I can confirm – URL rewrite + DHTML Album Select produces two forward slashes in the Matrix theme, in my gallery 2.2.4 setup, after a single use of the Recalculate button in Disk statistics tab in Statistics plugin from Community repository.

In my exact case, generating single gallery page with two forward slashes instead of Album Select produced this error:

[25-Feb-2008 04:57:50] PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function onLoad() on a non-object in /modules/core/classes/helpers/GalleryEntityHelper_simple.class on line 91

I did run the integrity check… it had shown 7 missing files in the Notification module (all from the phpunit test framework), and 7 modified files (in publishxp, webcam, and flashvideo renderer; of those, I remember modifying only the last one).

PublishXP and webcam are not even installed – so I just manually deleted their folders. Then I reinstalled Notification module.
As expected, this didn’t help with the Album Select problem – though “modified files” verification problems are now gone (except for flashvideo, which I did modify). Notification must have some kind of internal trouble, as it still shows the phpunit files as missing.

Next, I tried disabling URL Rewrite, and having a look if that error is still generated: NO!!! This means, that the error is clearly associated with URL Rewrite being enabled. It’s only totally unclear, what kind of association it is.

It’s possible, that only some rules in URL Rewrite are causing problems. So I’ll disable all the rules first: now album select works.

Next, enabling rules one-by-one:

• add comment: still fine
• view comments: still fine
• updates album: still fine
• popular album: still fine
• random album: still fine
• keyword album: still fine
• permalinks: still fine
• rating album: still fine (at this point I started thinking that it’ll just work after I enable all the rules; this way I’ll fix Album Select problem for some time, but won’t find the cause)
• show item: oops! Doesn’t work! Disabling: now works again! moving on to next rules for now.
• download item: OK
• site admin: OK
• 404: OK
• Simple RSS feed and RSS feed: both OK
• sitemap: OK
• view slideshow: OK
• tag cloud and tag virtual album: both OK
• watermark hotlinked items: OK

Intermediate summary: problem is only with the show item rule. As suggested at the menalto forums, this might be due to the individual items names/filenames.

So, for now: if you want URL Rewrite in Gallery2 with Album Select, and you only get two forward slashes – disable the show item rule. It gives you functional Album Select at the cost of disabled rewrites for single items.

Next, I had a peek at the code around line 91:

From what I understood, this line

in the code context calls the onLoad() function on each of the needed items, which are retrieved from the cache. So, as only one error is generated, it looks as if single item is either not in the ‘cached’ array when it should be, or is not of the expected type. So far, I do not understand how this might be associated with item names/filenames.

Update: there was a plugin/module, which wasn’t present in the fresh and full G2 install: Statistics. After I installed Statistics onto a fresh Gallery2, and recalculated ‘disk usage’, I’m now seeing two slashes in that “freshly installed” G2!
Other symptoms are exactly the same: URL Rewrite’s “show item” rule switches two-slashes on and off. Thus, Statistics module might be the cause.
Strangely, but deactivating/uninstalling/deleting Statistics doesn’t fix the problem…

Update: here is the sequence of actions to reproduce the problem:

• install full gallery
• during install, activate these plugins: album select, add items, integrity check, permalinks, url rewrite, gd
• configure/activate URL rewrite module (apache mod_rewrite)
• activate all url rewrite rules
• edit root album->theme: add dhtml album select to ‘album pages’
• tree doesn’t show: add album ‘test’. Now the album tree will be shown
• install Statistics plugin (from Community repository)
• go to Statistics menu in Site Admin, choose Disk statistics tab, press Recalculate
• when recalculation is complete – two slashes will be seen

I’ll keep looking for the solution. Comments from Gallery2 developers are highly appreciated.

Update generally went well, except for the message I got on the main page:

Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.

It was quite easy to figure out that new WP conflicts with an elderly “Sideblog” plugin – so I had to deactivate that one, and will have to update all the active plugins to avoid some other less evident problems… (actually, just completed updating all the plugins… quite a time-eater, that was.)

Also, there will be a slight change to what and how I write. No other details for now – but stay tuned! All the changes with no exceptions are planned for the good of readers, and for the users’ benefits!

Stimulated by the post of Eric Daniel (who used to have a blog at termitenshort.com), I compiled the most recent ffmpeg SVN source into Linux binary, which runs fine on my shared hosting (note: I’m using older ffmpeg binaries, which are at the end of the post).

mini-FAQ:
Q: Why the title has “for Gallery2″?
A: Just because I avoided the inclusion of libraries, which were not found on my shared hosting server. I hope this will work for other shared hosting environments.

Configuration, version and date can be found in the output of ffmpeg.

Versions built on April, 8, 2008:
ffmpeg (no lame) (checked: can be executed on godaddy shared hosting)

FFmpeg version SVN-r12769, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-swscale –enable-pthreads –disable-debug –enable-gray –disable-ffserver –disable-ffplay –enable-avfilter –disable-network –disable-ipv6
libavutil version: 49.6.0
libavcodec version: 51.54.0
libavformat version: 52.13.0
libavdevice version: 52.0.0
libavfilter version: 0.0.0
built on Apr 8 2008 15:13:14, gcc: 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)
usage: ffmpeg [[infile options] -i infile]… {[outfile options] outfile}…

ffmpeg (with lame). For this one, grab libmp3lame.so.

FFmpeg version SVN-r12769, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-swscale –enable-pthreads –disable-debug –enable-gray –disable-ffserver –disable-ffplay –enable-avfilter –disable-network –disable-ipv6 –enable-libmp3lame
libavutil version: 49.6.0
libavcodec version: 51.54.0
libavformat version: 52.13.0
libavdevice version: 52.0.0
libavfilter version: 0.0.0
built on Apr 8 2008 15:44:31, gcc: 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)

Based on single request: ffmpeg (with lame and libfaac and libfaad). For this one, grab libfaac.so and libfaad.so.

FFmpeg version SVN-r12769, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-swscale –enable-pthreads –disable-debug –enable-gray –disable-ffserver –disable-ffplay –enable-avfilter –disable-network –disable-ipv6 –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libfaac –enable-libfaad
libavutil version: 49.6.0
libavcodec version: 51.54.0
libavformat version: 52.13.0
libavdevice version: 52.0.0
libavfilter version: 0.0.0
built on Apr 8 2008 23:53:57, gcc: 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)

As an experiment, here’s ffmpeg freebsd binary without lame support. Did ran on some FreeBSD 6.3 hosting.

FFmpeg version SVN-r12769, Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-postproc –enable-swscale –enable-pthreads –disable-debug –enable-gray –disable-ffserver –disable-ffplay –enable-avfilter –disable-network –disable-ipv6 –target-os=freebsd
libavutil version: 49.6.0
libavcodec version: 51.54.0
libavformat version: 52.13.0
libavdevice version: 52.0.0
libavfilter version: 0.0.0
built on Apr 8 2008 16:15:38, gcc: 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)

Versions built on Ocotber, 28, 2007:
download ffmpeg without libmp3lame support

FFmpeg version SVN-r10867, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-pp –enable-swscaler –enable-pthreads

–enable-libogg –enable-libvorbis –disable-debug
libavutil version: 49.5.0
libavcodec version: 51.47.1
libavformat version: 51.17.0
built on Oct 28 2007 22:46:10, gcc: 3.4.6

download ffmpeg with libmp3lame support

FFmpeg version SVN-r10867, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-pp –enable-swscaler –enable-libmp3lame

–enable-pthreads –enable-libogg –enable-libvorbis –disable-debug
libavutil version: 49.5.0
libavcodec version: 51.47.1
libavformat version: 51.17.0
built on Oct 28 2007 23:04:59, gcc: 3.4.6

Shared hosting testing reports are welcome.

Below you can find even older versions of ffmpeg, which were tested and found functional on GoDaddy shared hosting.

Again, two versions are available – with libmp3lame support and without. Learn more about using ffmpeg with libmp3lame support in shared hosting environment.

download ffmpeg without lame

FFmpeg version SVN-r9447, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-pp –enable-swscaler –enable-pthreads –enable-libvorbis –disable-v4l –disable-v4l2 –disable-bktr –disable-dv1394 –disable-debug
libavutil version: 49.4.1
libavcodec version: 51.40.4
libavformat version: 51.12.1
built on Jun 28 2007 12:32:29, gcc: 3.4.6

The second binary DID NOT work on my shared hosting due to the absence of libmp3lame.so.0 (see comments and this post on how to enable libmp3lame support).
It was built two days later, and has the following config:

download ffmpeg with lame

FFmpeg version SVN-r9451, Copyright (c) 2000-2007 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: –enable-gpl –enable-pp –enable-swscaler –enable-libmp3lame –enable-pthreads –enable-libvorbis –disable-v4l –disable-v4l2 –disable-bktr –disable-dv1394 –disable-debug
libavutil version: 49.4.1
libavcodec version: 51.40.4
libavformat version: 51.12.1
built on Jun 30 2007 11:51:23, gcc: 3.4.6

Primary source of information was this post, but I recommend that you follow instructions here.

To add AdSense to your Gallery2 sidebar (when using the Matrix theme as a sample):

1. copy themes/matrix/templates/sidebar.tpl to theme/matrix/templates/local/sidebar.tpl on your server. This is needed to preserve your modifications when the Matrix theme will be upgraded.
2. any further modifications should be done in your newly copied local/sidebar.tpl file.
3. create the file which will contain all your AdSense code – e.g., let it be adsense_160x600.tpl for the Wide Scyscraper format. Put all your AdSense code into that file, and upload the file to your theme/matrix/templates/local/ folder on the server.
4. now edit the sidebar.tpl file. My original file looked like this:[smarty]
   {* Show the sidebar blocks chosen for this theme *}
   {foreach from=$theme.params.sidebarBlocks item=block}
   {g->block type=$block.0 params=$block.1 class=”gbBlock”}
   {/foreach}
   {g->block type=”core.NavigationLinks” class=”gbBlock”}

   [/smarty] I added [smarty]{if $user.isGuest == 1}
   {* adsense code *}
   {g->theme include=”adsense_160x600.tpl” class=”gbBlock”}
   {/if}[/smarty] and final file looked like this:[smarty]{*
   * $Revision: 1.2 $
   * If you want to customize this file, do not edit it directly since future upgrades
   * may overwrite it. Instead, copy it into a new directory called “local” and edit that
   * version. Gallery will look for that file first and use it if it exists.
   *}

   {* Show the sidebar blocks chosen for this theme *}
   {foreach from=$theme.params.sidebarBlocks item=block}
   {g->block type=$block.0 params=$block.1 class=”gbBlock”}
   {/foreach}
   {g->block type=”core.NavigationLinks” class=”gbBlock”}
   {if $user.isGuest == 1}
   {* adsense code *}
   {g->theme include=”adsense_160x600.tpl” class=”gbBlock”}
   {/if}

   [/smarty]

5. well, basically you are done. If you need/want to, you can wrap the inserted code into some styled container, to define the look of the block, like:[smarty]
   {if $user.isGuest == 1}
   {* adsense code *}
   {g->theme include=”adsense_160x600.tpl” class=”gbBlock”}
   {/if}

   [/smarty]

6. you can use any AdSense format you like, but you must mind the width of the sidebar in your theme – so that site layout is not broken by too wide AdSense units.

Finally, some more hints and explanations.

The smarty variables for users in Gallery2 are:

• $user.isGuest
• $user.isRegisteredUser
• $user.isAdmin

As you might have noticed, in the code above AdSense unit is shown ONLY IF the page visitor is a Guest. Thus ads will not be shown to Registered Users and Admin. I did not manage to find this condition in Google’s AdSense Policy, but the source post author states that showing Google Ads in password-protected areas is a violation of Google’s Terms Of Service (TOS). Again – I did not find that, but in good faith I provide the code which limits ads to guest-only users. If you want to show ads to any user class – just remove the first {if} and last {/if} lines from the code. Any knowledgeable comments on this (preferrably with URLs) are very welcome, as personally I see nothing bad in putting AdSense onto password-protected pages in the case of the Gallery, where photos are the main type of content.

To add multiple ad units – create a single file for each distinct ad format/type you want to use, and include it using the code shown above. Just keep in mind limitations imposed by Google on the number of ad units of different types on a single page.

Hope this helps, and good luck to you.