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Coppermine 1.2.1 FAQ

FAQ for Coppermine Photo Gallery v1.2.0 by Gregory DEMAR; with hacks by the coppermine dev team based on PHPhotoalbum by Henning Støverud (henning@stoverud.com)
FAQ v1.2 (last edited 2003/09/27) by GauGau
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

There are always the same questions asked on the support forums for Coppermine Photo Gallery; that's why we decided to start a little FAQ on this issue.

Table of contents:


 

Installation

What are the minimum requirements for the use of Coppermine 1.2. ?


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What's GD and how can I get it?
GD is a graphical library which enables PHP to do image manipulation. You can download it at www.boutell.com/gd/. You will need to recompile PHP on (L)Unix systems, depending on your setup Apache as well. On most windows systems, you can just enable it in the php.ini file. (this can of course only be done if you're running your own server; if you're with a webhost: find out if your webspace has gd; if not: ask your webhost if you can have it or get another webhost).

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When installing I get the error Fatal error: Call to undefined function: imagecreatefromjpeg() in /include/picmgmt.inc.php on line 168. What does that mean?
This error means that the version of PHP installed on your server has no support for the GD image library.
If the ImageMagick suite is installed on your server you can try to use it, else you have to complain to your webhost (the GD image library is now a standard component of PHP and should normally be installed de facto). Coppermine won´t run without gd or image magick.

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When installing I get the error Warning: mkdir(dummy) [function.mkdir]: Permission denied in /your/path/to/coppermine/install.php on line 126. What does that mean?
The script must have the right to create and delete files.

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How do I find out which version of PHP I have?
create a blank file named "info.php", put this code into it: <?php phpinfo(); ?>, upload this file to your webserver and run it in your browser (e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/info.php). In the very first line it should say "PHP Version X.Y.Z"
Please note: leaving info.php on your server might be a security risk; either delete it after use or move it into a password protected directory!

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How do I find out which version of gd I have?
create a blank file named "info.php", put this code into it: <?php phpinfo(); ?>, upload this file to your webserver and run it in your browser (e.g. http://www.yourdomain.com/info.php). Look for a table like this:
gd
GD Supportenabled
GD Version1.6.2 or higher
FreeType Supportenabled
FreeType Linkagewith TTF library
JPG Supportenabled
PNG Supportenabled
WBMP Supportenabled

Please note: leaving info.php on your server might be a security risk; either delete it after use or move it into a password protected directory!

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What's the difference between GD1 and GD2?
GD2 will create pictures with better quality (intermediate and thumbnails).
Here's an example taken from w-nailer: about resizing
(Original pic size: 1024 x 768 pixels):
GD 1.8.4:
ImageCreate
ImageCopyResized
128 x 96 pixels		GD 2.0.1:
ImageCreateTrueColor
ImageCopyResampled
128 x 96 pixels
Upgrading GD lib when coppermine is already installed will therefor not affect the pictures which are already created, but only new ones. You can not upgrade nor install GD lib unless you're running your own webserver - only your webhost can!

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I get the error "Warning: Empty Delimiter in search.inc.php line 33". What can I do?
Edit the file include/search.inc.php
Look for the line with
$charset = $CONFIG['charset'] == 'language file' ? $lang_charset : $CONFIG['charset'];
Replace it with :
$charset = $CONFIG['charset'] == 'language file' ? $GLOBALS['lang_charset'] : $CONFIG['charset'];

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What are the steps to get Coppermine running?
as stated in the readme:
  1. Download Coppermine
  2. Unzip it to your harddrive
  3. Upload the stuff to your server
  4. chmod the folders "include" and "albums" for the script (the webserver, that is) to have read/write access
  5. point your browser to http://www.yoursite.com/coppermine/install.php and follow the directions of the install file (basically the mySQL-tables will be created there and the config table will be filled with default values)
  6. after successfull installation, delete install.php from your webserver
  7. point your browser to http://www.yoursite.com/coppermine/ , log in as admin, admin mode and do the config job (customizing your coppermine)
  8. Play around, toy a little, test if everything works
  9. Publish your site by linking it (e.g. from your homepage)


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I get the error Zero Sized Reply during install. What can I do?
Some users experienced this error message during install:

It's unknown why this happens so far - those who have this error simply can't use Coppermine (sorry for that). If you have got an idea what causes this error (and possibly can come up with a solution), please visit the support board and clue us in!

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How can I use Coppermine on Free.fr
As only french people will probably use france.fr as host the answer comes in french:
Pour utiliser Coppermine sur free.fr il est nécessaire de modifier le fichier include/init.inc.php en supprimant la ligne avec:

Du fait des restrictions imposées par free : There have been several postings since I originally have put this questions into the faq list in french - since I hardly speak any french I can' tell you more. There seems to be a solution by downloading a patch by Greg

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I have the error message Warning: Undefined index: SCRIPT_NAME in /www.your-domain.com/include/init.inc.php on line 90. What can I do?
Try to edit the file include/init.inc.php:
change

to


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When a user tries to upload a picture I get the error message Impossible to move somepic.jpg to albums/userpics/ | Warning: move_uploaded_file(/tmp/phpezCYKr) [function.move-uploaded-file]: failed to create stream: Operation not permitted. What's wrong?
You should contact the admin of your webhost because usually you can't change the location of the temporary directory for file uploads yourself (it is part of PHP configuration) .
If the open basedir restriction is in effect on your site then the temp directory for file uploads should be one that you can access.

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How can I install ImageMagick or GD?
You can only install ImageMagic or GD if you're running your own server or if you have shell access to your webserver. If you're hosted by a webhost you can only contact your webhost and ask them to install it for you or choose another webhost.

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When uploading I get the error Warning: Undefined variable: HTTP_POST_VARS in include/init.inc.php on line 43. What can I do?
Check if your version of PHP fullfills the minimum requirements for Coppermine. If your version is 4.1.0 or better, then this error is probably caused by a misconfiguration of your server, so Coppermine isn't to blame in the first place. If the server isn't yours to configure properly (that is: if you're with a webhost), you can try this workaround (at your own risk):
Edit the file "init.inc.php" and look for
.
Replace it with
$PHP_SELF = $HTTP_SERVER_VARS['PHP_SELF'];

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Upgrading

How can I upgrade from the current (stable) version to the devel version?
Upgrading to the dev version is only recommended for advanced users (at your own risk). The difference between the current stable version (1.1.0) and the dev version (1.1.1) is the support for the integration of the user management of various bulletin board softwares (bbs).
There's a readme inside the downloadable distribution of the dev version that gives information on how to upgrade.

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I'm running version 1.0 - how can I upgrade?
download the 1.2 package and unzip it, there's a readme inside that'll explain updating, but for your ease of use I quote the part of the readme:
Upgrading from version 1.0
If you already have installed version 1.0 and you want to transfer your albums to version 1.2 proceed in the following way: This upgrade process leave your v1.0 gallery untouched

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Setup / Administration

How can I include a link in an album description or the caption of a pic?
Coppermine understands the following bbCodes (the same bbCodes that are used by phpBB) in image and album description:


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I don't want to show the last uploads on the start page. How do I edit what's shown on the start page of coppermine?
  1. login as admin into your CPG
  2. click on "Admin Mode" if it is not already enabled
  3. Click on Config in the "Admin Menu"
  4. under "Album list view" use the above provided keywords:
    'catlist': category list
    'alblist': album list
    'random': random pictures
    'lastup': last uploads
    'topn': most viewed
    'toprated': top rated
    'lastcom': last comments
    (e.g. catlist/alblist/random,2/lastup,2 means "category list, album list, 2 rows of random pics, 2 rows of last uploads")


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How do I remove/edit the bottom line "Powered by Coppermine" ?
You mustn't remove the line - it's part of the deal: you're allowed to use Coppermine on your site, but the line stays! It's more than justified to give credit where credit is due; be glad you're able to use such a great piece of software for free.
You are allowed to change the way the line looks by editing the CSS class to make it fit into the design of your site; edit /themes/yourtheme/style.css, look for the class "Footer" and change it as you wish.
Note: don't ask stupid questions on removing this line in the Coppermine Photo Gallery Support Board - your posting will be deleted!

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I want to buy a license for Coppermine (and get rid of the "Powered by Coppermine" line). How?
As Coppermine itself is based on OpenSource software published under GNU/GPL (which allows the modification of the code, but disallows to sell the code, modified or not), you can not purchase a version of coppermine with the credit line removed. Read the file COPYING that comes with the distribution of Coppermine for details.

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I don't want to use the feature XYZ of Coppermine. How can I remove it?
Just remove the link; edit /themes/yourtheme/theme.php, look for the feature you want to remove and comment out the HTML code.
Example: if you want to remove the ecard-feature, just look for
and replace it with


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How do I add a custom header/footer to Coppermine?
There are these files to look for:

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How do I create an album that anyone can add photos to?
(assuming you have already created at least one category with at least one album where the uploads should go to):

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How can I backup my coppermine database?
There's no built-in backup solution for coppermine available yet. Meanwhile, backup your directory/file structure via good old ftp and use a tool like phpMyAdmin to backup the database (many webhosts that offer mySQL also offer a pre-installed version of phpMyAdmin - go for that!). PhpMyAdmin is easy to install: just download the distribution, unzip it to your harddrive, edit one config file and upload it to your server.
Here's a small "howto backup a database with phpMyAdmin":

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The fullsize-pic doesn't pop up when clicking on the intermediate size pic. What's wrong?
You probably over-edited your template: you'll definitely need the line inside /themes/yourtheme/template.html to make the pop-up window work...
The <head>-part of your template file should look like this:

- just check the default theme that comes with coppermine if you're unsure.

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How can I let unregistered users see the thumbnails only, but not the actual pictures?
Edit displayimage.php and add
if (!USER_ID) cpg_die(ERROR, 'You need to register to access this page', __FILE__, __LINE__);
just before


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How can I prevent other sites linking directly to the pictures in my gallery instead of the gallery page?

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I tried to change the language on the config page, but it doesn't work. What's wrong?
"Character encoding" is probably set (or has been set sometime ago) to UTF-8 on your config page.
When UTF-8 is selected, Coppermine chooses your language file based on your browser configuration and stores the value in a cookie. This overrides the value stored in the CONFIG.
To fix that:


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How do I let guests, not only registered users to put comments on pictures?
To change the settings by album (above steps must have been made):

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I can't upload with the upload feature. What's wrong?
If you get the error message No picture was uploaded. If you have really selected a picture to upload, check that the server allows file uploads..., check if there's a problem with HTTP uploads on your server - they may have been disabled or improperly configured. In phpinfo(), check that "file_uploads" is ON, "upload_max_filesize" is something like 2M and "upload_tmp_dir" is a valid directory!

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How do I change the order of categories?


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I can't delete a certain picture with ftp. What can I do?
It is not Coppermine that doesn't let you delete the picture, it is your FTP server. The problem is due to the configuration of your server. Try to delete your picture from within the script.
If PHP on your server runs under the user nobody then all files created by any PHP script (this is not specific to Coppermine) will be owned by nobody. There is no way to change that.
 

0777 should not be the default mode for directories because it may be completely unsafe, if your gallery is running on a shared server and PHP safe mode is not enabled, anybody having an account on the server can possibly delete your pictures. There have been several threads on this issue on the Menalto Gallery forum and several users have seen their gallery hacked and destoyed because of that. This issue is not specific to Photo galleries, it applies to all PHP scripts that create directories. Provided you have write access to a directory, you can delete any file it contains, even if you don't have write access to the file itself.
 
I prefer to have 20 persons complaining LOUDLY and REPEATINGLY that they have to contact their sysadmin to uninstal Coppermine, that this is an issue and possibly switching to another gallery because of that rather than 1 person complaining that all his pictures have been erased.
 
If you disagree spend you time reading :
http://www.zend.com/manual/function.mkdir.php
http://www.zend.com/manual/function.chmod.php
rather than posting in this forum.
 
It is the decision of the sysadmin to run PHP as an Apache module and the fact that all files/dir created by PHP be owned by nobody for instance is the result of this decision. So sysadmins should not complain when you ask them to remove some files or directory.
 
On the webhost this site is running on, everything works fine when directory are created with mode 755 and all files/dir created by PHP are owned by the chezgreg user which is the user I use when connecting by FTP. Also if one of the file/directory on my site has a mode of 777, the server will shutdown my site and send me an email warning me that this is unsafe.
 
Greg



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I can't upload big pics. What's wrong?
The max. size of pics is limited by various settings - to find out why you can't upload big picks, check the following:

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I can't login to Coppermine. What's wrong?

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How can I move an album from one category to another?


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How can I change the sorting order of the albums?
By default the album appear in the order they were created. If you want to adjust the sorting order, do this:

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Add-ons / Modifications / Hacks

How can I let users select their own theme?
How can I change the order of the pics when editing them?
By default, the pics are shown alphabetically when you edit them. To change the sorting order to "by date", edit editpics.php and change

to



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How can I create a menu that's shown on the right side of the gallery?
When the template.html is read, it is split in 2. What is before the {GALLERY} tag is output by the pageheader function, what is after by the pagefooter function.
If your menu is in the "footer" you need to modify your theme.php file

will become

and
echo $template_footer;
will become



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How can I send a user directly to his private album once he logs in?
edit
login.php
and search for
pageheader($lang_login_php['login'],"<META http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"3;url=$referer\">");

and add before it
$referer = 'index.php?cat='.(FIRST_USER_CAT+$USER_DATA['user_id']);


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How can I prevent unregistered user from viewing the gallery?
edit
displayimage.php
and search for


and add before it
if (!USER_ID) cpg_die(ERROR, 'You need to register to access this page', __FILE__, __LINE__);


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How can I display the name of the uploader with the picture info?
Warning: this is quite a complicated hack for a newbie to perform!
Edit displayimage.php and search for:
$info[$lang_picinfo['Filename']] = htmlspecialchars($CURRENT_PIC_DATA['filename']);
add after it:
$info[$lang_picinfo['Username']] = htmlspecialchars($CURRENT_PIC_DATA['user_name']);.
Then open /include/functions.inc.php and search for following in function get_pic_data():
if($select_columns != '*') $select_columns .= ', title, caption';
and replace it with:
if($select_columns != '*') $select_columns .= ', title, caption, user_name';.
After that search for:

and replace it with:

Then you have to add the language string for the username. Open /lang/yourlang.php and search for:
$lang_picinfo = array(
and add after that:
'Username' => 'Username',
Also you need to execute this query in MySQL (with a tool like phpMyAdmin):
ALTER TABLE `cpg11d_pictures` ADD INDEX ( `owner_id` );
(If your table_prefix is not cpg11d_ then you need to change it in the query)


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How do I enable clickable links in custom user fields?
edit displayimage.php and change
$info[$CONFIG['user_field'.$i.'_name']] = make_clickable($CURRENT_PIC_DATA['user'.$i]);
into
$info[$CONFIG['user_field'.$i.'_name']] = bb_decode($CURRENT_PIC_DATA['user'.$i]);
 
In order to allow the use of BBCodes in custom fields: you can then have something like
[url]http://www.somesite.com/foo/bar.php?whatever=42[/url]
or
[url=http://www.somesite.com/foo/bar.php?whatever=42]link to some site![/url]
in your custom user fields (which of course have to be enabled first in the config page)


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How can I sort the thumbnails by user defined (custom) fields?
  1. edit /includes/functions.inc.php
    change

    to
  2. edit /themes/yourtheme/theme.php
    • change

      to

       
    • modify the lines after $template_thumb_view_title_row like this:


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How do I enable IPTC support?
edit /includes/picmgmt.inc.php and search for
$imagesize = getimagesize($image);
replace with:

This hack hasn't been tested, use at your own risk...!

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How can I add some output directly before the line "Powered by Coppermine"?
Edit /themes/yourtheme/theme.php, look for echo $template_footer and add the stuff you want to output in a line before it, like print '<span class="footer"><a href="http://www.mylink.com/foo.htm">My Link</a></span>';

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Common PHP errors and how to get rid of them...
There are a lot of people (especially PHP newbies) that post questions like I get the error "Parse error: parse error in XXX" and don't know what to do about it. That's why I translated this list of common errors (and a solution how to fix them) from the original german article in Dr. Web :


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How can I let users post several comments one one pic?
By default Coppermine doesn't let users comment pics more than once to avoid "flooding". If you want to disable the flooding protection (and allow users to post several comments to one and the same picture), edit db_input.php and look for

with

(in other words: comment it out).

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I'm running my own server

How do I enable gd on my Windows server?
GD 1.x 2.x are normally part of all standard PHP distributions under Windows
To check if you have it, go to the directory where you installed PHP, go to the "extensions" subdir and see if you have a file named "php_gd2.dll".
Sometimes you also need to edit your php.ini file (located in windows directory normally) and remove the ";" that is at the beggining of the line:
extension=php_gd2.dll (at the end of the file). This will cause PHP to load the GD2 extension.
Whenever you make changes to php.ini, remember that you may need to restart your webserver.
ImageMagick it quite complicated to use under Windows
Greg

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How do I enable ImageMagick on my Windows server?
ImageMagick is quite complicated to set up on Windows. There are several things to be taken into account. The Coppermine support board is not the right place to ask for help on installing it, as it deals with Coppermine, not "How to set up a server" (most people on the Coppermine boards don't run their own webserver, but they have webspace by a webhost). Instead, try to find support boards on the internet that deal with this special topic.


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Coppermine Support board

These are (alas) not-so-frequently-asked-questions on the support board. Before posting on the Support board (or, in fact, any board), please read this:
I don't know PHP/mySQL...
No problem with that, everyone has been a newbie once he started, but: please don't start each and every posting by stating "I'm a newbie", "I don't know anything about PHP" etc.
Mostly, one can tell that by your question itself, no need to apologize...

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I've posted my question a while ago, but nobody answers. What the...?
The support board is not a hotline. Although there are many visitors to the site, only a few do actually support - on a free, voluntary base. We don't get paid for it, we have a life, a job, a family. We are away sometimes.
If you don't get an answer to your question:

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How should I write my question?
If you have a question, make sure you provide as much information as possible:

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I've run into trouble. What should I do first (before posting on the board)?


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Hey, by looking at your profile I can see you're German/French/Whatever. Can I post a question in that language?
Please do not post in another language than English - this way, others may benefit from your question (and the answer), too. Don't be afraid to write "bad english" - no one will laugh at you, and most visitor's first language isn't english either! There's a german support board available at http://forum.the-service.de/ - use it if you' not able to write in English!

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May I email/pm/im you for support?
No you mustn't! Post your question on the Coppermine support board (publicly) - if we (the community) don't find a solution and I have the time and I want to I'll email/pm/im you!

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Who are you anyway?
We are a group of people who decided to form a team to develop Coppermine further - check the project team page for details...

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What happened to the "original" Coppermine site at www.chezgreg.net?
Greg, the author of coppermine, has disappeared. Meanwhile, his webhosting contract has expired, so the site went down. We (some guys interessted in the continuation of the project) have formed a dev team, registered the project at sourceforge.net and are about to continue development on the software.
We have asked the webhost (ovh) of www.chezgreg.net to grant us access to the database, but they can' do that without the consent of Greg, so we have no other choice than to start from scratch and build a new site and community.
We need your help and support for that - please contribute and give us your feedback on the new Coppermine support board we have set up.

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Where is Greg?
We don't know. We're trying to find it out.

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Coppermine Future

I'm excited about Coppermine. What'll be the future of it?
Coppermine is Greg's project, so it's hard to tell what will happen. We (the dev team) are trying to develop Coppermine further - Coppermine 1.2.0 has been the first release that wasn't built by Greg, but the dev team. Please check the Coppermine homepage to see if there are news.

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This FAQ is a work in progress, please contribute in the Coppermine Photo Gallery Support Board (don't contact me to ask for fixes of your Coppermine install). Please report any bugs, typos etc.
Check the online-version of this document for updates!
Have fun!

GauGau (aka Joachim Mueller) - coppermine dev team
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