This part of the documentation is meant for end users of Coppermine as well as for developers. There is no support for this section though, it comes as-is.
The Coppermine dev team is not affiliated with any of the sites / projects mentioned below, nor do we provide support for those apps. We're just convinced that those tools are usefull when running a gallery script like Coppermine.
Please do not ask support questions related to the apps mentioned below on the Coppermine support board. From our perspective, those apps come from a third party - support for them can be found elsewhere on the web.
The best place to get support for those apps are their homepages and the documentation that usually comes with those apps. You might find other usefull resources using Google.
This page is meant as a service to end users and developers - please don't make us regret having put together this link list.
The tools fall into different categories, depending on what you want to accomplish:
If you manually want to edit the database behind Coppermine or need to backup or restore your database, you will need these tools.
| App name | Purpose | Type | OS | License | i18n | Homepage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
phpMyAdmin |
Database management |  |
n/a |  |
50+ languages | www.phpmyadmin.net |
|
Description: Open-source web application that can be downloaded (for free) and installed on your webserver (easy installation). It comes with multiple language support. Your webhost may even provide this tool. Features: MySql database management tool that allows manipulating your database and running queries directly against your database. Benefits for the use with Coppermine:
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mySqlDumper |
Database backup/restore | |
n/a | |
2 languages
|
mysqldumper.de/en/ |
|
Description: MySqlDumper is a web app that can be downloaded and installed on your webserver. It is meant to be used to create backups of your mysql databse (and eventually restore those backups). Particularly helpful if you don't have shell access to your webserver and regular mySQL backups fail due to time-outs. Features: A PHP-Script has a maximum of execution time; anything after above the limit (Usually sets to 30 seconds) will result in losing data. Such behavior renders large database backup impossible. Perhaps you already noticed how much of a problem it could be while using other tools. MySqlDumper uses a proprietary technique to avoid execution interruption. It only reads and saves a certain amount of commands and then calls itself via JavaScript and memorizes how far in the process it was and resumes its action from its last standby. |
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Upload/download files to/from your webserver using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Needed to install Coppermine in the first place, but as well for means of FTP-upload plus batch-add, theme customization, file backup, updates.
Having an FTP app is a (nearly) pre-requisite for being able to install and maintain Coppermine (or any web-driven app) in the first place, at least if you're being webhosted. Only in the rare cases of having other ways of transfering files to/from your webserver (e.g. if you're on an intranet) you could get away without an application that is capable of transfering files using FTP. On 99% of all shared webhosting, FTP is the only supported (and recommended) method to transfer files. Therefore, having a good FTP-client is a must.
The Coppermine dev team is strongly advising not to use the FTP-clients built into WYSIWYG-editors like MS Frontpage, as those built-in clients have been designed to work with files created by that editor, but they have not been designed with pre-made scripts like Coppermine in mind.
Don't use so called "web-FTP" interfaces neither, as they are restricted by design to the limitations built into browsers.
| App name | Purpose | Type | OS | License | i18n | Homepage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
FileZilla |
FTP client |  |
  |
|
multi (18+ languages) | filezilla-project.org |
|
Description: FileZilla is a free FTP client that is available as open-source app (free of charge). Features:
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SmartFTP |
FTP client | |
|
Free for non-commercial use | multi (20+ languages) | www.smartftp.com |
|
Description: SmartFTP is a fully-featured FTP client for Windows. Features: Available for Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, XP x64, and 2003 x64. Multiple connections, auto-reconnect and resume broken transfers, global and local transfer queues with scheduling, FXP, custom commands, CHMOD, backup tool, drag & drop. Benefits for the use with Coppermine: Transferring Coppermine to your server for initial installation, transferring photos to your /albums folder, settings permissions appropriately, applying mods, plugins, themes. License: Free for Personal, Educational, or Non-Profit Use (no support). Small cost for Commercial Use or to include support |
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The web development tools are usually integrated into the browser as a plugin, so they interact with the page you're viewing in your browser. They are particularly helpful to figure out CSS issues, as one of their features often is to let you see which section of the output is controlled by which stylesheet class. Another key aspect that makes them usefull with Coppermine is their ability to monitor cookies and forms, which helps in figuring out issues with logging in.
| App name | Purpose | Type | OS | License | i18n | Homepage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Web Developer |
Web development tool |  |
n/a | |
19 languages
|
chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/ |
|
Description: "Web Developer Extension" is a plugin for the Mozilla/Firefox browser that adds a toolbar to your browser window. Using this toolbar, you can view cookie information, view and manipulate stylesheets, form data, images. It is particularly helpful for web designers (or after all everybody who runs and maintains a website of his own). Features:
Benefits for the use with Coppermine: Fix cookie issues (especially when bridging), find out what stylesheet class controls which section of the output |
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Web Accessibility Toolbar |
Web development tool | |
|
 |
|
www.visionaustralia.org.au/ais/toolbar/ |
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Description: The "Web Accessibility Toolbar" has been developed to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. It consists of a range of functions that: Details
Benefits for the use with Coppermine: Fix cookie issues (especially when bridging), find out what stylesheet class controls which section of the output License: Creative Commons (Freeware) Requirements: Microsoft Internet Explorer |
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IE Developer Toolbar |
Web development tool | |
|
? |
|
microsoft.com [...] |
|
Description: Microsoft has released a toolbar as well that has similar capabilities as the above mentioned toolbars. It can be used with IE6 or better (IE7 is supported as well) and can be used with Windows 2000 or better. Features:
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Firebug |
Web development tool | |
n/a | MPL |
|
getfirebug.com |
|
Description: Firebug integrates with Firefox as a browser plugin to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
Alternative platforms: there's a Firebug Lite version that can be used with IE, Opera and Safari License: Mozilla Public License (Freeware) |
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To modify the core code of coppermine or come up with a custom theme you will need a plain-text editor. You can't use WYSIWYG-editors like MS Frontpage, but you really need to use a plain-text editor. While the editor that comes with your operating system (usually notepad.exe on Windows) is fine, you may want an editor with advanced features like syntax-highlighting, project management
| App name | Purpose | Type | OS | License | i18n | Homepage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Crimson Editor |
Plain text editor | |
|
 |
|
www.crimsoneditor.com |
|
Description: Open-source client application that can be downloaded (for free) and installed on your Windows-PC. Features: Crimson Editor is a source code editor. This program is not only fast in loading time, but also small in size. While it can serve as a good replacement for Notepad, it also offers many powerful features for programming languages such as HTML, C/C++, Perl and Java: Details
Benefits for the use with Coppermine:
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Bluefish |
Plain text editor | |
    |
|
17 languages
|
bluefish.openoffice.nl |
|
Description: Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites. Features:
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Notepad++ |
Plain text editor | |
|
|
43 languages
|
notepad-plus.sourceforge.net |
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Description: Open-source client application that can be downloaded (for free) and installed on your Windows-PC. Features:
Benefits for the use with Coppermine:
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PsPad |
Plain text editor | |
|
|
8 languages
|
www.pspad.com |
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Description: PSPad is a freeware programmer's editor for Microsoft Windows operating systems, useful for people who: Details
Features:
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Before uploading images to your webserver, you might want to edit them on your client. There's a number of reasons why you should do that:
On www forums you can often read the recommendation to use Adobe's Photoshop application to perform such tasks, but it's a bit overkill to use such a powerfull, expensive application for such basic purposes. There are many applications available free of charge that can accomplish the same thing.
| App name | Purpose | Type | OS | License | i18n | Homepage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Irfan View |
Image viewer with basic editing capabilities | |
|
|
25 languages
|
irfanview.com |
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Description: Free for personal and educational use. Small license fee for commercial use. Features:
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The Gimp |
Image manipulation program for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. | |
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GIMP has been translated into many, many languages. Yours is surely among them. | www.gimp.org |
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Description: GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X. |
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