Review: RSGallery2 Photo Gallery for Joomla 1.5
RSGallery2 is a great photo gallery for Joomla. A few months ago, I reviewed RSGallery2 for Joomla 1.0.x. and gave it a glowing review. And it deserved it: it was easy to install, easy to use, worked flawlessly, and it was free.
Since then, I have switched over to Joomla 1.5 for all new websites I build using Joomla. Joomla 1.5 is a great improvement over an already great content management system. Unfortunately, many of the great Joomla 1.0.x plugins have not be ported to Joomla 1.5, or if they have, they are still in Beta and a little unstable.
I just installed the RSGallery2 photo gallery plugin for Joomla 1.5.x. This plugin is built to run natively in Joomla (Many Joomla 1.0 plugins will run in Joomla 1.5 if you turn on the Legacy mode, but there are reports that Joomla 1.5 runs slowly in this mode).
First, let me give a BIG THANKS to the RSGallery2 development team for porting this great Joomla component to version 1.5. If you are familiar with the previous version of RSGallery2, you will be right at home with the new component. Likes it’s predesessor, it’s easy to use and it’s still free. And I LOVE the bulk upload function. The Bulk Upload function allows you to upload a zip file of images; this is a great time saver when you are adding a lot of images to a gallery. What’s more, it has a wizard that guides you through the upload process, allowing you to add a title and description to each image before adding it to the gallery.
The installation, however, needs some work. When I installed RSGallery2, the installer displayed a dozen or more error messages stating that it could not find the Joomla language files. Below that, there was a success message stating that the installation was successful. So I continued and the RCGallery2 component seems to work OK. But there error messages are bothersome.
In addition to the error messages, the RSGallery2 templating systems seems to be imcomplete in this release: com_rsgallery2_2.0.0b1. The default template seems a little raw in places. Also, when I tried to use the two other templates included with the release, they didn’t work: they displayed blank pages when I viewed the gallery.
Overall, RSGallery2 for Joomla 1.5 is still a great component, but it’s probably not the best choice for production sites. If you are using Joomla 1.5 and want to use this component, it might be better to install the Joomla 1.0 version and run Joomla 1.5 in legacy mode, and wait for the RSGallery2 developoment team to release a stable version.
Tags: Joomla, joomla component review, Website