Images in Pixaria Gallery are stored in your web server's filesystem in a dedicated image storage directory within your Pixaria installation directory. By default, the image storage directory is located at resources/library/ but this can be changed to a different location via the admin control panel.
If you want to add a large number of images to Pixaria Gallery all in one go, you can do so quickly and easily by creating a directory of images on your computer and uploading them to your site by FTP. The directory and images you create should be uploaded into the resources/incoming/ folder and once in place, you will be able to import them from the library control panel. Details of how to do this are included in the documentation topic on managing your image library.
Pixaria also supports off-server storage of images using RackSpace Cloud Files. With RackSpace Cloud Files, it is possible to store all your image files on the RackSpace CDN (content delivery network) which can significantly speed up the performance of your site and make big savings on web hosting fees.
If you have a RackSpace Cloud Files account, you can enter the details in the general settings control panel to begin making use of the Cloud Files system. When Cloud Files support is enabled, it is possible to choose where to store images (local or on the CDN) at the time of import.
Pixaria Gallery offers a number of methods for managing the images you upload to your site. To understand how the software does this, it's best to start by explaining some of the terms used.
Firstly, the library is the term used to describe the complete collection of images stored in the Pixaria Gallery software. The library consists of the image files on the server and additional information about the images which is stored in the Pixaria database. Information stored in the database includes the title, caption and date of the image and various other metadata including EXIF and IPTC headers and image pricing and product options.
Inside the Pixaria Gallery library are constructs called groups which include galleries and lightboxes.
Galleries are a type of group and can contain an unlimited number of images from your library. In Pixaria Gallery, it is possible for an image to exist in more than one gallery at once. Galleries within galleries are called nested galleries.
Pixaria Gallery features a special type of gallery called a Smart Gallery that looks like a normal gallery to visitors to your site but behind the scenes uses a saved search to find images in your library. The contents of Smart Galleries update continually depending on the number of images that match the search terms defined in the Smart Gallery.
Lightboxes can be thought of as private galleries which users can compile for themselves. Any user can create up to ten separate lightboxes each of which can contain an unlimited number of images.
Registered users are able to manage their lightboxes from the 'My Account' link when they're logged in.
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