Bulk Rename A Thread Of Thumbnails

[tunescool]

i run a celebrity forum and pretty much all the time the pics are all over the place and i like to arrange them in the order i like. its easier to just move the thumbnails around while modifying the post than renaming them one by one in my finder somewhere.

so i save all my galleries on an external hard drive in case the uploaded pics ever lose their urls, but id like to keep them in my external in the order i have arranged them in. is there a mac program that would bulk download all the pics and rename them in the order they appear in my forums threads?

or if anyone has ever heard of a website that you could put the url of the pics you want renamed in order in, and the website would do it for you

[acme.mail.order]

If you run a forum then the pictures should be in the database. Use that to organize them, don't forget to do a search/replace across the entire database to fix links to each file.

If it sounds like a big job, that's because it is.

[tunescool]

theyre not in a database

[macosnoob]

This is the site you've mentioned before? http://celebnook.proboards.com/index...ad=3434&page=1

The ordering is done server-side on celebnook, right? The visual "organization" exists only by virtue of the code that exists on the server. I don't know how you would easily replicate that organization. Glancing at the source shows spaghetti links from celebnook to thumbnails on the imagebam site and then those thumbnails in turn link to the full-size pics. So it would be, as acme.mail.order notes, quite a job to reconstruct the entire structure in a standalone fashion. Possible, sure, but nothing automatic comes to mind.

[acme.mail.order]

Meh. That's average htmp for a content manager with a bunch of plugins.

Your pictures are in a database. I should have been clearer before - the image files are not stored in a database but the references to them are. So, if you want to gather everything in one place you will need to:

1. query the database for image URLs
2. download those images to a location we can control
3. rename the files using a process that both organizes and checks for name collisions
4. update the database with the new URLs

You will not find a pre-made process as each forum database and server structure are sufficiently unique. Are you good with SQL and shell scripting?

[tunescool]

alrite thanks guys, if nothing is available. i dont understand how i could download images from my forums database, plus i already have them downloaded. and if for some reason i could get a way to rename either the images or the urls automatically it would stll be the same in the post thread page. the only bulk downloader i like and use for mac would still just see the names imagebam gave them. no im not good with sql

[acme.mail.order]

Quote: Originally Posted by tunescool no im not good with sql

That's a problem. From what you have described you would need expert level skills in sql and shell scripting to pull it off without destroying your forum.

If your forum doesn't have built-in attachment handling then you should upgrade to one that does. And a quick look seems to indicate that you don't want a forum at all - you want a content manager.

Do you have:

- lots of users contributing substantial original content? -> forum

- a few users contributing the content, and a bunch of readers discussing it? -> Blog with comments.

[tunescool]

ive invested too much in my forum to move, plus one of a kind custom made codes with months of copying and pasting into threads to archive all my threads by thumbnail. i cant leave

[acme.mail.order]

Quote: Originally Posted by tunescool ... months of copying and pasting into threads to archive all my threads by thumbnail.

Big mistake. This is what databases are for. If you don't change you are stuck with a large problem that will get larger with time. If you do change you should do so while it is still manageable.