Any way to create directories in the Media Library?

This would be great info to know.

Anyone? I'd like to keep each gallery's images in their own folder, for example, separate gallery images from those on posts and pages, and definitely keep my images separate from those another poster would have access to. Even a workaround of some kind would be helpful. 

Hi Joe and spicecadet,

Currently, Drupal Gardens doesn't support different directories within the Media Library; however, it's definitely a great suggestion and something that we're now tracking internally at DG-2665.

In the meantime, there a couple of options that you can use to organize and display your photos.

One of those is, if you are using a service similar to that of Flickr or Picasa, you can organize your photo galleries on those sites and pull in a feed into your Gardens site.

Another option would be to divide your photo content on your Gardens site into sub-galleries. Instead of having a large gallery that held family photos for instance, you could have a gallery for birthdays 2011, vacation 2010, and so forth. Keep in mind that when you upload photos to your Gardens site, the images are loaded in the order they are stored on your computer. If you want them to be loaded in a particular order, then sort them before uploading them.

You can set permissions for what users and roles have access to administering or viewing media as shown in the below screenshot by going to Admin > People > Permissions:

https://skitch.com/e-stacywray/g57hx/people-stacywray-heart-testing

Let me know if this information helps, and I've definitely added both of your comments to the discussion thread we're tracking for DG-2665.

Thanks!

Best regards,

Hi Stacy,

Sounds like there's no way to organize media files on DG itself. Using sub-galleries is a surface organization, grouping displays but pulling each file in each sub-gallery from the same pool. Correct?

And if you're pulling a feed from Flickr or Picasa, you lose a great deal of latitude in how to display it, correct? Any way to build a gallery from a feed, including titles and descriptions, that displays in a lightbox and on its own pages?

Outside of this, I'm exploring using simple naming strategies to group files by prefix. In the Find Content, Media tab, I'm able to sort by title. That helps. However, when I'm editing a page, and I "Add Media," then "Browse Library," I'm stuck with a thumbnail view sorted by date uploaded. Plus, the view truncates long file names. So I can't see the full name, and when it's PDFs or zip files I'm working with, that's frustrating.

Any way to at least choose how to view the library when you're browsing it from the edit window?

Thanks.

Hi Joe Shirley,

Currently, within Drupal Gardens, there is no other way to organize media files into separate repositories. All users have access to the same pool of media.

Due to the nature of Gardens being a hosted platform, it would be difficult to have an unlimited number of separate repositories of media for each site or for each user role on a site.

In terms of building a gallery from a feed, you wouldn't need to do this since you can basically import an existing gallery from the third-party resource like Picasa, or Flickr as it might be redundant to create a gallery of a gallery.

Since the gallery would be linked to the third-party source that hosts the images, the lightbox capabilities would need to come from whatever outside resource is being used unless the images are actually stored and hosted on your Gardens site. You can always use CSS to target the images once they are displayed on your site.

Long file names are definitely a source of irritation; however, you could change the names within the file name on Flickr or Picasa to something shorter, and even create a naming mechanism outside of Gardens so that they continue to exist in the format you'd like once you embed the images within Gardens.

To your last question, there is no other way to view the library when you're browsing files from the edit window. I have created a feature request for your suggestion though, that we're tracking internally at DG-2831.

If you're feeling that you need more flexibility when it comes to building your site, you can always export your files/data and self host it so that you have access to all Drupal modules available as well as have the capability to organize your media files in the manner that best suits your needs.

You might find this related post helpful as well:

http://www.drupalgardens.com/content/styling-media-fields

I hope this information clarifies things better!

Kind regards,