New in GEDCOM 7.0 and TNG v15 is the ability to crop a photo for one or more of the people linked to that photo. That means you can have a group photo but only show a portion of the photo for any person seen there.
Advantages
Now you can focus in on a face or just a specific zone in the photo without creating a new image just for that purpose. A good use might be for default photos (the ones seen on charts or at the top of any person-specific page).
Tradeoffs
The cropping is done when the photo is displayed, so the entire image must still be loaded each time it is used, even if you don’t see it all. Also, you can’t link a photo to the same person twice, so if you want to show a group shot and a cropped version for the same person, you will still need two different image files and two corresponding media records.
How it’s done
One way is to do the cropping in another program and have the dimensions come in via GEDCOM import. Of course the other program must be able to export the crop parameters according to GEDCOM 7 standards. These numbers are then stored in the tng_medialinks table.
The other way is to enter the coordinates by hand. Go to Admin/Media and edit the desired media record, then scroll down to the Media Links section. Edit one of the links (add one first if necessary), then add the crop parameters in the popup window.
This is a still a little clunky in TNG 15, as it requires you to know the exact numbers (or make an educated guess). If you don’t get it right the first time, come back and edit the numbers again. The ability to crop by dragging a box would certainly improve this feature if added in the future.
Cropping vs. Image Tags
Please note that image tags are not the same as cropped images. You *can* create an image tag for a specific part of an image by dragging a box over the desired area, but you cannot directly edit the resulting coordinates or dimensions. Image tags do not prevent visitors from seeing the rest of the image, and image tags cannot be used as default photos.
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The “What’s New” page is a good place for visitors to your site to see what you have added or changed most recently. It lists the additions and updates for each of your media types first, then people and families.
Top of the “What’s New” page By default it shows at most 10 items from each category, and only items changed or added in the past 30 days are considered. You can change that from the TNG General Settings page, under Miscellaneous, with these values:
If you want to include items older than 30 days, increase the “Days” value there from 30 to something larger. If you don’t want to go that far back, make it smaller instead. And if you find you’re not making enough changes to keep this page populated, you could instead set the “Days” to zero (0). That will remove the time restriction altogether, so that you’ll always have something shown on this page, even if it has been a while.
Likewise, you can use the “Limit” value to increase or decrease the number of items in each category. So for example, if 5 items in each category is enough, change this from 10 to 5.
Finally, if you have some custom media types (or “collections”) and you don’t want to show all of them here, you can turn those off individually under Admin >> Media. Choose your custom media type from the Collections dropdown, then click the button there to edit that type. In the popup box, just uncheck the “What’s New” box near the bottom, then save:
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TNG’s GEDCOM import tool is a very complex piece of software in its own right, and it has to co-exist with a variety of different server environments. As such, there are a number of common problems. For example:
The import halts. Perhaps you were watching the progress bar and it just seemed to stop at some point. Two common reasons for that are 1) The server has a limit on how long a PHP script can run, and your import was taking too long; or 2) Something in your file threw the process for a loop and it didn’t know what to do, so it just stopped. The import is smart enough to try and start itself again when something like this happens, but it isn’t always successful. The complete progress bar just “pops” in at the end with the results. This probably means that your server is buffering the output. In other words, it’s saving what it has to put on the screen until it has enough of it to make the effort worthwhile. Until that happens, it could seem like it’s not doing anything. The import is actually finishing in this scenario, but the “progress” bar isn’t helpful. The progress bar never appears. This could also mean the server is buffering, but another possibility is that the import failed to start, maybe because the file is larger than what the server is allowing for uploads. For example, if the server says we’re not going to allow files larger than 2 Mb to be uploaded, the import might be allowed to go through the motions of uploading the file, but then when it finishes, the server pulls the rug out and deletes the file. The import finishes, but you’re left with zero records. I’ve only seen this a few times, and I’ve yet to be able to reproduce it, so if this happens to you and you haven’t discussed it with me already, I’d like to know. Basically the import looks normal until the very end, but when you go back to the menu, it reports zero for everything. It’s almost as if the import thinks it needs to start over and goes through the delete phase again. So what can you do if one of these things happens to you? Here are some possible aids or remedies:
Resume. If your import just halted and couldn’t restart itself, you could try doing it yourself. The progress bar window should include a “Resume” link, so if your import has gone more than a minute or so without doing anything, try clicking this link. Manual resume. If the link does nothing, or if you can’t see it for any reason (maybe the screen is blank or is showing you an error message), you can try resuming the import by “visiting” this direct URL: https://yourwebsite.com/admin_gedimport.php?tree=xxx&resuming=1 (of course you’ll want to substitute your own domain name, and switch out your own tree ID in place of “xxx”). This may “spin” for a while as the importing continues, but it might not provide any visual feedback. If the “page” finishes loading and the import still hasn’t finished, repeat this action. Open a different browser. In #2 above you might have been asking, “How will I know if the import is still going or not?” The best way is to open a different browser window. In other words, if you were doing the import in Chrome, now open Firefox or Edge. In the new window, browse to your Admin menu and observe the number of people, families and sources on your site. Now wait a few seconds and refresh the page. If at least one of the numbers changed, the import is still going. Refresh every so often as needed. Dev tools. If you right-click anywhere on the page, you should get a popup menu in which one of the options is “Inspect”. If you choose that, a new panel should open in your browser where you can see all kinds of developer tools and advanced data about the current page. For example, if an error has occurred, you may see that on the “Console” tab. You can also click on the “Network” tab to see communication between the import page and the server. Every few seconds TNG tries to ask the server for a progress report, so you can click on one of those events, then click on the “Response” column to see what came back (either data or an error). Old-style import. Years ago, the import reported progress by simply printing the number of imported records on the screen every time it passed a milepost (ie, every 10 records). Sometimes this still works better, usually because the increased output causes the server to fill its buffer more often and thus display the progress more reliably. If you want to try this, check the box in the lower right corner of the import screen before starting the import. Debug mode. If your server isn’t halting the import because it ran on too long, it could be that the program ran into an error. Perhaps a certain line caused a problem that threw the whole train off the track. In that case, running the import in debug mode might help. To do this, simply add “?debug=1 at the end of your import URL, like so: https://yourwebsite.com/admin_dataimport.php?debug=1. Once you load the page like that, select your file and options as usual, then start the import. Now if an error occurs, you should see it in an iframe in the bottom left corner of the screen. Ask your hosting provider. If the import can’t upload the file or can’t finish the process due to a server setting, you can always try contacting your hosting provider to ask if they will adjust the settings for you. For example, the setting that controls the amount of time allowed is max_execution time, and the ones that control how large an uploaded file can be are upload_max_filesize and post_max_size. View the full article