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PhotoPageGen Changelog

What's new in PhotoPageGen 8.1

Nov 28, 2023
  • Added: Enhanced FTP publishing. The publish form is now more intuitive… and the FTP directory and published URL are right underneath for easy checking. If you previously used FTP publishing, it should autoformat to the new way without issue. Added ability to list contents of the FTP directory (by double-clicking on it). If any hierarchy in an album, tries to synthesize the correct FTP directories if 1 was already done. Save FTP settings after 1st successful transfer, not just when whole thing completes once.
  • Added: JPEG comments/description. Added display of JPEG comments and/or description as part of the caption mechanism. That is, captions work as before, selected from the pulldown, but now JPEG comments and/or descriptions can optionally be added to those captions.
  • Tweak: Stop scanning/rescanning images if browser closed and drag a video on
  • Tweak: Fixed a minor bug that prevented a title page that had images for subdirs which did NOT have GPS, from building a map even though images under subdirs did have GPS
  • Tweak: Enhanced a long-standing issue whereby wanted to figure out some way to exclude an image from the map of a title album (like use the MAP exclusions for each sub-album). So this works now. Any sub-album that excluded an image or the image from a map, will NOT show on the title album map
  • Tweak: when opening PPG initially with a title album (or in 1st creating one), if drag on a non-title album, title album settings were retained.
  • Bug: When publishing a new album, it would glitch “ALREADY CURRENT” every few files on the main form
  • Bug: Fixed a bug where if you ctrl-C in the title or subtitle (like what you might do to copy the text from there), the key-down event was fired and marked the album as needing publishing. Fixed this.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug that caused a video added or subtitle change, the LED in Album hierarchy would go yellow, but then later on, return to green without having been published (like when another album was published, all LEDs would go green, not just the one, but any that had videos added)
  • Bug: Fixed a bug that caused crashes if the datetime was in some weird way (saw it with a panoramic out of photoshop). Made the code more resilient
  • Bug: Fixed a minor bug that would cause a crash if the title-view form was closed (only can do this by right-clicking on Windows taskbar and closing form… can not normally close this form)… doing other things afterward in PPG will error out due to the title form not being available to interact with
  • Bug: Fixed a rare bug that in certain circumstances could cause a crash during publishing
  • Bug: Many small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, generated-html cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 8.0 (Dec 10, 2022)

  • Added: Links instead of pictures. If a title album has a file called ‘link.txt’, the text in that file should be a URL link that clicking the title image will cause the navigation to (normally it would go to the subalbum of the same name as the image). This is nice because it allows you to have an album of links to other pages not in the album
  • Added: For videos… Now support new Youtube shorts format
  • Added: Publishing status update on main PPG form… much cleaner
  • Added: Brand image/icon for upper left of pages by drag/drop image to upper left of PPG form
  • Added: An optional “best-of” selector at the top vblog pages that only shows the videos that were liked. This allows a quicker filtering down to the best videos
  • Added: Added new feature of showing description/title in the EXIF data on the main form and on the generated html page of the captions are set to EXIF. (The description/title is what Windows Explorer -> Details calls “Title” if you right-click a file in Windows Explorer, where it can be viewed and/or set)
  • Tweak: Made Like mechanism a dropdown on pages. So… now it is much friendlier for mobile phones since does not require keyboard interaction. This works for normal pages and vblog pages
  • Tweak: Changed Alt-1 and Alt-2 keyboard commands to Ctrl-1 and Ctrl-2 so it would work more universally (Alt doesn’t always work on every computer in every configuration)
  • Tweak: Tweaked the dense theme to be more pleasing
  • Bug: Corrected what was probably a long-standing bug: when switching between an open vblog and then adding a new normal album, it would publish the new normal album as if it was a vblog and not transfer all the files. And vice versa, if have a normal album open, and then switch to a vblog, it tried to publish files that weren’t there (and crash).
  • Bug: Fixed some cosmetic issues of likes/hearts in vblog mode
  • Bug: Fixed a cosmetic glitch with gems when using PHP8.0. It was not a problem when using earlier versions of PHP. ONLY WAS A PROBLEM IF PHP8.0 IS BEING USED AND LIKES ARE ENABLED.
  • Bug: Many small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, generated-html cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.9 (Dec 12, 2021)

  • Added: Timeline. A big new feature put at the top of pages, scaled appropriately based on the time-range of the image set. Hover over tick marks in the timeline and image pops up.
  • Tweak: If loading a new album, don’t retain the old scroll settings for preview… jump to the top. i.e. resets the browser scroll if new album loaded.
  • Tweak: if image sizes were smaller than the overall settings width for the main images, and in lightbox/responsive mode, the image would show small when clicked, rather than the settings size. Now, if images are inherently small, they are scaled up to what the settings says.
  • Bug: If a published directory is removed from the server, the publish didn’t work anymore. Fixed.
  • Bug: when Transferred an album with normal lightbox, then changed settings to enhanced photoswipe, then replublished, it did not transfer the dist folder and so photoswip emode didn’t really work on the published site. This only occurred if switching lightbox modes between publishes
  • Bug: Fixed a minor bug that had crashes happening if a “new” titleview subalbum was clicked in quick succession to another new titleview subalbum that was just clicked (and was thus building)
  • Bug: Fixed some small errors in the logs
  • Bug: If sprites were enabled, in some cases FTP transfer failed because dir was not created
  • Bug: Not all sprites were displayed in some cases if opening and closing PPG
  • Bug: Fixed a few TitleView bugs
  • Bug: Fixed a log-standing bug whereby when the date/time was used in certain circumstances, the whole date/time would be displayed as the caption, regardless of whether date-only or time-only was selected
  • Bug: Made title image GPS count correct for full hierarchy (it previously only counted the images on title page)
  • Bug: Many small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, generated-html cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.8 (Mar 16, 2021)

  • Added: Browser preview on it’s own thread A big improvement in experience since can look at Preview, or close Preview window while publishing, etc.
  • Added: Titleview window, showing the tree structure of an album will show up right next to PPG if a PPG album is detected above or below the current album. This is a significant enhancement that makes navigation in a Title Album much easier. A Title Album is simply a PPG album that has sub-albums underneath (i.e. a tree of albums).
  • Added: a force-reset update-everything checkbox to the publish form to override all date checks and force every file to be re-uploaded. This can be handy if the publishing gets into an unknown state (like if someone removes files from the server, or restores from backup and dates get messed up, etc.)
  • Added: a Preview reset button (on top of Preview button). This forces the Preview to go to the upper left of the main computer screen. This can be useful in multiple-monitor situations, if you “lose” the Preview window, or in situations where you drag the Preview off-screen, or otherwise lose it, or accidentally shrink it too small and can’t find it.
  • Tweak: Made HTML references back to some assets use https instead of http (previously browser would have gotten javascript warnings about it)
  • Tweak: Cosmetic tweak… made description and any images placed in the description be wider if there is a lot of content up there in the description (more content… makes the content area wider), or narrower if not.
  • Bug: Wow gem was missing from previously release. It works now
  • Bug: Fixed a few longstanding windows placement/layer issues: the publish and history forms to go underneath Windows Explorer windows and other windows if PPG was dragged around while the history or publish forms were open
  • Bug: Fixed a longstanding minor bug where by the title album default text font was at max when a title album was detected
  • Bug: Made publishing more robust in in the face of directory names being changed (some circumstances could cause the manifest to be incorrect and publishing to not transfer everything properly)
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing bug whereby the slideshow.html file did not correctly reference the background, if a custom background was set (i.e. custom backgrounds didn’t work for slideshow)
  • Bug: Fixed longstanding minor bugs having to do with autodetecting changes in the filesystem and auto-recreating what is necessary (like maps). It didn’t always detect everything correctly.
  • Bug: Fixed longstanding bugs regarding startup, what messages are displayed, and bringing up PPG correctly. These were mostly related to the non-normal modes (like dragging on empty directories or .csv files of videos, etc.)
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing bug that had the videos – only in the case of when “and videos” is checked in the formatting area when videos are present… not spaced correctly in the 2 lightbox modes “None” and “normal”. The main “Enahnced/Swipe” lightbox mode did not have this issue.
  • Bug: Many small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, generated-html cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.7 (Dec 12, 2020)

  • Enhancements to publish mechanism and a few other features and fixes:
  • Added: Wow gem to like mechanism. So that makes Like, Love, WTF, Sad, Wow, Champion, and Funny
  • Added: Improved publishing mechanism to be more robust, have better error messages from server, etc.
  • Added: Added the ability to turn off a users ability to “share” a picture to social media (it defaults to on) when using the Enhanced/Swipe lightbox mode in the settings. When enabled, a user will see an arrow in the upper right hand corner after clicking an image. When disabled, no such arrow will appear.
  • Tweak: Added more info to the notifier… the number of images added, and enhanced notifier to only send notifications when images added, not every little setting change
  • Tweak: Added overall like counts and comment counts at the top of pages, to be auto-updated without a browser refresh when someone clicks something
  • Tweak: Several publishing tweaks: Made publish statusbar on main form not lag the publish form statusbar. Also made it bold if transferring files. Also made it only display filenames if actually transferring a file. Made publish form “follow” the main form if the main form is dragged around. Publishing used to be on a separate thread to allow simultaneous publishing while still tweaking settings, etc. . But now, since publishing status is indicated in main thread, and is much faster, eliminated this multi-tasking feature.
  • Tweak: Several cosmetic tweaks regarding placement of gems under various circumstances. The champion gem had a few issues.
  • Tweak: Made default overall comment up top, wider
  • Tweak: Several minor mapping related tweaks to better indicate placemarks in the form, and also better position things on the webpage. Made creation of interactive map only occur when map settings change, not all other settings.
  • Bug: Fixed a few bugs with publishing that make it more robust. For example if the remote dir changed in between publishing, things could get confused, etc.
  • Bug: Fixed a few bugs with the new interactive map mode that had it not auto-generating all the time
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing minor bug whereby in vblog or normal photo page, if not signed in, gets Javascript error if try to like, instead of bringing up dialog to say sign in.
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing minor bug whereby the tootltip from comments/likes at the top was underneath the images if they were rotated a lot
  • Bug: Fixed a longstanding minor bug that caused a website link-click from the album history to open up the website twice at the same time (i.e. 2 pages)
  • Bug: Fixed a long-time bug whereby captions didn’t work properly if there were image filenames that had same ending (like “post-restore.jpg” and “restore.jpg”).
  • Bug: Many small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, generated-html cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.6 (Sep 21, 2020)

  • Added: Revamped publish mechanism. Substantially faster, and substantially simpler, improved FTP logging, and improved error reporting. Now, once FTP settings are set, clicking “Publish” just publishes it, whatever needs publishing.
  • Added: Added controls for updating current album to previous albums settings:
  • Alt-1 for previous album’s settings without the description, videos, titles, etc.
  • Alt-2 for previous album’s settings including all text (description, videos, titles, etc.)
  • Added: Ability to add footer text/html on the web page.Before, filling in the Description with text or HTML placed this at the top of the web page. Now, any text/html between “[[” and “]]” in the description box, will be placed at the end of the webpage. So, text/html can be placed at the beginning, end, or both; on the webpage.
  • Added: Title page recursive placemarks. So if you have an album of subalbums, and on the main album you enable an interactive map, it will retrieve all placemarks from all of the subalbums underneath, and put them on the main map. This has been tested with 700+ placemarks without issue. Also, the placemarks will be individually colored to match the subalbum, and they are also clickable to view the underlying image.
  • Added: ability to exclude images from the map. Sometimes the GPS in an image is not correct. These images can be excluded from showing a placemark in the wrong place.
  • Added: feature to allow video blog web page to have an editable description header on 1st page only.
  • Tweak: When click an FTP directory from the publish settings, auto-login and display the directory (works on most browsers, but not all… some still prompt for login).
  • Tweak: Only keep files in graphics directory that are needed for current settings. That is, add/remove files there as necessary to reflect current settings. Allows for much faster FTP transfers as well.
  • Tweak: Album history now limited to 200. Much faster and maintainable.
  • Tweak: Dense theme to have larger images, more inline with other social media services.
  • Tweak: No disallow disallow html tags/injection into login name. Previously only handled other form inputs, but not login name.
  • Bug: Cleaned up some minor bugs/issues with sprites, mostly cosmetic, and mostly related to “custom” sprites.
  • Bug: Cleaned up some minor bugs/issues with video blog mode, mostly cosmetic, but some functional.
  • Bug: Even though sprites were added to the last release, all of the needed files to support sprites were not included in previous release and so didn’t work (sorry). So that feature previously didn’t work, but now does.
  • Bug: fixed a bug that prevented certain images (like from Wikipedia) from being imported as image URL’s due to SSL/TLS encryption issues
  • Bug: Many small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, generated-html cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.5 (Apr 1, 2020)

  • Added: Ability to hover over a like and have it tell you who did it.
  • Added: Color coded history and title bar… reflecting different colors for title albums, sub albums, and ones that are both.
  • Added: Usage stats to log (i.e. who spent what time), and also added the names of those who are subscribed to an album.
  • Added: Complete revamping of map mechanism. Now support interactive maps (retained static map mode as option), using all placemarks in the map (yes, even if 500+), website users can select bounding box of all points, or sequential path connecting all points (in the order the images are displayed… usually by time), or both. And added an autozoom that should work anywhere on earth (album users can then interactively pan/zoom around and override the initial zoom). Also, each placemark can be clicked to see the image. If map is enabled on a title album, it searchs below and creates placemarks from all subalbums too, showing the full breadth of a trip, for example.
  • Added: Support for all possible combinations of lightbox, webpage type, and raised. A chart showing what is supported and in what versions is below. This necessitated significant testing, which resulted in a lot of the cleanup shown below in tweaks and bugs. PPG is now very flexible in the type of site you want to set up, and reasonably mobile-friendly
  • Tweak: If in responsive mode, shrink the mat/border size to nothing if mobile.
  • Tweak: If lots of videos are present, don’t update preview unless click preview (it gets cumbersome to reload the preview with all the videos every time a setting change is made)
  • Tweak: Made the admin mechanism m ore robust
  • Tweak: If no likes or comments, and someone hovers over like/comment icons on title page, indicate no likes or comments yet, respectively.
  • Fixed a minor issue whereby if someone tried to post a comment without being logged in (which can only occur with dialog box actually being displayed), the alert messagebox indicates they haven’t logged in. It previously said that the number of valid comments has been exceeded.
  • Tweak: Made it so only files that are needed are put in graphics dir. Like timer files and map placemark pngs.
  • Tweak: Close FTP connection after transfer of an album.
  • Tweak: If using likes/comments, delete index.html from server and use just index.php. If using index.html only (i.e. no likes/comments), delete index.php from server. Allows for updating old albums with comments/likes without glitches associated with switching index files / cache, etc.This makes the whole experience of switching modes on albums, or updating old albums, more seamless.
  • Tweak: Now allow png for title album cover images. Previously, just jpg.
  • Tweak: Now made title albums combined with photos work, in Enhanced/Swipe mode. This wasn’t supported before.
  • Tweak: Now display in header how many subalbums there are.
  • Tweak: Slight tweaks to album history… made the hovering of the mouse be no lag.
  • Tweak: only allow user to drag 1 file on for background (used to be it would just take the first if a group were dragged on)
  • Tweak: Fixed a long-time bug that when there is a gradient, if there are only a few images, the gradient repeats, looking bad
  • Tweak: Made caption font size in responsive mode slightly bigger across the board.
  • Tweak: corrected some hidden or obscured startup-from-scratch messages
  • Tweak: tweaked the default them to not use gradient, tweaked formal theme to have less mat, tweaked minimal theme to add header
  • Tweak: Differentiated “liked by me” and “liked by others” in terms of the table that is generated when you hover over it. Also, made the red/green indicator be name-based only, before it was name and IP. So now you can log in as yourself from any computer, and see your likes.
  • Bug: Even though sprites were added to the last release, all of the needed files to support sprites were not included in previous release. So that feature previously didn’t work, but now does.
  • Bug: Fixed a longstanding bug whereby if in Enhanced/Swipe mode, and then transition to vblog mode, there was way to much space between the vblog like count, heart and delete button and the video itself.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby if more than 15 videos loaded, and video expanded textbox open, and click preview from expended textbox, it didn’t preview
  • Bug: Fixed a cosmetic issue that in static mode with lightbox normal or none, the horizontal line at top and bottom (including header and footer, were not the whole width of the site, but rather just the site_width parameter
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby in static mode, the videos wrapped in a way that doesn’t take full width of browser. Only happens in Normal or None lightbox mode, not ENhanced/Swipe. This was a longstanding cleanup whereby lightbox settings (which used to be the way responsive mode was handled) were incorrectly used on video formatting.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby when tacks were on if video formatting was enabled, the tacks previously were under the videos instead of on top
  • Bug: Fixed an issue with wood frame AND responsive AND Enhanced/Swipe mode, whereby it caused thumbnails to get jumbled when large border’s present
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing bug whereby if a file had a bogus (i.e. in the future) LastWriteTime, PPG would go into an endless regeneration loop. Now… we correct the LastWriteTime of these rogue files to be current time and it only regenerates once.
  • Bug: Fixed bug that if enabling comments in non-Enhanced mode AND captions were at the image bottom, they looked bad, so instead forced it to bottom mode, where they look good. Fixed cosmetic bug whereby when lightbox was normal or none, if caption long and overlays enabled AND at bottom, don’t place overlays on top of caption
  • Bug: Fixed a long-time bug whereby when captions are enabled AND comments AND captions are on image bottom AND in normal or no lightbox AND the captions were long, they wrapped down into the comment section. Forced it now to go into bottom mode instead.
  • Bug: Fixed bug in that thumbnails bled off right when border XL and spacing large, but only in responsive mode with no lightbox or normal lightbox
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby the background image had a repeating gradient if gradient was used “and” Google Translate. This otherwise didn’t occur.
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing bug whereby: When form minimal/normal, then maximized, then config-on, config-off, then unmaximized… vertical size remains too big.
  • Bug: Fixed a pre-exisitng bug where placemark letters were not properly placed only when: responsive mode, placed on bottom
  • Bug: Corrected a bug whereby when responsive mode, but normal lightbox, map at bottom stretched to fill width of browser.
  • Bug: added support for: when an album open, can drag an empty directory on, or hit “new” and it won’t barf when adding videos, images, etc.
  • Bug: fixed a bug whereby if gps was previously enabled and then added an empty album, there were crashes (due to trying to handle gps)
  • Bug: fixed a bug whereby published link sometimes showed when it shouldn’t
  • Bug: fixed a bug whereby cell spacing did not work for wood frame (i.e. frame+) in Enhanced/Swipe mode (both static and responsive). This thus broke Love and Formal themes
  • Bug: switching to vblog mode obscured the banner that said what to do
  • Bug: allow an image URL to be dragged on after clean start with no directory, it polls for directory, and then puts it there. Previously, you couldn’t drag an image URL unless valid target already in place
  • Bug: show the webpage link if in vblog mode. Was previously hidden
  • Bug: Fixed some startup graphical glitches that have existed for a long time
  • Bug: Fixed longstanding minor bug whereby when not logged in. if click heart, only bottom portion of heart worked.
  • Bug: Fixed a longstanding bug whereby if captions aren’t placed right in any theme, directly on image, if rotate=0 whether polaroid is on or off. So, this made captions not work correct for minimalist and dense themes.
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing bug whereby in proofsheet theme, if image size was small, it made the mat black. Also, made the proofsheet thumbnail size a bit smaller.
  • Bug: Downloads were not reflected in the log, probably since Enhanced/Swipe added.
  • Bug: Long-standing minor issue: If mixed sub-albums and photos, it always said “albums” as the heading. Now only show that if only albums.
  • Bug: Fixed a longstanding bug that prevented the same comment from being applied to different pictures (it was only supposed to reject this for the same picture)
  • Bug: Fixed a bug with displaying the log whereby subdirectories with spaces in the names made the subalbum be colored funny in the log.
  • Bug: Fixed bug whereby video count was not displayed under certain circumstances (like when switching to an all video album)
  • Bug: Fixed long-standing bug: When dragging a youtube.csv list onto a video album that was just created by dragging an empty directory on first), if likes/comments enabled, it failed to copy the necessary graphics files. Worse, it also created the structure in whatever directory that csv file is (e.g. the desktop!), and so only worked as expected if the csv file was in the dragged on directory
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing issue whereby videos that are formatted (using “and videos”) to Thumbnails settings… if comments were enabled, long comments didn’t wrap properly, instead they stretched out the matting.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby if drag a Youtube.csv file onto PPG and have likes/ or comments already enabled, the proper supporting files didn’t get deployed.
  • Bug: Fixed a long standing bug: when using gems, and have rotate set to 0, when adding a gem caused a situation when other nearby pictures were clicked to be opened, the gem from the other picture you just added was graphically on top of the new picture you just clicked to look at.
  • Bug: Many small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.4 (Dec 14, 2019)

  • Added: Sprites. A cool new mechanism in the background settings that allows floating-down objects in the background. You can set the number of objects, fall-rate, and transparency. There are several built-in (hearts, balloons, leaves, snowflakes, bubbles, etc.), or you can add your own.
  • Tweak: Prevent swipe mechanism from wrapping around . Previously, if click an image and then swipe, and continue swiping until the end, it would wrap around to the beginning. Now if swipe, and get to the end, it stops.
  • Bug: Fixed a long standing issue whereby when an “older” picture (older than index file created) is dragged into directory to replace an image… it wouldn’t update the thumbnail or the medium image. Now, it removes the thumbnail when a new image or images are dragged into the folder, so as to force a regenerate of the respective thumbnails.
  • Bug:Fixed issue introduced by new swipe mechanism… when changing lightbox modes, previously did not indicate an album needs publishing. Now does.
  • Bug: Fixed an issue that if caption filenames mode was used, a mode was set that caused the comment mechanism to be affected… to break the comments at any character instead of words
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.3 (Oct 22, 2019)

  • Added: Notifications. An album viewer can opt to be notified of album updates by entering their email address in the login form (available when comments, likes, or video-blog mode is enabled). They will be notified of likes, comments, pictures being added, sub-albums being added, and videos being added (for video-blog mode).
  • Added: A stat summary at the top of a page, of who liked and who commented, by hovering over the icons at the top. Also did this for title pages by recursively aggregating all stats of sub-albums beneath.
  • Added: Support for responsive description. Previously, a desired look was achieved by adding carriage returns to the description to make it be the desired width. Now, it is responsive to browser size.
  • Tweak: Significantly improved the log by including who was notified when notifications occurred, and by handling sub-albums (i.e. recursively aggregating all logs of albums underneath)
  • Tweak: Significantly improved login logs by making everything in easy-to-read tables, and recursively aggregating all logs from sub-albums underneath.
  • Bug: Fixed long-standing minor bug whereby when logging in as admin, liking colors (red and green) were mixed up because it didn’t recognize that I was admin.
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing bug whereby PHP errors occurred if a gem was turned off and there were no more gems
  • Bug:Fixed bug where tooltip for likes wasn’t wide enough to have everything on 1 line
  • Bug:Fixed bug whereby notification in log for album update was actually for vblog.
  • Bug: Fixed a long standing issue whereby index files were not shown in display area on publish
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.1 (Apr 17, 2019)

  • Added: Video Blog mode. Generate an online infinite depth video blog that is configured, added to, and monitored all online. Once generated and published, never need PPG again to change it. Allows for likes, comments, and gems, just like other PPG albums.
  • Added: A few new gems to be used with “like” mechanism of albums and new video blog.
  • Added: An admin log to monitor what has been going on with clicks, likes, etc. Also added an admin login name (set in the overall “settings”) to use to get to the log.
  • Added: A “raised panel” mode whereby the pictures/videos and content is all on a rasied panel that is raised from the background. It is also a static color, so no matter how busy the background image is, everything is readable.
  • Added: The ability to have background music/audio. Just drag an mp3 onto the PPG GUI. If slideshow is enabled it will play for that. If not, it will play for the main page.
  • Added: Several new backgrounds. Many with transparency and quite nice. Most were images. Removed some older rarely used or less quality backgrounds.
  • Tweak: No longer allow duplicate comments to be written. Sometimes, if server slow, a user might hit post more than once. It used to cache these requests and post the repeated comments. No longer.
  • Tweak: Made publish update status easier to read and more uniform
  • Tweak: Limit 5 names on gems, and 25 total comments per image.
  • Tweak: Changed the way gems are installed. Now its 1-click, 2-click, etc. on the little heart on an image. Previously used control characters.
  • Tweak: Tweaked some themes. Mostly to add the new “raised panel” feature to some, and others to set the transparency or gradient better for the business of the background.
  • Tweak: Updated several tooltips
  • Bug: Fixed bug that caused “disable further posting” to cause animated backgrounds to fail.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug in background image (and new audio background feature) that kept older image (or audio) files from being published if they were older files. i.e. in some cases, the background image would not be updated on the server because the file date was older than what was on server.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug that prevented gems from always displaying if click-number was clicked fast
  • Bug: Fixed longstanding bug where one of the wallpaper backgrounds wasn’t working.
  • Bug: fixed bug that put %20 for spaces (and other conds/control-characters) in subjects of notifier emails
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 7.0 (Jan 6, 2019)

  • Enhanced: GUI. Mostly via tooltips/help for various controls, and reorganizing things, and adding themes (see below).
  • Enhanced webpage: Mostly via adding tooltips to hearts, added tooltip to login name area, making things line up better,
  • Added: Themes. Significant cleanup of user interface. Aggregated most settings under a theme mechanism. Now much simpler. Just pick a theme. Settings still adjustable.
  • Enhanced: Gems. Now support multiple gems (clunky before), and with username son them. Click any heart with ctrl, alt, or ctrl-shift to add a gem. Fixed a few bugs with gems as well.
  • Ctrl-click: “star'” gem
  • Alt-click: “funny” gem
  • Ctrl-shift click: “Champion” gem
  • Added: A Notification mechanism to allow viewers of your album to subscribe (in the login pop-up, if enabled), and then if you add more pictures they will get an email indicating such when it is published.
  • Added: Download button to all images
  • Added: Significant new animation: . “Leaves” background (which is also used in the “Autumn” theme). Leaves slowly trickle down.
  • Enhanced: Slideshow mechanism with tooltips on the theme pulldown, and also made the background match the overall background.
  • Enhanced: Title page mechanism… title images always have caption on top, always bigger, always title font, and likes/comments always on bottom, even if mixed with non-title images
  • Added: Support for video-only working with likes and gems.
  • Tweak: Tweaked many cosmetic settings slightly, color tweaks, control positioning, etc.
  • Bug: Corrected a long standing minor issue whereby if you copied something from a google doc into the description, the single and double quotes would render as a character that indicated it didn’t know the character. This was due to a discrepancy how Google renders quotes vs Microsoft and HTML.So, now we just convert them to standard double or single quote.
  • Bug: Fixed bug whereby download and thumbtacks were not autoremoved for title page. Also made title images more distinct from other images…
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 6.5 (Sep 24, 2018)

  • Added:
  • Gems. Shift-click any heart when likes are enabled, and a large star will show up in upper right of picture, indicating this image is a “gem””. The signed-in person’s name is faintly shown on the star. The star cannot be undone by others (i.e. first come, first serve!), just the original poster, by shift-clicking again.
  • Made Title Album (i.e. nested albums) mechanism cleaner, with dedicated fonts, and auto-shrink 2nd line in title (for sub-title effect).
  • Added aggregated like/comment statistics to title page. Also made these stats work to 2 layers under title
  • Autodetect for files added to albums. This wasn’t working so well previously. Now thoroughly works.
  • Support for Netlify (used to be BitBalloon, they merged). A very simple way to publish your album.
  • Tweak:
  • Order comments from oldest to newest (i.e. read in order). This is opposite to before.
  • Disallow most html tags in comments (i.e. so users can’t funk up the display by putting their own images, big text, etc.)
  • Made rating/like system more robust by not transferring files back and forth, and by not allowing accumulation of certain errors
  • Added timestamp to likes, and IP address to comments (behind the scenes stuff)
  • Added sign-in for likes now, so you know how liked things. Also people must login first before posting any comments.
  • Removed “version” from footer.
  • Bugs:
  • Fixed a bug that caused disabling posting more comments to cause the page not to render.
  • Clarified months vs minutes in the timestamp on comments. They both used to be ‘m’.
  • Fixed a bug whereby the published link on publish form was not properly updated if switching between settings (to/from php, etc.) or on initial load.
  • Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 6.4 (Jun 26, 2018)

  • Added: Full Comment mechanism, with ability to comment at the top of pages, and/or on each photo
  • Added: Selectable thumbtack mechanism. Can pick between thunbtacks, darts, nails, and tape.
  • Added: Auto-detection of changed files. For the current album, if an image changes, is , added or deleted, the album auto-updates.
  • Added: Video format option. If videos are loaded, there is a checkbox under thumbnails to optionally format videos as well (with border, comments, likes, etc.)
  • Added:Cool new font for title pages
  • Added: Moved theme CSS into its own file. Move javascript into its own file
  • Tweaks: to colors (background, mat, and border) and positioning of various controls. Also added some backgrounds.
  • Bug: Fixed another bug whereby likes didn’t show up if mapping not on (since the locations were computed in mapping)
  • Bug: Fixed a long-standing bug whereby “likes” did not work if tacks were enabled.
  • Bug: fixed a bug whereby tacks and placemarks did not work together moved all comment files to graphics directory
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby if an album didn’t exist, cause a crash if attempt to open in history.

New in PhotoPageGen 6.3 (Apr 9, 2018)

  • Added: Support for hosting on Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive.
  • Added: Full Slideshow capability, with 3 themes, with settable slide duration.
  • Added: Ability to have transparent background which may be useful when overlaying the website created onto another website.
  • Added: A fancy new frame, modeled after a wooden frame, with configurable borders and mats
  • Added: Separately configurable borders and mats, and also also cleaned up the border types (larger sizes were previously handled there.
  • Added: New thumbtack option… nails
  • Added: Some new backgrounds and removed some others that were either redundant, or not very good.
  • Added: Easier to use color selection mechanisms
  • Tweaks: to colors (background, mat, and border) and positioning of various controls
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 6.2 (Mar 11, 2018)

  • Added: History log that tracks all albums loaded, for quick access of previous albums, including where they were published, whether they were uploaded, etc. This is a significant positive change for the overall user experience
  • Added: A warning to a user if the album is out of date, and needs publishing. If an album has been published with PhotoPageGen, any subsequent settings tweaks changes the color of the publish button to red, to warn the user that the album is now out of date, and needs publishing. Text is also underneath the Publish button which indicates the last change made
  • Added: Many GUI cleanups that make PhotoPageGen interface cleaner and easier to use. Mostly just re-arranged things to make more sense, and also group all thumbnail controls into one area. Much cleaner
  • Added: An autodetect FTP settings, so if there are similar albums nearby (i.e. 1 level up or below), they will be pulled from there
  • Removed: Support for poof page since EXIF data is now support as a caption. Pulled the same data as the proof page had
  • Bug: Fixed “like” mechanism. Negligently, the icons were not included in the previous release
  • Bug: Corrected the FTP status bar, which could be off under certain circumstances
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 6.1 (Jan 7, 2018)

  • Added: Many more backgrounds and textures
  • Added: Support for “like” mechanism that allows webpage visitors to “like” individual images. It keeps tallies, and color-coded hearts for all to see. Maintains a behind-the-scenes simple database totally in your control. Even keeps the data if the webpage is updated by PhotoPageGen (i.e. doesn’t get erased if you re-upload the album).
  • Added: Many small GUI cleanups that make PhotoPageGen interface cleaner and easier to use. Grouped the thumbnail overlays in it’s own area, and hide the controls when not in use. Much cleaner.
  • Added: Transparency and Gradient sliders to lighten the whole webpage and/or the top of the webpage when using images for backgrounds. Much slicker and tunable presentation style. Also automatically tweak header text colors based on these settings to maximize readability.
  • Added: An FTP transfer log which tracks all transactions and albums uploaded. They can even be clicked to go the webpage created.
  • Added: Support for EXIF data as a caption option.
  • Added: Revamped proof page . Mostly cosmetic and easier to read/use.
  • Added: An all-inclusive FTP transfer progress bar . Combined the previous 2 into one very readable bar.
  • Added: Tweaked the thumbnail border mechanism in several ways. A new thumbnail border type: frame mode . Also tweaked all of the border/border-size/matting-size sizes to better match the size of the border. Also tweaked the colors to better match.
  • Added: Support for animated backgrounds (added animated GIF and PNG support), and included many to pick from. Very slick. You can also drag your own onto the form, and that will automatically become your background.
  • Added: Support for animated images. Added animated GIF and PNG support so that you can make an album of animated GIFs if you wanted to, for example.
  • Added: barcode font as a new caption font option (because it could be done 🙂 … and some other slight font-related tweaks
  • Bug: Corrected some control-visibility issues. Under certain circumstances, controls either showed when they weren’t supposed to, or didn’t show when they were supposed to.
  • Bug: There were minor alignment issues, particularly noticeable when thumbtacks present.
  • Bug: There was an issue with the “Published webpage” link that sometimes wouldn’t show, even though the website was published.
  • Bug: Fixed an issue that prevented one from starting a video-only album, and then trying to add pictures to it. That wouldn’t work. Now can do a picture-only album, a picture-and-video album, a video-only album, or a video-only album that you later decide to add pictures to the album. The last one, previously you couldn’t do.
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 6.0 (Nov 1, 2017)

  • Added: User defined backgrounds, just drag any image onto the form and it becomes your background. Transparency is adjustable.
  • Added: Many more backgrounds and textures, from high quality images.
  • Added: Published web link on main form after publishing. And when you hover over it, you are informed when it was published last.
  • Added: Publishing is on a separate thread now, So while uploading, can still tweak album, look at preview, etc.
  • Added: Thumbtacks/pushpins as an optional graphic on each image so it looks like a poster board. Particularly striking when using the cork background.
  • Added: More rotation angles (45, 90, 180). Also, for angles above 25, randomize the rotation angles (so if set to 45, it randomizes the angles between 10 and 45). Its much more striking when randomized.
  • Bug: Corrected some rendering issues when large borders were used…. things were not always scaled properly
  • Bug: There were minor alignment issues, particularly noticeable when the thumbnails were super small (like 0.1x and 0.2x)
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 5.4 (Jun 28, 2017)

  • Added: Renamed Razzle-Dazzle to Polaroid, and separated out the angle/tilt from that mechanism. So now, thumbnails can be tilted independent of Polaroid/Razzle-Dazzle being enabled. This is especially used for displaying transparent PNG files.
  • Added: mat transparency to the Polaroid mechanism. This is especially useful for displaying various effects, and for providing transparency to Polaroids that have captions.
  • Added: New look and feel with new color scheme, less distracting.
  • Added: Added configurable placemark separation distance. Default is 20 ft. Allows for geographically dispersed display when lots of images are present.
  • Added: Made a cleaner, simpler exclusion mechanism. Also cause a dialog if clear-all is instigated.
  • Added: Title-page generator used to need at least 3 directories to be used. Now any number can be present.
  • Bug: Corrected a major bug that caused some Windows computers to not be able to run PPG due to missing dll’s in Windows (some computers have them, some don’t).
  • Bug: When being opened for the first time, window size defaulted to max. Should have been min.
  • Bug: Made EXIF date/time extraction more robust. It was found that some cameras use different fields than others. Now, look for either.
  • Bug: Made maximize work perfectly. It was a little visibly glitchy before.
  • Bug: In some cases, exclusions caused the GPS mapping to be incorrect. Fixed.
  • Bug: Had incorrect orientation if caption was selected as bottom of image (didn’t handle the cases where it was on image… only worked if caption was on top of image). Fixed this.
  • Bug: Added an error handler for bad FTP host setting. Previously, it would crash if the FTP host was not found.
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 5.3 (May 31, 2017)

  • Added: Added several animated backgrounds (clouds, hearts, and stars)
  • Added: Made the main form less distracting, went to a new color scheme for a new look and feel
  • Added: Added support for re-sizable forms. This automatically resizes the image, description, and captions for easier use. The Publish form is re-sizable too, allowing for easier reading of long FTP paths, etc.
  • Bug: Corrected a major bug regretfully introduced in the last version that made the ff and rw buttons useless when trying to cycle thru albums. Sorry, that was a big one ??
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby the ff and rw buttons on thumbnails would become disabled if an album didn’t have any images, and then stay disabled for any subsequent album load.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug whereby made fontsize of caption invisible when captions turned off, like the rest of the caption controls
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 5.2 (May 2, 2017)

  • Added: Added the ability to now save images (by right mouse clicking) when viewing them
  • Added:Added a new album feature, in the form of a + button on the top banner. You can still just drag/drop a directory on the form, or now you can use this button to remind you of what to do
  • Added: Added support for exclusions, the ability exclude selected images from display. There are now controls near the bottom right of the thumbnail on the main form
  • Added: A help page
  • Added: A longer memory for FTP saved directories, to 100 (it was 20). It only displays 10 in the pulldown, but it will remember up to 100.
  • Added: A font size label (1-7) and a video count label
  • Bug: Made it so that “Preview” automatically rescans and checks for new, updated, or removed image files
  • Bug: Made title-page function work for all modes. Previously, it only worked if in lightbox mode, and if in razzle-dazzle
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 5.1 (Mar 14, 2017)

  • Added:A banner and 10-deep album history were added, so that quick going back to previous albums is possible.
  • Added:A privacy mode whereby, when enabled, it will keep most search engines from indexing/finding the photo album
  • Added: Made FTP drop-down retain 10 most recent FTP settings (additionally, saving the last 100 so that an album can look up its last settings used)
  • Added:Added title-page generation. If an image name matches a subdirectory name, the webpage generated will images that when clicked, will open another album in that subdirectory, rather than just zooming the image like normal. Allows multi-level photo-pages.
  • Added:Added settable site-width to every album
  • Added:Added new animated snow background
  • Added: Added support for Image URLs. Drag an image from a website onto the form, and wit will be added to the album
  • Added: Improved sorting capabilities: made more robust, added random sort, added reverse alphabetic sort
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes, various cosmetic cleanups, and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 5.0 (Mar 14, 2017)

  • Added:Video capabilities: drag Youtube URL’s on, or a .csv file of Youtube videos.
  • Added:web fonts so that all web-pages generated will be render fonts consistently on any computer and on any borwser
  • Added: Dark theme support. Previously, the application was really funky if using a windows dark theme. Now at least its still usable.
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes and stability enhancements

New in PhotoPageGen 4.0 (Mar 14, 2017)

  • Added: Added NeoCities as a hosting site
  • Added: Added Border and Mat and associated coloring and other customizable properties, to thumbnaills
  • Added: Added RazzleDazzle feature to map, so it has the same characteristics as the thumbnails
  • Added: Added a label to the sort order, actually showing whether its oldest picture first or newest picture first or alphabetical
  • Bug: Various small tweaks/fixes