Meld Solutions Inc.

Meld Gallery for the Mura CMS ... Now Available

Meld Gallery, our open source image manager/gallery display plugin for the Mura CMS, is now available for download.

In fact, Meld Gallery was 'mostly' finished almost three months ago, but thanks to some thoughtful-but-complicated requests from a significant interest (i.e. client) it ended up becoming a narrowly-supported (i.e. only MySQL, only Adobe ColdFusion 9) plugin by the time it was complete. It took a few months both to widen support to include MS SQL and ColdFusion 8 / Railo into the mix, as well as add even more functionality requested directly from Blue River (makers of the great Mura CMS itself). Now, after many rounds of internal testing and a few clients-slash-willing guinea pigs later, Gallery is ready for a broader audience ... albeit still in a 'beta' version.

(As a side note, 'beta' for us really means that we've tried everything we can think of to break it and can no longer, that the few who have been testing it are no longer Emailing us about issues, and that we would feel comfortable about putting it on a site without having to constantly watch over it.)

Features

While the documentation page has most of the details, I'd liked to point out a couple of primary features that stand out. First, we've built it so that you don't really have to use the plugin directly at all. Meld Gallery will automatically include any images uploaded through the Mura Site Manager into its library, and you can convert your standard Mura Gallery into a Meld one simply by changing the page type. We also made it so that it could use any Mura Content Collection as a source for a gallery. If you are familiar with the Merced "Feed Gallery", then you will really love this feature as setting up this type of gallery not only much easier, but also is entirely theme-independent.

Another important feature is that it makes gallery management much easier for both power users and novices. For instance, once the basic gallery settings have been configured, even a modesty-experienced Mura user will be able to quickly upload, organize and display their galleries in a wide variety of formats without ever having to know what a pixel is. For those of a more technical bent, every single gallery can be configured to individual specifications, allowing the site administrator to set the thumbnail dimensions, resize/crop types, transition types and timing, and much much more.

Finally, Meld Gallery automatically cuts every image to the exact requirements of a particular gallery from a 'master' original. No more re-cutting/sizing/uploading images for you ... Meld Gallery takes care of all of that. What this means is that if you suddenly wanted all of your gallery images 20% larger, all you have to do is change the gallery height/width settings. Meld Gallery will automatically re-cut the images from the original masters the next time the gallery is displayed.

So, have fun, and if you happen to find any bugs or issues (or want to add to what seems like an infinite list of potential new features) please post them in our community forums.