Images field in CMSMS?

[Cerulean]

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I last worked with CMSMS - not since before 2.0 was released.

One challenge I remember was the scenario where you want to upload multiple images to a dedicated field within a page. For a single image I could use GBFilePicker, but for multiple images there was no easy solution and I had to use the Gallery module and then select the gallery from the page editor.

So my question is: are there any new solutions to this scenario, either in the core or via a module? The needs are...

1. Interface within the page editor (so I don't have to navigate away from the page being edited to a separate section in the CMS admin)
2. Allows the upload of multiple images, where the number of images is not known (i.e. not a bunch of individual file/image fields).
3. Provides basic content management features: sort the images, add a plain-text caption to each image
4. Is a dedicated field so the images can be retrieved and iterated over in the template (i.e. not a WYSIWYG field)

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[velden]

I think the only answer is: no

That said, I don't know all 3rd party modules available in the forge.

[Cerulean]

Thanks for the reply @velden.

This seems like such a basic content management need that it's disappointing not to see it supported in CMSMS. Wanting to add and sort images for a page outside of the context of a WYSIWYG editor is a very common scenario in all but the most basic of templates.

Using a module like Gallery is a poor workaround at best because there is no proper connection between the gallery and page: if you want to automate a page->gallery connection you have to rely on things like the page alias being named the same as the gallery, which breaks if the page alias is later changed. Not to mention the inconvenience of needing to edit the page content in two different locations in admin.

A multi-image field should be provided in the CMSMS core IMHO. Considering that CMSMS is currently presented as a candidate for "Best Open Source CMS" and "Best Free CMS", I suggest that it would timely to review whether the CMSMS core really provides the content management features that users need for modern websites. If not, it should be a priority to address this.

[DIGI3]

There's lots of ways to do what you're asking, just perhaps not directly in the core:

• you can use a UDT so the editor can choose a Gallery from within the content page (I do this a lot, it's great - they can choose sliders, galleries, etc)
• you could write or extend a module to handle it
• you could sponsor a developer to extend an existing module to do what you're after
• you could fork an existing module and adapt it to your needs
  (just to name a few)

Having an image sorting mechanism within the content manager isn't simple, and it's out of scope for the core. When we look at features to include in the core, we take into consideration how many people would use it, how difficult it would be to support, what impact it would have on performance, as well as simply what resources we have to spare. Features such as what you're after are ideal for modules, but not the core.