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mjau-mjau
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Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

20 Dec 2015, 14:15

Imagevue X3 Official Release
After today's 0.14 release, and with a new purchase/license system in place, we are today officially launching Imagevue X3. There are still a few formalities pending, including new documentation and a new www.photo.gallery website, but we don't want this to further delay public launch of Imagevue X3.

How can I get Imagevue X3?
If you want to get started with X3 immediately, you can purchase a license at www.photo.gallery/buy/. After purchase, you will receive an email with a download link and an X3 license-key. Read more about the X3 purchase/license/authorization system here: viewtopic.php?f=51&t=8746

Try First
If you want to try X3 before you buy, go to www.photo.gallery/buy/ and click the TRIAL tab. If you decide to continue with X3 after trial, you can purchase a license, authorize your domain, and continue with the same X3 installation.

Future
For the next few weeks, we will be working to release a new www.photo.gallery website alongside new X3 documentation. Once complete, we are looking forward to continue adding new great features into future X3 releases!

----------

Official X3 Demo
https://demo.photo.gallery/
https://demo.photo.gallery/panel/

X3 Purchase License and Authorize Domain
https://www.photo.gallery/buy/
[Information]

X3 Documentation
There is an X3 installation guide in the readme.txt file provided in download link. Additional help can be found directly in context within the X3 admin panel. We are working to release additional X3 documentation online.

X3 Requirements
X3 requires a web server with PHP version 5.3 or higher, and standard PHP modules installed. X3 currently supports Apache server, but will also support other environments once we can complete conversions of the .htaccess file.

A list of websites running X3
https://www.photo.gallery/showcase/

High-performance X3 web hosting
https://www.flamepix.com
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

21 Dec 2015, 02:25

Just for reference, I would like to note a few important X3 features that were added in the latest release-branch [0.12-0.14] prior to release-version. We had a long forum thread ongoing since August 2015, generally about this new release-version.

New features of X3 [0.12-0.14]
---------------------------------------

Brand new JSON settings
The settings structure has been redesigned from ground-up to make X3 as flexible as we want it to be. The new JSON format allows us to utilize settings across both PHP and Javascript, and merge default-settings with user-settings. When you make changes to global settings, your changes are stored in a unique file config.user.json, which allows you to upgrade X3 easily without loosing your settings. Also page-settings have been moved to page.json files within each folder, and only settings that are not default get stored in each file. You can now also set global-default page-settings, so that you only need to change a minimum amount of settings for each page you create.

New image "landing page"
Each and every image in your X3 website now has it's own "landing page", see example here. These pages are not generally viewed by humans, because when clicking a smaller image, they will normally see the image in the X3 popup window. So what is the point? There are a few reasons to have a landing-page for each image: 1) SEO - Having a unique page for each image, with all meta data included in the document, will give a the best foundation for having the image-page indexed in search engines. 2) Sharing - Most sharing services (including Facebook and Google+) require a PAGE to be shared, so you kinda need an image-page for this. You could share an image directly (without a page), but don't you want visitors to land on your website, instead of just a plain link to an image? The image-page also includes the images meta-data, so that correct title, description and preview-images are used when sharing. 3) Accessibility - As far as robots can see, each link in your galleries now goes to the image-page. The X3 popup is really just a human-interface that hi-jacks the click for improved image-viewing without leaving the current page. Also, if a visitor does a "open link in new tab", the image-page will load in the new tab (just like facebook galleries etc.)

CSS hosted on CDN
In addition to the X3 javascript, we are now serving the X3 CSS files from a super-fast CDN (content delivery network). Personally, I think this is a really cool feature, which generally speeds up all X3 websites.

Fail-proof conditional CSS- and Javascript loader
Sometimes, CDN resources may fail to load if the visitor is behind some kinda firewall, or located in a country with some strict limitations. Now, if a CSS or JS resource fails to load, X3 will automatically load the local version of the CSS/JS file instead. This makes sure your X3 website does not break in these rare cases.

Justified layout fix
Fixed "orphan" bug, and dramatically increased rendering speeds for the popular justified layout.

New X3 Popup
We have implemented a new awesome popup method for viewing images. Test it here by clicking an image. The new popup has some really cool features, including zoom-in animation (from thumbnail), image-sharing, transitions, zoom, superior touch/swipe functionality from touch devices, and extensive settings from the X3 admin panel. The popup-method has also been made available for you to use in your page content, read more here.

Added Font-Awesome
X3 now uses Font-Awesome, which by default is loaded from a fast CDN service. Font-awesome is used natively in the X3 design (icons), and can be used in your page content also, read more here.

New Sharing Toolbar
There is a slick new sharing toolbar available, which is by default attached to the left side of the visitors screen. The toolbar is primarily used for social sharing, but can also be used to add other links and features. It is highly configurable from the X3 admin panel, and makes clumsy, large 3rd-party services like "AddThis" redundant.

New Footer
New footer, configurable from the X3 admin panel. The new footer allows custom content, and editing the "icon-buttons" with your own links, icons, colors and titles.

New initial diagnostics
We have now enabled new diagnostics by default. This allows X3 to make sure that necessary folders are created, and that permissions are correct when the website is run first time. If diagnostics reports that there are no issues, you can safely disable diagnostics from panel settings, and continue with your X3 setup.

New Panel Tools
New "tools" page available from the X3 admin panel: #menu (pre-create menu), #preload (create site object when using the "preload" option), #authorize (check your license authorization vs domain), #reset (reset settings), #htaccess (for diagnosing and editing .htaccess file)

More
- Much improved codebase.
- Native support for chatra.io chat (See demo @mjau-mjau.com, bottom right button).
- New customizable 404 (page not found), in panel -> manage -> custom/404.
- New customizable favicon, in panel -> manage -> custom/favicon
- Faster page-creation times with menu-fragment caching.
- New "prevent context-menu" setting, to prevent visitors from downloading images.
- New panel/custom.css, to add custom CSS rules to the panel.
 
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Martin
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

21 Dec 2015, 14:41

mjau-mjau wrote:New image "landing page"
Each and every image in your X3 website now has it's own "landing page".
I noticed that the landing page in your example has no technical data below the image (like 'Model', 'Focal Length', 'Exposure', 'Aperture',...
while in my case these items are being shown.
How can I hide these items?
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

22 Dec 2015, 01:09

Martin wrote:I noticed that the landing page in your example has no technical data below the image (like 'Model', 'Focal Length', 'Exposure', 'Aperture',...
while in my case these items are being shown.
How can I hide these items?
That specific example page does not display meta data, because the image doesn't have meta data.

If you want to hide the image meta data for your image-pages, add this to your settings->custom-> custom CSS:
Code
.file .meta {
  display: none;
}
 
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Martin
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

22 Dec 2015, 09:19

mjau-mjau wrote: If you want to hide the image meta data for your image-pages, add this to your settings->custom-> custom CSS:
Code
.file .meta {
  display: none;
}
Thnx!

Another question:
Disqus: Most of my galleries have no Disqus specification, only some do.
But an image that resides in a gallery where Disqus is not specified still shows the Disqus section on the landingpage of that image.

Some other remarks:
1) When entering the url of a landingpage it takes a lot of time for that page to appear.... especially the first time
i.e. http://martinbroeze.nl/emptiness/12thse ... Water_008/
Clicking on the image in a gallery does not have this bad performance

2) Nothing to do with landingpages, but I noticed also a bad performance when clicking in the menu on a gallery that has user/password protection. Especially after clearing the browser- and the clouflare-cache.
example: http://martinbroeze.nl/attic/tmo/
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

22 Dec 2015, 13:24

Martin wrote:Disqus: Most of my galleries have no Disqus specification, only some do.
But an image that resides in a gallery where Disqus is not specified still shows the Disqus section on the landingpage of that image.
So you have Disqus account enabled then? ... and using it for a few pages? If Disqus is enabled, it will add Disqus comments to the image-landing page also by default ... perhaps we need to add settings for this. It is just guessed that with Disqus enabled, you would like to offer the option of commenting on photos, as it would only benefit SEO anyway. For now, you would have to hide it by CSS:
Code
. x3-file . disqus {
  display: none;
}
Martin wrote:Some other remarks:
1) When entering the url of a landingpage it takes a lot of time for that page to appear.... especially the first time
i.e. http://martinbroeze.nl/emptiness/12thse ... Water_008/
Clicking on the image in a gallery does not have this bad performance
No, of course loading the image is MUCH faster, and that is why this is what all humans will be seeing unless accessing the page from a link shared on social media. Since there is a landing page for each image, this pages needs to get created- and cached like any other page. Most other pages in your gallery will get cached within short time after you make changes, because humans are visiting them. Your image-pages however may not get cached, simply because nobody is viewing them (until you for example check yourself).

Must say, your server seems incredibly slow to process. Your website isn't that heavy either. First time I loaded that page, there was a 30 second wait:
Image

Second time, it was super-fast, thus proving how effective- and important the X3 server caching mechanism is:
Image

As long as you are making changes in your website, the entire page-cache will keep on expiring and having to be refreshed all the time. Once you stop editing for a while, your website will speed up drastically. I would have to mention that your server seems super slow for page-processing.
Martin wrote:2) Nothing to do with landingpages, but I noticed also a bad performance when clicking in the menu on a gallery that has user/password protection. Especially after clearing the browser- and the clouflare-cache.
example: http://martinbroeze.nl/attic/tmo/
Actually, it's same as landing-pages or any other page in your website. Sorry, but your hosting is really slow. Also, you are using cloudflare PAGE-CACHING? This does not work with login pages, and would break your logins. Else, its entirely unrelated to both cloudflare and browser, since neither of them would cache a page (only images etc).

Here is your password page, compared to ours:
http://martinbroeze.nl/attic/tmo/
https://demo.photo.gallery/examples/features/password/

Basically, it seems like ANY of your pages that are not pre-created (cached), takes 20-30 seconds to load:
Image

Not good, as I can't see you have too many folders in your content, or images in your folders.
 
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Martin
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

23 Dec 2015, 04:10

mjau-mjau wrote:
Martin wrote:Some other remarks:
When entering the url of a landingpage it takes a lot of time for that page to appear.... especially the first time
Well, I think yesterday was a bad day for my website, because today everything is really as fast as it ever was.
I contacted my provider and they told me that due to high I/O the server limited my resources for a while.
A question: I did create my menu and site Object a couple of times yesterday after making changes. Can it be that this action caused a lot of I/O? The problem is that I do not know when to recreate the menu and the site Object... after what kind of changes is it necessary and when isn't it?
mjau-mjau wrote: Also, you are using cloudflare PAGE-CACHING? This does not work with login pages, and would break your logins.
Yes, I am, but I created a page rule for *martinbroeze.nl/attic/*, so no problem there.
mjau-mjau wrote: Here is your password page, compared to ours:
http://martinbroeze.nl/attic/tmo/
https://demo.photo.gallery/examples/features/password/
Mine is as fast as yours, today... the bad performance was temporarily

Thnx! for looking into it.
So, only these questons remain: can recreating the menu- and site Object cause a high I/O?
And when should one recreate them and when not?
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

23 Dec 2015, 11:56

Martin wrote:Well, I think yesterday was a bad day for my website, because today everything is really as fast as it ever was.
I contacted my provider and they told me that due to high I/O the server limited my resources for a while.
Yes it's certainly fast now. I was a bit worried about the slow creation time for new pages yesterday. In either case, regardless of this delay, you have two layers of caching on top of your website now that makes it incredibly fast. Pages get cached not only on server for fast access, but your cloudflare page-caching adds another layer of incredibly fast page-access. Your "slow" issues would only arise when you are editing pages, in which case you will be refreshing both the server page cache and cloudflare page cache.
Martin wrote:A question: I did create my menu and site Object a couple of times yesterday after making changes. Can it be that this action caused a lot of I/O?
Yes, these two process do cause a lot of I/O and processing demands on your server, and that is why we have added them as "tools". However, when these processes are complete from the "tools" (they may take several seconds each), there is no reason your server should not return to a state of readiness as the processing ends and the objects are created.
Martin wrote:The problem is that I do not know when to recreate the menu and the site Object... after what kind of changes is it necessary and when isn't it?
To be honest, you can just ignore the "menu" setting, as this is always refreshed on the first page you check after you make ANY change from the panel. It might just speed up your first page check, but essentially its just a comparison tool to check how long time it takes to generate the menu. As for the CREATE SITE OBJECT, that is different, and is by far the most heavy process. When editing pages and previewing them, you don't need to use this tool, because you can still see the results when accessing a page directly. It may load an old siteobject in the background though, so if you start navigating, you may see old pages. You should use this button basically when you want to "publish" your website, because it creates the object that gets loaded into the visitors browser for pages navigated to.
Martin wrote:Yes, I am, but I created a page rule for *martinbroeze.nl/attic/*, so no problem there.
yep
Martin wrote: Here is your password page, compared to ours:
http://martinbroeze.nl/attic/tmo/
https://demo.photo.gallery/examples/features/password/
Yep, nice and fast.

Although you are bypassing cloudflare cache for these pages, passworded-pages still use the X3 server cache. This cache is "partial", because it still stores an output of the page to make it load fast, but there is still some overhead PHP processing going on, to check if there is a password, manage the routing, and checking for the cached file to output.
 
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Martin
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

23 Dec 2015, 23:52

mjau-mjau wrote:
Martin wrote:The problem is that I do not know when to recreate the menu and the site Object... after what kind of changes is it necessary and when isn't it?
... As for the CREATE SITE OBJECT, that is different, and is by far the most heavy process. When editing pages and previewing them, you don't need to use this tool, because you can still see the results when accessing a page directly. It may load an old siteobject in the background though, so if you start navigating, you may see old pages. You should use this button basically when you want to "publish" your website, because it creates the object that gets loaded into the visitors browser for pages navigated to.
So, if I understand it correctly, the constellation of all the pages in my website is stored in the site Object (minus the images, videos, etc.). At a given moment in time visitors will see my website by means of this site Object. If I change or add new pages this will not affect the visitor as long as I do not refresh the site Object. In the worst case the site Object has a definition of an image that is no longer there.

Most important: do not recreate the site Object after each change in the panel, only when you've done editing for a while and want to publish your changes.
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

24 Dec 2015, 00:06

Martin wrote:So, if I understand it correctly, the constellation of all the pages in my website is stored in the site Object (minus the images, videos, etc.). At a given moment in time visitors will see my website by means of this site Object. If I change or add new pages this will not affect the visitor as long as I do not refresh the site Object. In the worst case the site Object has a definition of an image that is no longer there.
Yes, but there is one important exception: The site object only contains the pages in JSON format that are loaded with javascript after you CLICK a menu item. When you access a page directly (by adding url in browser, or refreshing page), this page is always loaded separately without accessing the site object. The site object is for javascript, and is always loaded after first page loads, and only applies when clicking links in the menu.

Therefore, you can still TEST separate pages from the panel WITHOUT "creating site object" first. However, if you start clicking around in the menu, it will render pages from the last created site object. Therefore, if you are working on your website from the panel, it may not be necessary to create the site object until you are actually done with your editing, as long as you are aware of the test limitations.

How many seconds does it take from your panel to create the site object (when nothing is cached on server and cloudflare)? Technically speaking, even if it takes 20 seconds, after the process is complete, it should not hog any more resources. It is just a single heavy PHP process, that starts and ends.
 
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Martin
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

24 Dec 2015, 02:30

mjau-mjau wrote:How many seconds does it take from your panel to create the site object?
... even if it takes 20 seconds, after the process is complete, it should not hog any more resources. It is just a single heavy PHP process, that starts and ends.
Some 30... 40 seconds.
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

24 Dec 2015, 02:57

Martin wrote:Some 30... 40 seconds.
That's a long processing time, but nothing wrong with it. The create site-object process is very heavy, because it basically process ALL pages in a single process. Once rendered, you have your site-object file nicely ready and available to load for visitors (if you have preload enabled).
 
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adonismale
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

29 Dec 2015, 16:51

I just wanted to say a huge congratulations on the official release of IVX3!

I've been a longtime fan of ImageVueX and when I went to go checkout on my license for X3 a couple of minutes ago, I realized that I first purchased X2 in 2011 -- it's been four years and IVX is still going strong! I can't wait to try out the new, fast, and modern IVX!
 
LeiRuM
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

07 Jan 2016, 19:30

The audio player will be available when?

Thank you
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Imagevue X3 Official Release [0.14]

07 Jan 2016, 22:12

LeiRuM wrote:The audio player will be available when?
Next major release, likely February.