No category icon displayed when subcategories are picasa

[McFlow]

Hello,
I am facing a small problem with phoca gallery and picasa.
There are no category images displayed if the subcategories are all stored at picasa. It will just show this default emtpy folder icon.If all categories are stored on the server it's no problem.
I created the structure like this:
2010, 2009, 2008 etc...
If the user clicks one of these categories several albums will be shown. It seems that the category icon for "2010" is randomly chosen from the category icons of the categories inside 2010.
As I said, everything works fine if everything is stored on the server. If the albums are from picasa it's like this:
"2010" has this default icon. If I click 2010 I will see albums with thumbnails... Strange.
I set them all to "Ordering ascending" instead of "random". Still does not work.
I hope you have a small hint for me, thanks

[Jan]

Hi, yes, this is a feature, by Picasa images, the script cannot check if the images exist, so returns empty which means the folder icon - it is a feature which is caused by external images using

Jan

[McFlow]

Thanks Jan!
I worked around it by replacing the default folder image by some other picture. Now all categories have at least the same category icon

[Jan]

Ok, if you are able to do such modifications, then for you, there should not be problem to set the with from fixed name to some variable, e.g. id of the category and then save images for every category

e.g. path ... /'. $catid.'jpg';

[nonsavant]

Hi,

I have run into exactly the same problem as McFlow. I don't get a thumbnail for a picasa web album throughout the hierarchy, until I am only one click away from viewing the actual photos.

Don't understand the workaround though -- are you saying that instead of Phoca's default folder icon, you have changed the default to a different icon... but it's the same for all of your categories? For me, that isn't a workaround. Or are you able to set a specific image for one category, and a different image for another category?

I find the terminology of Phoca gallery confusing at the best of times, so if you are able to help me, please be as specific as possible when referring to parameter names (for example, where/how do you even change the default folder image? I can find no option for this.)

@Jan: Is there any possibility of editing the script so that it can pull images from the picasa web album? Presumably it can do this successfully at some point, as I get a proper folder image when I am one click away from viewing the album.

Also, is your most recent post (18th April) in the wrong thread? It doesn't seem to relate to this discussion, unless I'm missing something?

Thanks for any help
Pete

[nonsavant]

I have found another workaround, potentially.

If you are using only Picasa web albums, and are getting the default folder icon instead of an image from your photos, and would prefer not to see the default folder icon:

-Add an image to the category that is displaying the default icon.
-Set the image option "Authorized" to "No".

This (depending on your other settings -- your choice of "Category Image Ordering" will definitely have impact here) will let Phoca find an image to use as a folder thumbnail, but when you click the folder, said image is hidden.

This works well for me, but may not suit everyone's folder hierarchy and image organisation. It's a bit of extra work to add these images, but given the huge amount of effort saved by using Phoca and Picasa in the first place, I'm not complaining

Pete

[Jan]

Hi, thanks for this info.

Jan