product images in sub folders

[eclark461]

with so many products and even more images it is extremely important for us to be able to place the images in folders

example
product1 would automatically have a folder created in

images/stories/product1

then the child products would have the folders

/images/stories/product1/child1

this will in turn make it possible to Sep the images by name as well as keep track and simplify the images instead of having one root folder for all product images

is there any way to get this implimented or are there any methods anyone know of that will allow this and work with the sync function?

thanks

[jjk]

You can use a different image folder structure of course. For example, I'm using something similar to this:

In VirtueMart Media Settings:

General Assets URL: components/com_virtuemart/assets/
Category Media URL: images/category/   
Product Media URL: images/products/
Manufacturer Media URL: images/manufacturers/
Vendor Media URL: images/vendor/

Then a corresponding folder structure for the product images is this:

/rootfolder/images/products/manufacturer1
  productname1-mediumsizeimage.jpg
  productname1-largesizeimage.jpg

  productname2-mediumsizeimage.jpg
  productname2-largesizeimage.jpg
 
/rootfolder/images/products/manufacturer2
  productname3-mediumsizeimage.jpg
  productname3-largesizeimage.jpg

  productname4-mediumsizeimage.jpg
  productname4-largesizeimage.jpg

and the product thumbnail images would be in:

/rootfolder/images/products/resized

  manufacturer1
    productname1-thumbnailimage.jpg
    productname2-thumbnailimage.jpg
   
  manufacturer2
      productname3-thumbnailimage.jpg
      productname4-thumbnailimgae.jpg


Tip:
If you use such a structure, it is easier to create the folders and upload images to them if you use the Joomla media manager or the media manager from the JCE editor or FTP.
You can upload i.e. 10 or 100 images into your image folders and then go to VirtueMart 'Tools & Migration' and click on the 'Synchronize media' button. This will make all your images available for selection in your Product Edit View's image tab (provided your image path settings in VirtueMart Configuration > Templates tab are correct)

[eclark461]

that is what I have been doing
however it would make alot more sense to be able to set a product folder so when you remove a product you can get the images and all that is associated with it

it also makes it alot easier to differenciate from each

example

category folders which contain the images for that category would be better than the structure we have now

[jjk]

I found my image folder settings, where product images (with exact product names as file names) are sorted into manufacturer folders to be very convenient and easy to handle. Currently I have approximately 1600 images in my shop. You can of course create image folders like:
images/stories/product1
images/stories/product1/child1
The VirtueMart media synchronization has no problem catching the content of such image folders. But you would have to set up the folders manually or i.e. with the Joomla media manager.

However, if you really have a lot of products (There are VM2 shops with 6-figure numbers) I wonder what your ftp program comes up with, when you click on the images/stories folder. Will it display i.e. 100.000 folders without crashing? (I never tried something like that). And even locating a certain folder out of 1000 product name folders probably will be a slow (human) process.

[defiantclass]

I'd like to get some additional information on this subject if I could.

I did upload all of my images via FTP, thinking that it would be obvious when I got to assigning images to products while I created them. Not....

I was able to change my default file path to the next folder level deeper (i.e. /images/stories/virtuemart/product   and then /inventory_images) but I have additional subfolders from that point forward for each category.

I tried using the Sync Media tool, after enabling the database update tool, but I get errors:

Found prior migration process, resume migration maxScriptTime 47 maxMemoryLimit 114

Synchronized 0 media for product in directory images/stories/virtuemart/product/Inventory_Images/

Synchronized alltogether 0 files

I've been trying to just alter the path in the product image screen but when I click Save it just goes back empty fields. Or it uploads my image to the root folder.

I'm using 2.0.22c and Joomla 2.5.11

[jjk]

Can you upload two screenshots showing the blue VM infos which are displayed after executing 'Synchronize media to VirtueMart' and also the paths entered in your 'Media Files Settings' in VM Configuration > Templates tab?