Admin Guide: running the Image Browser

1. First time: change the default password

1. Open the Image Browser and click Admin at the top right (next to Help).
2. Type the default password in the Password box and click Login.
3. The Admin Panel opens with a red warning across the top:

   

4. In the 🔑 Admin Password box on the right, type:
   • Current password: the default password
   • New password: your new password, at least 8 characters long
   • Confirm new password: the same new password again
5. Click Change Password. Under the button you'll see "✓ Password changed successfully."
6. Click ← Back to image browser, then Admin again, and log in with the new password to check it works. The red warning has gone.

2. Logging in and out

• Wrong password: you'll see "Incorrect password."; just try again.

  

• Too many tries: after 5 wrong passwords within 5 minutes, the Image Browser stops accepting any for a while and says "Too many failed attempts. Try again later." This keeps out anyone trying to guess it. Wait 5 minutes, then try again carefully.
• One admin at a time. If someone logs in on another computer, the earlier login is signed out the next time it clicks anything, and goes back to the login page. That also means you can't be locked out by a computer someone left logged in.
• Automatic log-out: after 30 minutes without using the Admin Panel, you're logged out. Two minutes before, a Still there? box appears: click Stay logged in to carry on. An import that's running carries on regardless.
• Logging out: click Logout at the bottom right of the Admin Panel when you've finished, especially on a shared computer.

3. The Admin Panel at a glance

4. Changing the admin password

Fill in all three boxes and click Change Password, as in section 1. The new password is used from the next login; you stay logged in now. If it isn't accepted, the message under the button says why:

The box under New password says At least 8 characters., and a password that's too short is stopped by the browser itself before it's sent: it asks you to make it longer.

5. Importing: putting changes on the site

The photos on the site come from two places, both kept up to date by the image maintenance team:

• the photo files (JPEGs), in a folder for each collection on the NAS (the project's shared storage);
• the archive spreadsheet, Archive Index Numbers.xlsx: one row per photo, with its description, date, category and where its file is.

Changes to either don't show on the site by themselves. An import reads the spreadsheet and the photo folders and brings the site up to date. Run one whenever the team tells you they've added photos or changed the spreadsheet.

1. Ask the team to save and close the spreadsheet first, so the import reads their latest changes.
2. Click ↺ Import from Spreadsheet.
3. Watch the progress bar (next section), then read the summary when it finishes (section 8).
4. Visit the main page and check the new photos are there. The counts in the collection and category lists are updated by the import.

An import is safe to run as often as you like. It only copies photos that are new or have changed and updates descriptions; it never removes photos from the site, and visitors can keep using the site while it runs. The first import of a new installation copies every photo and can take a long time; after that, imports usually take a minute or two.

Where the photos are read from

Under the button, Collection Images lists every collection the import reads, each with the folder its photos are read from, and Output path is where the Image Browser keeps its own copies of them. These folders are set when the Image Browser is installed; you don't need to change anything. They're useful to:

• tell the image maintenance team exactly where to put new photos for each collection;
• check, if photos seem to be missing, that the import is reading the folder you expect.

The photos are only read from these folders, never changed. The Image Browser shows visitors its own copies, so the site keeps working even if the NAS is switched off (until the next import).

6. While an import runs

The Import box shows:

• What it's doing, for example Reading AVIATION records…, Scanning input files…, Copying 40 new/changed file(s)…;
• a progress bar and percentage for that step, with details such as Copying 3 of 40;
• for a long step, an estimate: Estimated time left for this step: about 3 min (finishes about 14:32);
• a ✖ Cancel Import button (next section).

Only one import can run at a time. Clicking Import again while one is running just says "An import is already in progress." and shows its progress.

7. Cancelling an import

Click ✖ Cancel Import if you started an import by mistake or need the computer for something else. The Image Browser asks you to confirm:

• Keep importing (or Esc, or clicking outside the box) lets the import carry on.
• ✖ Yes, cancel the import stops it, after the photo it's copying at that moment.

Nothing is lost: everything already copied stays on the site. The panel then shows an amber box headed ✖ Import cancelled, saying how far it got, for example "Import cancelled after copying 3 of 40 file(s).", and when it stopped. It stays there, even after leaving and coming back to the panel, until the next import starts (or the Image Browser is restarted). Run Import from Spreadsheet later and it carries on from where it stopped.

8. Reading the import summary

When the import finishes, the box shows a summary. The first line says how it went:

• ✓ Import complete (green): all fine.
• ⚠ Import complete, with N warning(s) and/or N error(s) (amber): it finished, but some things need looking at (see below). Everything else was imported.

The next line, Import method, says whether it was an Import or a Full reimport. Then come the counts:

Under the summary, Finished at 14:32 says when it ended.

9. The full import report

The summary only gives counts. Click ⬇ Download the full import report under it to save a text file (import-report-date-time.txt) with the same counts followed by every item behind them:

• each row with a missing image file: its sheet, folder and file name;
• each image file with no row: its collection, folder and file name;
• the rows without an image, the rows skipped (not a JPEG, or the same photo listed twice) with their sheet and row number in the spreadsheet;
• every error.

Open it with Notepad (or any text editor), or email it to the image maintenance team so they can put things right. Only the latest import's report is kept, and only until the Image Browser is restarted.

10. Full Reimport: starting again from nothing

A Full Reimport deletes every photo record and every copied photo from the site, then imports everything again as if for the first time. Because of that, it asks you to confirm with a red warning:

• Keep everything, cancel (or Esc, or clicking outside the box) does nothing.
• ⚠ Yes, delete everything and reimport starts it.

11. Import or Full Reimport?

An ordinary import adds and updates, but never removes. So almost always you want Import from Spreadsheet. You need a Full Reimport only when something has to disappear from the site:

12. When something goes wrong

If an import can't finish, the box shows a red message starting "Import failed while: …" with the step it was on and why. Nothing done before then is lost; fix the cause and import again, and it carries on.

If the panel shows 🧪 Dry run mode, it has been started for testing: imports only report what they would do, and change nothing. Ask whoever installed it to restart it normally.

13. The library's kiosk PC

The kiosk PC shows only the Image Browser, full screen, with no address bar, tabs or Back button. It signs itself into its kiosk account when it starts. You look after it from your own admin account on the same PC.

Image Browser · Burnham-on-Sea History Project · Admin Guide. Other guides: User Guide (finding and looking at photos) and Image Maintenance Guide (adding photos and descriptions).