Using The System

Once you get the system installed you need to check that it is working correctly. The best way to do this is to log in as a user and see what happens. Log in as a normal user and as as an Admin. You will notice the system dynamically changes depending on who you are logged in as.

Log in as an Admin and you will see tons of various system settings you can change. They are all clearly labled. Categories can be set up however you like and they can go 4 levels deep.

Designing your category setup will probably take a little while, but it is quite easy to work with.

By default there are 5 sample users each with different access.

Passwords are case-sensitive.

username user1
password test

username user2
password test

username user3
password test

username user4
password test

This user is an Admin.
username admin
password test

ADMINS can add and remove other ADMINS

Use the Admin account to get into the Admin Area and manage users as well as edit the settings of the ASPGallery system.
If you lose Admin access because you unchecked it or forgot the password
you will have to open the database up via Microsoft Access or SQL and add
Admin access to an existing user in order to gain access to the Web Admin again.

Page Layout

There are header and footer include files that surround the application.
Edit them and you can make the application easily look however you like.

User Registration

As an Admin there are settings you can set to control what fields are mandatory when they sign up. You can also add up to 6 custom fields.

There are options for which fields are mandatory when a user signs up. The only validation the system performs by default is checking for mandatory status. If you want to add more validation so reduce the chances of input errors that is up to you.

(Server Side Validation) You can add additional server side validation by doing server side checks on the save pages... you can also make the field sizes larger in the database if you think you need to.

(Client Side Validation) The easiest way to do this is to add FrontPage client side form validation on the fields. All the edit forms are FrontPage friendly, open the edit pages via FrontPage explorer and add any form validation as you see fit. Save the edit pages and your all set. Make sure you have the "show all" option enabled in the FrontPage toolbar so that you see any blotches of ASP code as little yellow script icons and therefore don't delete any of them by accident when editing those edit pages with FrontPage. The "show all" icon looks like a PIE symbol.

Always backup your files before making changes to them so that you can revert back to a working copy if you mess something up.

Email Settings

As an Admin under the Settings you can specify which email component you are using.  "CDONTS" or the "SoftArtisans.SMTPMail" or the "JMail.SMTPMail " or the "ASPMail" component or the ASPEmail component.

A special setting has been added for using ASPMail. It is in the "config_inc.asp" file. Please open that page with a text editor to enable ASPMail.

Having an email component is a requirement of using this system. Many functions depend on it.

Your can run the included file "server_info.asp" in the extras folder on your server and it will tell you if these email components are installed on your server. Installing these components and any settings that they require are between you and your hosting company. We can not help you with that. The code for all 5 email components has and tested many times and it does work correctly, so if you can't get your email components working it is most likely on your end or the hosting company.

Number of Pictures Per Album Setting

Please edit the config_inc.asp file with a text editor.
You will see a section where this is set as well as a few other settings you can change.

The number of pics part looks like this.

' Do not edit this variable unless you know what you are doing... too large a number can seriously effect performance
' If using no image resizing component 18 is recommended
' If using an image resizing component on a shared server no more than 36 is recommended
' If it's your own server and you don't care a value as high as 100 might be ok thought you may need to tweak the view album code a bit. 50 is a good number as well that will require no tweaks.
maxpicsperalbum = 18

Also

Users of this system must have cookies enabled in their web browser or they will have to log in to every page in your site repeatedly. Session variables need cookies enabled to function. Nearly all password solutions require cookies to be enabled because nearly all password solutions use session variables. ("All ASP solutions that I know of do"). This is not a big deal as most users have cookies enabled. All the big sites from Amazon to Ebay depend on this as well so it isn't something you should worry about. If they don't have cookies enabled they still won't be able to access pages without logging in.

Disclaimer... www.CJWSoft.com makes no guarantee about the security this script offers. Use this at your own risk. To the best of knowledge it is very secure, but that doesn't mean there isn't a bug or some hacker will never find a way into it. We recommend you rigorously test it and change the password on the Access database before you start using this. That way if someone downloads your database they will a hard time getting anything useful out of it especially since the database supplied with this download is also encrypted. There are utilities available to crack Access database's so if you really want secure password protection you should port this to a SQL database.  If using Access and your web is frontpage enabled you can right click on a folder in frontpage explorer and choose properties, this will allow you to uncheck "allow files to be browsed" which will stop people from downloading your Access database if they somehow figure out the URL.