The Magazine Database will fix the Gallery!

[Phillyman]

Today I realized that I could use the new Magazine Database to fix the Image Gallery. Years ago when we installed the Gallery component to this site, I imported tons of magazine covers that we had from our old old wiki.....and the tons of images that Kevin gave us when the Magweasel wiki shut down. The issue is that when we imported the images, they assumed the name of the file. For some images the filename was descriptive enough.....but for many others....the file names are somewhat cryptic and not search friendly.

For example.....

http://community.retromags.com/gallery/category/112-play/

This is the category for the USA magazine "Play". You will see that the files are named in this sort of manner.....

play-0112

play-0203

play-0204

.

.

etc...

At first you may think the four digits are month/year.....but it is actually the reverse (so that they are sorted in the correct order). No matter how the numbering scheme is configured.....these titles are not user or search engine friendly.....so we need to change them to.....

Play Issue 001 (December 2001)

Play Issue 003 (March 2002)

Play Issue 004 (April 2002)

While I wish I could get rid of the prefix zero's, they will need to stay for the time being.....for sorting purposes. But the above examples give a more clear understanding of which issue's cover you are looking at.....and which ones we are still missing! With hundreds (maybe thousands) of images that are not conforming to a standard naming scheme.....it would be a nightmare for 1 person to manually go to each image and change the title.

I think I found an easier way to "kill two birds with 1 stone". The Magazine Database already has the correct names, dates and issue numbers for almost every magazine in existence! Almost 2000 of the images in the Gallery have already been "linked" to the correct record in our database. As we link more and more images to records, I can actually use that information to mass rename the titles in the Gallery.....changing thousands of titles in just seconds!

Not only should I be able to fix the Gallery to a standard naming convention.....but I will also be able to link the Gallery to the Database! That means that when you are viewing an image in the Gallery, that there would be a link to its record in the Database! Very cool stuff indeed!