Meld Solutions Inc.

Meld Gallery, Because Everybody Wants One

Introducing Meld Gallery, a gallery plugin for the Mura Content Management System.

We came to a conclusion recently that "everybody wants a gallery on their website". Because many of our clients have been demanding more control and flexibility with their galleries, we decided to develop a new Mura CMS plugin application to do exactly that. First and foremost, Meld Gallery is designed as a "user-friendly application for content managers to upload, organize and create beautiful image galleries". We wanted a plugin that would remove the burden of content managers having to understand resolution-vs-dimension, content organization, or having to fiddle with a bunch of settings to get a gallery onto a particular page.  In short, we wanted to develop something powerful, highly automated, and yet easy to use. In Meld Gallery, we think we've succeeded in doing just that.

There is a lot to get excited about in Meld Gallery. The process starts by converting any images uploaded by a content manager into manageable "web" dimensions (which the administrator can, of course, preset). Uploaded images can include not only captions but html descriptions, urls, descriptive tags and much more (or the image & caption and nothing else).

Next, content managers can organize their images by either adding descriptive "tags" to them or creating "Image Sets". Image Sets are simply collections of images, managed through a graphical interface that includes drag-n-drop sorting and a light box-style selection area.  They can also include descriptions and tags, making them easy to sort through and identify.

The "Gallery Displays" are the last big piece of the puzzle, essentially gallery formats that display your images.  For instance, content managers could create a "ShadowBox" Gallery Display simply by selecting an Image Group and clicking "Save".  If they wish, they could also configure image & thumbnail dimensions, set how the images will be cut (cropped/resized/etc.), and tweak a number of other settings as well.  This saved Gallery Display could then be placed on any (or multiple) pages within a Mura site, and will look and act pretty much exactly like a traditional Mura gallery. Creating the "Boxy", "Mast Head" or "Swishy" galleries would be just as easy!

Meld Gallery automatically takes care of cutting and resizing the images the gallery will use, and any new images added to the Image Group will automatically be cut and sized as well. Some of the other interesting concepts include:

• Image Reuse: uploaded images can be added to any number of Image Sets or galleries; Meld Gallery will automatically create versions of the selected images to suit the display
• Light Box: images in Image Groups are selected by using a searchable light box-style gallery that includes drag-and-drop sorting
• Integration: All images are stored using the Mura file cache, and so are available to any other plugin or Mura system that wishes to access them
• Organization: Images and Image Groups can be easily sorted and filtered
• Deletion: when an image is removed from a Display or deleted all together, Meld Gallery performs a thorough clean-up to remove all thumbnails and versions from the file system
• Displays: Meld Gallery will launch with several gallery types and we'll be creating new Gallery Displays over time, including jQuery- and Flash-based galleries and integrations will popular 3rd-party galleries

In the future, we'll also be developing several important add-on features:

• Multiple/Batch Upload: we will most definitely add a multiple-image upload tool in the near future, once we've thought out the best approach for doing this (as images can have a lot of associated content)
• Content Generators: a way to generate xml, cvs and other data-type formats so that external applications such as 3rd-party Flash-based galleries can be easily integrated
• Content Indexes: we'll be adding a Mura content index-style tool that will allow Display Galleries to dynamically draw in images based upon content tags or labels
• Site Manager Integration: we are looking at ways of adding access to Meld Gallery images via the Site Manager content editor, so that users can easily insert individual images into their content
• S3 Cache: Meld Gallery currently doesn't support images hosted via Mura's Amazon S3 cache, but will in future editions
• Display Gallery Uploader: while Display Galleries are currently an integrated part of Meld Gallery, we will eventually include a "Install" feature which will let administrators easily add new display types
• Integration Tools: Meld Gallery is designed to work with other Meld Solutions plugins (for instance, it will drive the Meld Ecommerce product galleries). We will be building tools to allow 3rd-party Mura plugins to integrate Meld Gallery functionality into their own systems as well

We have just completed the "Alpha" version, which is being tested by both our Mura clients and Blue River Interactive themselves. As to the release date, I should note that images you see in this blog post (bottom of page) are in fact coming from a Meld Gallery 'ShadowBox' display. The current testing is being done simply to identify any bugs or issues (not to find new features to add), so once this is complete we will be making the plugin generally available.

Licensing will be the same as will other Meld Solutions products: dual licensed, allowing you to download (for free) the GPL 2-licensed version, or purchase the commercially licensed version.