Well, as I had feared, upgrading my gallery to the latest Coppermine code took a lot longer than I had hoped for. And at 3 am, my iPod has lost its steam as well. Over the years, I have made numerous tweaks, enhancements, and significant modifications to the Coppermine base code. When the developers update it with new features and bug updates, you often have to replace all your old files with the newer ones. This results in you losing all of your tweaks.

So, although I had a good record of the tweaks I made, it took a long time to figure out how they fit in because they moved quite a few things around. I am no programmer, so a lot of my fiddling is trial and error. In addition, I did some cleanup to the gallery’s look, with a few more tweaks still needed. But it is now in running condition. I think it will be a good long time before I take on another ‘update.’

The main reasons I chose to upgrade were the new features I have long wanted to incorporate.

• Password-protected albums – a feature I intend to use for submissions to photo editors who often accept the use of web ‘lightboxes’ for reviewing material
• Images can be applied to multiple ‘categories’ now
• Vastly improved search capability
• Importing IPTC file data – so I can keyword from Adobe Bridge, and Coppermine will pick up that IPTC data. I hope this will be a big time-saver for me when keywording.

If you get a moment, please visit the gallery and kick the tires a bit. I welcome any feedback, or if you happen to come across any errors or strange formatting. Cross-browser testing is always an interesting experience! 🙂