Welcome to the Question2Answer Q&A. There's also a demo if you just want to try it out.
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Q2A is, besides its excellent features for a question and answer site, as well a perfect platform for other website projects like image discussion sites, news sites, forum sites and much more.
 
For example does Q2A offer all features for a project like www.9gag.com or more or less all features for a site like www.pinterest.com , both being fast growing and well comented communities.
 
Q2A basically was developed to offer a perfect php/mysql question and answer script, so it does not wonder that image features for above mentioned projects are not fitting perfectly.
 
This discussion should figure out the needs of interested website developers as well as the best way to achieve the desired functionalities.
 
Using the wysiwyg (ckeditor with imageupload activated) q2a already offers image upload but there are a few problems when trying to use this feature for image based projects.
 
Problems:
 
a) Showing the questions content (images here) on question lists.
   - There are several posts explaining how to do this by using the mouseover
     plugin.
 
b) Uploading images through ckeditor is kind of difficult for targeted usergroups
     who have low internet experience.
   - There are posts which explain how to get an easier to use upload dialog, but it
     is still not perfect.
 
c) Images are stored actually in the database, what is great as long as images are
    not the main purpose of a webpage.
    If each post uses images it could be better to store them in a folder on the
    server,  so the usage of CDN or multiple servers could be achieved easier,
    the database  wouldnt grow that fast.
   - There is a post including the information that a plugin could be used to store
      images in folders, but that plugin is still not written.
   
d) Resizing images server site. As consumer cams and cels do deliver actually
     images of huge size and pixeldimensions, resizing images on serversite will hit
     php limits on many shared hostings.
 
     Resizing images through ckeditor is actually not possible, one can change the
     css, but the image is still stored with its original size.
     The authors of tinymce offer with www.plupload.com a free tool which allows
     client side resizing, multiple image upload and more through either, flash,
     silverlight, html5 and others. 
     It seems to be the most promising tool these days.
   
What could be the perfect solution ? What would fit best with the script ?
 
What I as non programmer imagine, would either be added features in the wysiwig editor:
 - simple imageupload dialog, automatic max width / hight for images, auto resizing
   clientside
or 
 - adding special fields to the ask, answer, comment form, with show/allow options
    in adminmenu.
 
These special "media" fields could be shown or not on these forms, above or under the editorarea, and even the editor could be shown or not.
Mediafields could be image upload fields, movie (Youtube..) fields, sound, pdf, file or other fields.
 
Image upload fields should have the option in admin menu to set a max width / height, serversite or clientsite rezizing and may be more.
 
What are Your opinions ? What is possible ? Which way would be the most promising ? Would it be better to have plugins (if possible) or should modifications be added to the core ?
 
Please coment on that, please post Your needs and opinions !
 
Who could write a matching plugin, would it be free or what would it cost ?
Q2A version: 1.5.1.
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Just an idea but I am not sure, maybe you could use adaptive images for "d) Resizing images server site", see http://adaptive-images.com/
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Hi echteinfachtv,

I am using the solution as posted here http://www.question2answer.org/qa/15070/does-anybody-know-here-how-to-store-blob-image-as-normal-image
second answer, it works nice for me and it gives me a smaller database and I can store extrathumbs in filesystem, i commented it as good as possible, so anybody can optimize it easily...
Only thing is to get hands on the blob id when You use the thumb stored in filesystem.
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thanks for pointing to the other post!
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Has anyone made any further progress with this topic?
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There are at least 2 solutions for the image resize, my one, which You found already and the one by Kai, see last answer here.
The basic difference is that Kai intercepts the CKEeditor and my solution intercepts the blob functions.
We still have no image fields, and I still dont see an imageupload script besides the CKEeditor.
With the new q2a version 1.6 I will review my image resize solution to check if it still works. With 1.6 one can either choose to store images in the database or in a filesystem on disk.
I am not skilled enough to write a nice and handy plugin, and personally I am waiting for a simple imageupload field to avoid CKEeditor.
To show the full question content in the question list, look around, a few weeks ago I saw a simple solution where the q_list function was altered.
http://www.question2answer.org/qa/11764/how-to-show-question-content-to-question-list?show=11764#q11764
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I'm interested in this topic, too.
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Hello, we would be interested by such a plugin. Additional requirement would be that the image upload works seamlessly on a mobile environment, as much as possible.

We are ready to pay for such a feature, do not hesitate to contact us for details.

7 Answers

+2 votes
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I need that too. Did you gave up with solution on http://www.question2answer.org/qa/13432/display-full-question-text-image-question-list-help-please. Is it working because I want to implement it on my website?

 

Thanks.

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- This is a version 1.3 site. To add a phrase like that in the actual version You would need to modify the ask box plugin in Your plugin folder.

- To use the modifictions on the question lists, You need to know how to set up an advanced theme, see instructions here on q2a -> about -> advanced

- If You do not need video embedding You do not need to add noahs embed plugin.
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Nono, it's not related to Images, I am asking for box on your site home page " "Just ask - no need to register !" . I am using latest version so I am not able to find AskBox by default nor to find it at plugins list on Q2A website. Maybe I should open new question for this.
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You are right, its a widget not a plugin.
- Activate the widget in admin-layout (Ask Box)
- Modify the widget by changing the file
qa-widget-ask-box.php in Your qa-include folder on Your server.
- Or set up an advanced theme and add there a custom ask box as described in numerous posts.
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Got it, thanks !
+3 votes
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It will be great if the user can attach image to question/answer and show that image in listing pages as thumbnails under the question.

I am willing to pay for this if it is not planed in some of next versions?
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I am interested too.
+1 vote
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Any updates?
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No news so far. I think the best thing we can do is posting our exact needs, to have a request ready when it comes to the next version. Gidgreen asks before each version step what users want or need, the better we can point out our needs the higher the chance to get them included. What are Your needs ?
+1 vote
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What about creating a new WYSIWYG editor specifically designed around image uploading?  I also think a whiteboard/drawing feature would be nice.  Something like   http://www.scriblink.com/

I've also been experimenting with a mathjax script for an equation editor addition to the CKeditor or some other WYSIWYG editor. Here is what I have so far. Any comments would be great.

http://mathhomeworkanswers.org/equation/index9.html

Just testing a few things for now. Lots of bugs.  Anyone who has suggestions is welcome to work with the code.

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Something like scriblink would be a dream of a feature !!!
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@mshelton : While searching for an imageeditor to offer image creation to my users i found this, I hope it ia an option for You !

http://www.fmath.info/plugins/CKEditor/demo.jsp
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I have actually seen this as well.  It is flash based and the equations are all converted to images. There is a script called MathJax that is great because it is built with fonts instead of images. Still working on the best way to use it with ckeditor.  Thanks for your comment.
+1 vote
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Adding advanced image handling is not trivial. Writing an image processor that will handle all kinds of user images without breaking is going to be a big project.

I have cobbled together a basic image processor that creates a local copy and thumbnail of JPG GIF PNG and BMP external images. The thumbnails are displayed in a carousel. You can see an example of this here.

The Q List adds an image icon to the title for any post with images. I might eventually add thumbnails to the Q List.

One problem with using uploaded images in Q2A is that the images are stored in the db. And the problem with remote images is that they often become broken.

After having spent quite a lot of time on this, I am of the opinion that the optimal solution would be to choose an open source image gallery and write a plugin to bridge between Q2A and the image gallery. This would require a new or modified editor, or images could be handled when qa_db_post_create() is called.  

The benefit to using an established image gallery is that all of the common image processing functions will already be there and will be well tested.

 

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Do You have a (lightweight) image gallery in mind ? Your carousel is really excellent, this would be a great plugin as well. The database issue is known and it is ok as long as images are not so important. Gidgreen pointed in one post already to the basic functions which are needed to write a matching plugin storing images in folders, but still nobody found the time to work on that. However, I think it should be part of the core, where one can set where he wants images to be stored.
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I found this list of open source image galleries

http://www.opensourcecms.com/scripts/show.php?catid=7&category=Image%20Galleries

Some of them seem like they could work.  Any opinions?
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I am looking at Gallery 3 now.
0 votes
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Just want to point You to

http://www.question2answer.org/qa/15070/does-anybody-know-here-how-to-store-blob-image-as-normal-image

second answer, where i have published some code which could help on that.

For me it works very well, please comment and help to make it better.

0 votes
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This crossed my way today and might help to implement advanced image handling: http://www.jquery4u.com/ajax/image-upload-example/

Btw, what I have done for image handling over the last months:

1. image manager plugin (admin): https://github.com/echteinfachtv/q2a-list-uploads-page

2. resize script (for uploaded images): http://www.question2answer.org/qa/18980/tip-resize-jpg-images-on-upload

Maybe that helps.

All the best,
Kai
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