Once you have installed and launched Pixory according to the instructions in the README file, you are ready to configure it. If Pixory has not yet been configured, the application will automatically start up in the 'Configuration' section. There you must enter an 'image directory', a top level directory under which Pixory will find images and albums. This directory can have any nuber of subdirectories, nested arbitrarily deeply, and Pixory will find all images and albums in all of those subdirectories. The Configuration screen will also require that you set a username and password. Since Pixory is a Web application, an application that is accessed through a web browser, you can potentially access your personal image server from anywhere on the Internet. Thus it's important to protect access to the application with a username/password.
You can also set your email address and ISP provided mail (SMTP) server in the 'Configuration' screen. This information is needed when you ask Pixory to send out email 'invitations' to view a photo album. You can optionally set a 'wan hostname'. This is the hostname or ip address by which your machine is known to the Internet. Your wan hostname could be different from your lan (or actual) hostname if you have a home network connected to the Internet through a router that performs Network Address Translation (NAT). Finally, advanced users can change the TCP/IP port that the Pixory application listens on for HTTP requests.
There are two types of users in Pixory. The album "composer" is the user who installs and fills out the "Configuration" information and who has access to the album page editors where he can add captions, add narrative, reorder album pages and the like. You could think of the "composer" as the "administrator" for the Pixory installation. Each Pixory installation has only one "composer" account and the credentials (username/password) for that account are maintained solely from the "Basic Configuration" page.
The other type of Pixory user is the "viewer" who comes to look at albums in a strictly "read-only" capacity. A viewer may be logged in, in which case Pixory knows the viewer's identity, or the viewer may be anonymous (not logged in). Each Pixory installation supports any number of "viewer" accounts. A viewer can have an account in a Pixory installation only if they are present in the "contacts" list. A viewer provisions their own account by requesting credentials, using the "Send Credentials" pop-out panel accessible from the login page. If the viewer's email address is found in the composer's contact list, then the account is created and the credentials are sent to the provided email address.
The pages (screens) of the Pixory application are roughly seggregated into two types which correspond to the types of user they are targeted at. Thus, the album page editors, "Cover" editor, "Sharing" editor, "Basic Configuration" editor, etc. are all referred to as "composer pages", since they are targeted at the "composer" type of user. The "home" page, "album index" page, individual album pages, etc., are referred to as "viewer" pages, since they are targeted at the "viewer" type of user. These two types of pages have two different graphic designs to reflect the fact that they are targeted at different types of users. Viewer pages are whitish, with black/grey accents. Composer pages use a blue/green background with orange highlights.
Pixory allows you, as an album "composer", to use your computer's filesystem to organize your images into a
hierarchy of 'Folders' and 'Albums'. You can use whatever tools you want for moving and rearranging image
files and directories. You can also use your favorite image processing applications,
such as Adobe Photoshop, to manipulate your images. Pixory will immediately reflect in its
interface any changes to directories and images that are stored under the 'image directory' you
specified in the 'Configuration' screen. An 'Album'
is any subdirectory under the 'image directory' that has no subdirectories of its
own, and appears within the pixory application with this icon:
Any subdirectory under the 'image directory' which has no subdirectories automatically
appears as an Album within Pixory, whether or not it yet contains any image files.
If at any time you add a subdirectory to an Album directory, it will no longer
appear as an Album within Pixory (the one exception to this rule is the 'hidden' .album
subdirectory that Pixory automatically creates in every visited Album directory).
Any directory under the 'image directory' that does contain subdirectories
appears within Pixory as a 'Folder': .
Pixory has
a built in "Browser' that allows you to navigate up and down 'Folders' and 'Albums'.
When you click on an Album from the Browser, Pixory will show an overview display of the Album, called the "Lightbox". Each image file in the Album directory is assigned to its own page. You can at any time add or remove images from the filesystem and Pixory will automatically update the Album accordingly. Clicking on an image in the Lightbox will "pop-out" the Album page for that image exactly as it will appear to Album "Viewers". Clicking on the little pencil icon in the lightbox takes you to the "Page Text" editor for that album page. In the editor you can add a caption to the image, add text to the Album page, and can select which page number you would like that Album page to have. Clicking on the little info [i] icon will take you to the "Photo Info" page, where you can see detailed information about the picture (such as EXIF information), and you can edit the date for the image. You can modify how album pages appear (such as image size) to "Viewers" on the album Attributes page. Pixory never stores static html pages anywhere, so any changes you make to your Albums are immediately reflected in what your viewers see.
Every album in Pixory has a sharing "mode", and this sharing mode is selected in the "Sharing" editor. There are four possible sharing modes:
share with public albums are visible to any viewer. They always appear on the "viewer home" page, whether the viewer is anonymous or logged in.
share by anonymous url albums are visible to any viewer who knows the url. Since album urls in Pixory are obfuscated (they contain a randomy generated key), the only viewers who will normally be able to know the url to an album are those who have received an email "invitation" from the composer. A viewer can access an album in this mode whether logged in or anonymous. These albums never appear on the "viewer home" page. This is the default mode for all Pixory albums.
share with listed contacts albums are visible only to the contacts that are explicitly listed in the "share with" list. Thus, a viewer must be logged in to see this album. These albums always appear on the "viewer home" for only the listed contacts.
share with no one albums are not visible to any viewers at all. They can only be accessed by the composer.