A List Apart Comments for Article: A Better Image Rotator

Testing!

Mon, 15 Aug 2005 19:56:02 GMT

Here is a comment that I will post. eat a sandwich.

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Can Not get this picture rotating script to wotk at all!!!!

Sat, 27 Aug 2005 14:11:23 GMT

This is on the face of it an excellent idear to have a php script that can be included in a php file that rotates various images round each time you load up the page.... However I have tried to get it to work a number of times and failed completely.. the script uses an ini file and sometimes shows a jpg file I have on the server but somtimes fails to load a picture and instead just shows a tiny red cross and no image.... It is very disappointing that it appears not to work correctly I would like to accept e mail about this in an attempt to correct this.. but feel that there must be several things wrong, either with the format of the ini file or the rotator.php script or both........... Help>>>>...???

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works, but...

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 04:29:13 GMT

it's extremely slow... been testing the script, watching the 'activity viewer' as it downloads the test-page, sometimes it loads fast, but most of the time the download of the page grinds to a halt when it starts downloading the rotator.php file

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work with txt files?

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 12:01:09 GMT

will it work with text not images?

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Only uses first image in ini file

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:51:25 GMT

This script will only use the first image listed in the .ini file. I tried messing around with rotation.php but nothing worked. From what I can see, either the ini isnt working correctly, or the rand() command isnt working for some reason. Can anyone help me here?

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how to fix it...

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 02:46:51 GMT

well i know whats breaking it, but not sure how to fix it ;-) the problem is the .ini files. if you have an url with a querystring appended to it, the array that parses the ini trips over and everything explodes in a big flaming fireball. please please mr benjamin can you implement querystring support?

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that was quick

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 02:52:50 GMT

well, i fixed it. if your url has a querystring in it. wang some quotes around the ini entry. eg; url = "think.php?id=43&category=life" thanks for great little script benjamin.

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problems with sub-directories

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 01:27:50 GMT

I can get this to work, but I am having trouble with using it in sub-directories. Ideally, I want to be able to use this with some variables. For example, I want to set a variable for the root directory so that the "rotator.php" can be accessed by going to to the root level ($root/rotator.php). However, when I try to do this, I get an error with the showimage() function (Fatal error: Call to undefined function: showimage() in ...) Any ideas of how to fix this?

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Adding intervals

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 17:11:17 GMT

Is there a way to rotate images on a certain interval using only PHP? or at least clean JS? I was thinking of implementing a session ID... but that requires session code on each page. Any suggestions?

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Several links

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 05:58:35 GMT

it is possible to create several links at different places from the loaded image ? Any ideas of how to do this?

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Script wont work in sidebar...pease help

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 09:29:33 GMT

i'm trying to add the 'better image rotator' from http://www.alistapart.com/comments/betterrotator/ on to www.rapnews.co.uk as you can see, the command in my sidemenu is showing as code, and not the image.

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Several links : it works !!!

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 04:32:54 GMT

I found a way to put several links at different places from the loaded image. I used CSS Style sheet. For the moment, my new site is visible at : http://web.design.creation.free.fr/azurid/ As you can see, "image rotator" generates a random image on my first web page. And one can click on various links. If you are interesting by this. Contact me. Flip flop.

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Unable to read ini file.

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:40:47 GMT

I'm getting the error Unable to read ini file. Can anyone help? It's got the correct code inside and is in the correct folder.

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Unable to read ini file...

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 06:52:07 GMT

can we see your script inside the ini file ? and the path you used to call it ?

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Untitled

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 16:52:10 GMT

content of ini: [Headnod] src = images/headnod.jpg alt = Headnod.co.uk url = http://www.headnod.co.uk/ title = Headnod [Tony] src = images/advert.jpg alt = Advert url = http://www.rapnews.co.uk/ title = Advert The path is as instructed on this site's implementation instructions.

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Untitled

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 07:43:03 GMT

1/ I suppose that the content of ".ini" is written like this : [Headnod] src = images/headnod.jpg alt = Headnod.co.uk url = http://www.headnod.co.uk/ title = Headnod 2/ Are you sure that you call the right ".ini" file in the rotator.php script ? :

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Unable to read ini file... correction

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 07:45:08 GMT

1/ I suppose that the content of ”.ini” is written like this : [Headnod] src = images/headnod.jpg alt = Headnod.co.uk url = http://www.headnod.co.uk/ title = Headnod

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SEVERAL LINKS : IT WORKS !!!

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 14:28:54 GMT

Just for saying that the exemple is now visible at : http://www.azurid.com/ As you can see, “image rotator” generates a random image on my first web page. And one can click on various links. If you are interesting by this. Contact me. Flip flop. METTRE PLUSIEURS LIENS SUR L'IMAGE chargée par rotator !!! Juste pour dire que le lien qui montre l'exemple a changé. L'exemple est maintenant visible sur la page d'accueil de mon site (une fois sur la page, réactualisez le site et l'image change) : http://www.azurid.com/

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Untitled

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:17:01 GMT

The first link (a better rotator) shows an error message from Rails

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Uses only first picture in .ini

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:52:55 GMT

I did not see a solution to the previous post on this problem, and would like to add that I get the folowing error message: Warning: Error parsing images.ini on line 3 in Unknown on line 0 this displays on the line above the image that displays. Any help appreciated.

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Uses only...

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:06:47 GMT

Hrumph- turns out it was the exclaimation (!) points interrupting the parsing of the .ini file (I had included them in the alt's)- this is new to me.

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It's good but this one is better

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 23:37:06 GMT

Your script is good. But when i used it, I ran into 2 problems. It was slow in retrieving each random image. But it also created firewall problems on two different machines. For this reason i had to stop using it. I currently use the solution given at http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Simple-Image-Rotater/790. This is a block of code you insert into your main php file and does not reference an external file. This seems much quicker than the ala solution and also have had no firewall problems. However, I want to thank you sincerely for introducing me to the concept of image rotation.

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It will only parse two sections

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 03:48:19 GMT

I can't seem to get the script to parse more than two sections. Is this a limitation of the php function or am I doing something wrong?

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Captions?

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:49:17 GMT

Is there a way to modify this script to attach specific captions to an image?

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Rotate .swf files?

Wed, 17 May 2006 16:19:52 GMT

The rotator script works beautifully. However I want to rotate .swf header movies on my home page. I guess I would need to change the $extLit value, but what would that be to display random .swf movies? Thanks

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Captions II?

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:38:12 GMT

I too would be interested in a way to display the title under the image. As it sits now, it's not useful for my application. Thanks

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What if my server doesn't support PHP?

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:43:34 GMT

Unfortunately, our servers at work do not support PHP. Can someone post a link to a non-PHP method. Preferabley ColdFusion or Javascript. Thanks!

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Great work

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 12:21:20 GMT

An exemple of image rotator : http://groupe.argentis.free.fr

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Maybe you can use other method

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:21:42 GMT

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005,which has got an component called "AdRotator".I really like it,it works as well as the author's work.Thanks to the author, now I know how it works.

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PLEASE HELP

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:33:19 GMT

i put all the code in a folder called artist, and when i say nothing happens....please help im new to php!!

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caption

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:13:12 GMT

Yes, adding a caption is possible. First, add a caption variable to the script: $caption = $images[$img]['caption']; Next, edit the script to incorporate the caption variable into the HTML ouput. Something like this: if ($caption) { printf('

%s.

', $caption); } Last, add a caption line to each block in the .ini file.

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Caption, take 2

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:51:00 GMT

Not sure why, but the first part of that PHP code got a little munged in transit. I'll take another stab; perhaps the ALA admin would be good enough to help if it comes out wrong again? :). #get the caption

$caption = $images[$img]['caption'];

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How do I set paths to the ini file?

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 20:22:21 GMT

. I am using Gallery 1.X. Right now everything is in this path, images, rotator, index, .ini, ... Everything. ... http://www.classannual.com/php/gallery/rotateJax/ That works. But I just cannot get it included in the actual gallery pages. ... On this page I have a random image. ... http://www.classannual.com/php/gallery/ I would like to replace that Random image with a RandomImagePlusLink, like this BETTER IMAGE ROTATOR tool generates in rotateJax. Since Gallery has a bunch of includes, The index is in the gallery folder, where would I place the folder with my images, my ini file, my rotator, and what would my php include say? ... How do I address paths in PHP? Jack

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I got it working

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:42:14 GMT

. http://www.classannual.com/php/gallery/ The image in the upper right is random, and it links. ... There are about 2600 image/link pairs in the ini file right now. ... It seems to work for me!

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Darned. ... It only partially works

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:08:52 GMT

I can get the gallery front page to work, but when I bounce off the page and navigate to another gallery page with a set of albums, then try to go back to the top page, I get an error. ... I am not a wood nymph, but I think there is a troll in my machine.

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Opening in new Browser Window?

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:28:35 GMT

I am hoping that someone can help me figure out how to have the links open in a new browser window. Does anyone know where I need to put the "target=_blank" command in the ini or the configuration file?

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NO REPEAT IMAGES

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 11:19:44 GMT

I have been using your ROTATOR script for about a year and I really enjoy its performance. I have approximately 200 images on my web site that I rotate. Each image is linked to a synopsis of a book. I was using one images.ini file but found that many of the images repeated before all of the images were displayed. Many of the images are never displayed. I broke the images file into 12 different files and that improved the performance but I still have the problem that images repeat before all are displayed. Is there a method that will insure that all images are displayed before any one is repeated? I have also tried to implement the CAPTION mod but I could not get it to work. Thanks for any help you can provide. Thanks Buddy

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Most Recently Uploaded Image

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 00:01:38 GMT

A friend refered me to your post. I have used a similar block of code for a random image module. //Spit it out $limit=count($image);$limit--; $randnum=rand(0,$limit); // $size=getimagesize("$directory$image[$randNum]"); $filename = "$directory$image[$randnum]"; // Slipstream our content into the template eval('$home[$mods[\'modid\']][\'content\'] = "' . fetch_template('adv_portal_random_video') . '";'); ?> I'd like to know how I can make it call the most recently uploaded image, rather than a random one.

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CAPTION MOD NOT WORKING

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:53:08 GMT

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? I have added the caption mod but it wont work. I also added caption to the ini file like this. [11] src = /images_used/067188770X_small.jpg alt = Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking url = /usedbooks/cookbooks.htm#Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking title = Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking caption = Betty Crocker's Vegetarian Cooking */ # file containg your image descriptions $IMG_CONFIG_FILE = 'images.ini'; # You shouldn't need to change anything below this point function showImage( $ini=null ) { global $IMG_CONFIG_FILE; # if no custom ini file has been specified, use the default $ini_file = $ini ? $ini : $IMG_CONFIG_FILE; # read the config file into an array or die trying $images = @parse_ini_file($ini_file,true); if (! $images) { die('Unable to read ini file.'); } # pick a random image from the parsed config file $img = array_rand($images); # get the selected image's css id if one exists $id = $images[$img]['id'] ? sprintf( ' id="%s" ', $images[$img]['id'] ) : ''; # get the selected image's css class if one exists $class = $images[$img]['class'] ? sprintf( ' class="%s" ', $images[$img]['class'] ) : ''; # get selected image's dimensions $size = @getimagesize( $images[$img]['src'] ); # if an url was specified, output the opening A HREF tag if ( $images[$img]['url'] ) { printf( '', $images[$img]['url'], $images[$img]['title'] ); } # output the IMG tag printf( '', $images[$img]['src'], $images[$img]['alt'], $size[3], $id, $class ); # if an url was specified, output the closing A HREF tag if ( $images[$img]['url'] ) { echo(''); }

$caption = $images$img;  if ($caption)  {
  	printf('%s.', $caption);
  }

  }



?>
  
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Fatal error: Call to undefined function: showimage()

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:15:29 GMT

I have the script running perfectly on my own laptop testing server, but when i uploaded the pages to the web, I get the above error. can anyone shed any light on the subject. the include statement is in the correct place at the top of the page, and as i said works fine on my laptop. thanks for all your help in advance. Russ

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Screwed Ranking

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:13:29 GMT

I had a reaaly good ranking in Google - until i rolled this out on my entire site. I have consitently held a rank of between number 1 to number 3 of the search results for atleast the last 6 months. If search rankings bother you, consider something else. Those having troubles with it finding the INI file... I had to enter my full server path to the ini file. If you dont know this your host will be able to tell you.

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captions

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:44:16 GMT

I can't get the captions to work... this is what I put in the .php file: # add caption $caption = $images[$img]; if ($caption) { printf(’

%s.

’, $caption); } and added "caption = " to the .ini file. Can someone help? Thx.

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Output size

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:26:25 GMT

Hi great code works perfect is there a way to out the images at a certain size. thanks

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Click through on Images

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:12:54 GMT

I have your script working on my site and am wondering if there is a way to give each image a click-through address? I am asking because the images that I want to add to our site are ads. Thanks for the great script! This is my first excursion into PHP and it worked perfectly without any hitches at all.

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Combination of rotate and rotator?

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:59:19 GMT

I liked the simplicity of rotate -- except that since it had an image path that was fixed, the browser would cache that image. So if I used it as part of my sidebar menu system then it would not change the image as I moved from page to page, unless I explicitly reloaded the page. I like rotator's actually writing the link in, and the various features for adding information to it. In the long run I can see the possiblity of a suite of similar tools. With rotator you must hand edit a file for the directory. It would make better sense to write a file per image. Give the text file the same name as the image file, but a different extension. In this way, the manipulation of the file and the image can be done together, without messy edits. This also allows for the non-existence of the extra information. I'm brand new to php, but I've done some perl before. I'm going to try to make a minimalist rotate that writes image links, using bits from both programs. Thanks for the two progs. *** Much of the time there is no need to specify the size of the image. That can be offloaded to the browser. Use your css to specify how big you want the image to be in the containing div.

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Setting a target

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:23:49 GMT

I've found this code quite useful, but I too am trying to figure out where to insert a TARGET=_BLANK so as to open links in a new window. also of secondary interest would be to add a Border=0 feature

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Error Message: Undefined index: id in..

Wed, 21 May 2008 18:11:53 GMT

Does anyone get the error messages on lines 44 & 48 of the rotator.php file saying undefined index. I don't need the id for styling, but have created the id in the style sheet to see if it goes away and it doesn't. It doesn't affect the rotator when uploaded but I hate error messages on my testing server. Any help??

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Untitled

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:11:44 GMT

In order to get only unique images add the following to rotator.php script above the 'get the selected image's css id if one exists' statements (note: you only require one 'pick a random image from the parsed config file' statement): //initialise array if it has not been created if ( empty($_SESSION) ) { $_SESSION['selected_pics_array'] = array("0"); } // pick a random image from the parsed config file $img = array_rand($images); //ensures that the image is unique while(in_array($img,$_SESSION['selected_pics_array'])) { $img = array_rand($images); } //add the image to the list of displayed images array_push($_SESSION['selected_pics_array'], $img); Also put the following above your tag: After adding all of your "" statements add the following:

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Border issue - help required!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:19:44 GMT

I am new to PHP but the script is working fine for what I want...only how do I get rid of the border that is automatically being added to my photos? I dont want a border at all... Thanks

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Text Equivilent

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:54:10 GMT

Going way back to #4's request. Can this script be adapted to display only text links instead of banners. I haven't had any success isolating the 'caption' part and suppressing the image

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