it to my own pricing scheme) and republishing four galleries, without the photos, simultaneously as I went to bed, this morning the pc had frozen with 6GB (or 89%) memory use by LR. needless to say it refused to budge until I turned it off at the switch. I cannot help feeling this just should not happen.
The intention behind Publisher as against gallery exports, is one of simplicity and speed. I can understand the ease of altering things and leaving images intact or adding a couple to a gallery. But if LR is not capable of coping reliably with a queue, what is actually achieved? Publishing an album takes exactly the same time as exporting a gallery, in my experience, doing an average of 300 images an hour without any hi-res exports. My connection speeds are a fast 90Mbit/s down; 9Mbit/s up.
Another strange thing: if I open my publisher instance (I have only created one – CE4 publisher mpvs v1 - so far) then I see "LR Publishing Manager" and a list of services left: Hard Drive etc etc "TTG CE4 Publisher (not saved)". If I click on the SAVE button bottom right, this "(not saved)" remains in force and I am told I have changed the settings for this publish connection (which I haven't) and am asked if I want to republish all the xxxx photos or not. Do you know why I keep getting "(not saved)" in the LR Publishing Manager window"?
In the meanwhile I have a pile of paper printed from the docs and forum discussions on albums and album sets etc and I believe I have read at least most of the last few months' (very helpful) community correspondence, alas to no avail in this case. Studying (only) yesterday's ttg log on my server was a non-starter; it had amounted to a staggering 45MB!
So, in conclusion, I can get the principle of publishing to work, but the practice to date has been rather frustrating. No doubt it will get sorted out, but like most people, I feel awkward having to ask for assistance.
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I forgot to mention that when I tried to create new albums in LR yesterday I was often told it was impossible as such an album existed already (which was not the case) and several unfamiliar-looking error messages fill of technical jargon were splashed up over the LR window. There was no indication whether these messages came from LR or from TTG
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When you deleted albums, did you delete them from Publisher or did you delete them from the server using your FTP program?
If you deleted them from the server, that's why you're getting the message that they already exist. The database thinks they're still there.
This requires editing the database. If you want to tackle that I can tell you how to access it, but you can do some damage if you're not careful. Otherwise, you can wait for Ben and have him go in and fix things.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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to your first post....
My suggestion is to take things slowly at first. Publish one thing at a time to see how things work before trying to publish multiple albums at once.
As mentioned above, if you've deleted albums and album sets from the server then the database will need some attention.
the contents of the grid, when viewed online, are all mixed up. Some thumbnails occur twice and in the wrong order.
this can happen if you're having Publisher rename files and you've chosen a rename method that includes sequential numbers.
Another strange thing: if I open my publisher instance (I have only created one – CE4 publisher mpvs v1 - so far) then I see "LR Publishing Manager" and a list of services left: Hard Drive etc etc "TTG CE4 Publisher (not saved)". If I click on the SAVE button bottom right, this "(not saved)" remains in force and I am told I have changed the settings for this publish connection (which I haven't) and am asked if I want to republish all the xxxx photos or not. Do you know why I keep getting "(not saved)" in the LR Publishing Manager window"?
This will happen if you've made changes like checking or unchecking something and then not saving the settings.
I'll often change Push metadata without updating existing photos setting. If you just need to update metadata, it's a good idea to uncheck this first and then Save the settings. This is when you get the message about republishing all the images. I just decline to update all those photos and carry on.
If you've got any specific albums that are having problems, be sure to post links. You also might consider gathering your logs and sending them to Ben as outlined here:
http://ce4.theturninggate.net/docs/doku … g_for_help
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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I don't know in which order I deleted albums. Quite possibly using FTP first since I was studying the output to the server frequently and when I saw it was wrong on the server I expect I deleted it straightaway, but virtually simultaneously using Publisher in LR. Whatever the order was that I did it in, it was the wrong one. As I wrote above, not being aware that an upload to the server was ongoing in the background even after I had cancelled the proces(ses) using the red cross in the LR progress bar, things went from bad to worse.
I would not know where to start editing the database. If it is editable in a text editor you could give me an indication such as "see if you can do this and this; look for this entry in file xxxxx.xxx and delete it" or whatever. If I am not sure what to do, I shall leave it alone.
Other galleries exported and/or published appear to be working normally; I just want to make sure the database is as it should be so that I can start creating some new album sets and albums.
By the way, is there any way to achieve the following, namely to move album 5 out of the set so that it is a stand-alone album next to 1, 2, 3 etc? I could not achieve that yesterday, although that might have been due to the mixed-up database by that time.
Publisher instance 1
album1
album2
album3
album set 1:
- album4
- album5
album6
album7
Thanks for all assistance!
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there is no text file to edit. But since Ben's already posted how to get to the database I can tell you what to look for.
First log into ttg-be as admin
click the phpLiteAdmin link
the password is admin
You'll see a link to the publisher database
after clicking that you'll see (just below) the tables you can access. click on Album
You'll see a table of all the albums and album sets. You'll see red links to delete each individual album or set. This is where you can delete the database entries for any album or album set that you manually deleted via ftp
if this is intimidating, you can ask Ben to do it.
By the way, is there any way to achieve the following, namely to move album 5 out of the set so that it is a stand-alone album next to 1, 2, 3 etc?
From within Publisher, just drag things around where you want them to be. Click and hold on 5 and then drag it into the other albums. It will be inserted in the group of other albums, listed in alpha-numeric order.
To change the order in which they appear on the page, you'll need to edit the slug. Since they all appear in alphabetic order, you can change the slug to fit it where you want. I often will precede an album name with a number: 01-olympic, 02-arches, etc. so they appear in the order I want.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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Thank you, Rod, for these two answers. I am starting to feel better already.
I shall now tackle the database with confidence! Being able to move the albums around was just as I expected, namely as in the rest of LR and TTG; it would not work for me yesterday but hopefully once I have sorted my yesterday's chaos, it will.
Your suggestion of mailing Ben was a good one but that would be a last resort. My ttg.log entries for yesterday alone come to 23MB... which I could not possibly burden him with, but it has given me insight into where the system stumbled over id numbers; there are a couple of entries "failed to open stream: no such file or directory.....gallery.xml" so that must have been when I had deleted the xml file just before LR tried to delete it for me in the queue. In fact, in those 23MB, the letters "fail" occur only those two times so this must have been the trouble.
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My ttg.log entries for yesterday alone come to 23MB...
You can open it in a text editor and then just copy the most recent entries into a new text file
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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Hi Martin, the golden rule is to let Publisher do it's thing and to not touch the Publisher-managed files on the server via FTP. As you've found, removing Publisher-created albums via FTP breaks things. Publisher can replace photos of existing albums, or update the metadata, so if something isn't quite right, it's straightforward to amend your gallery after it's been published.
I'm happy to go in and look at the database for you. Do you know which albums in particular are broken? If you'd like me to clean them up, please email me the TTG BE admin username and password. (not the guest with full privileges - only the admin can access phpliteadmin).
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Thank you, Rod and Ben, for your excellent and clear advice. I appreciate the "golden rule" tip!
Having mailed my host provider about the register_globals setting which prevented me logging in, they turned it off and showed me how to do that sort of thing myself in the "OPS" part of my host's settings. It has enabled me to access the phpLIte admin and I can now see all the album tables you refer to. I will study them and sort it out.
First-class help from you both. Thanks so much.
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Hi Martin, glad to be of help. That register_globals error is raised by phpLiteAdmin, which isn't TTG code. Still, it's always safest to have register_globals disabled. Depending on how a site is coded, with register_globals enabled, a malicious user could try to set a server-side variable by passing it in the URL, e.g. yoursite.com/?logged_in=true.
Removing albums alone may not fully clear-up the database. Each album has a set of photos. Each photo has a set of renditions and metadata. So if just the albums are removed without the related photos (and subsequently related renditions and metadata), then there will be orphaned data in the database. It's not likely to cause a problem, but it's worth keeping in mind. In any case, if you're delving into cleaning up the database to any significant degree, I strongly recommend that you first make a backup of ttg-be/data/publisher/master.sq3, so that you can restore it if needed.
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Hi Ben & Rod,
I've been using Publisher for a while now, in the last version (ce3) it was sometimes tricky to get an Album deleted from the server, Publisher within Lightroom would loose the connection. I say loose the connection, likely I had done something to create the problem and in order to clean up the problem, I found a way to delete manually from the server.
Carrying this bad habit forward into ce4 thinking I would save myself time, has costed me a huge amount of lost time and huge frustration. So, the lesson, those that can read have a huge advantage.
To confirm what Ben and Rod have written - If you cant delete an Album within Lightroom/Publisher find out how to do it within phpliteadmin within your ttg-be back end. The back end is fantastic, the documentation is fantastic.
Thanks for all your help and thanks for your patience.
Have a super day.
Patrick
Hi Martin, the golden rule is to let Publisher do it's thing and to not touch the Publisher-managed files on the server via FTP. As you've found, removing Publisher-created albums via FTP breaks things. Publisher can replace photos of existing albums, or update the metadata, so if something isn't quite right, it's straightforward to amend your gallery after it's been published.
I'm happy to go in and look at the database for you. Do you know which albums in particular are broken? If you'd like me to clean them up, please email me the TTG BE admin username and password. (not the guest with full privileges - only the admin can access phpliteadmin).
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Hi Patrick, sorry I hadn't yet found time to look into your message. Is everything working for you now?
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Hi Ben, I think we have the Publisher under control now, thanks. I have another question I will send in PM.
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