Ultimate Member User Photos Addon

Every album in your community has its own audience

In a community, photos from a work trip and photos from a family gathering are not shown to the same people. If your site only offers publish or do not publish, anyone who would rather not show everything chooses not to, and their profile stays a name and an avatar.

That is why it matters where the decision lives. With User Photos, privacy is set per album, not per profile: the same person can have one public album and another only they can see. This Ultimate Member extension adds those albums to each profile, and lets you decide who can create them and how far they can go.

Albums and photos inside the profile

• Their own albums: each member creates theirs, uploads photos and can edit or delete them.
• Two views on the profile: one for albums and one for photos.
• Comments and likes: part of the albums, and a single option hides them if you do not want them.
• Control from My Account: the My Photos tab lets members download their photos and delete all albums and photos.
• Activity: with the Social Activity extension, creating an album posts an entry to the wall.

The five possible audiences for an album

When creating an album, the member chooses from these options:

• Everyone: public.
• Only me: the uploader and the admin. It is worth explaining it this way to your members, because "only me" does not exclude whoever runs the site.
• Only people I follow: the people they follow.
• Followers and Friends: need the Followers or Friends extension.

The social options gain value if your community already has relationships between members.

Your limits: roles, quotas and alerts

Member photos are content you end up hosting, so these settings deserve a decision from day one.

• By role: the feature is off by default for each role and is turned on where you want it.
• By user: a maximum of uploaded photos per person (0 means no limit).
• By album: a maximum of photos in each album.
• By visibility: who can see the photos tab.
• Alerts: emails to administrators when someone creates, updates or deletes an album, with templates you can enable, disable and edit.

You also set album and photo columns, photo rows, and cover and thumbnail sizes, and you can disable the album cover or title.

Turning it on by role and choosing where it shows

You need Ultimate Member, because this is one of its extensions and does not work alone.

1. Install and activate the extension.
2. In User Roles, turn the feature on for the chosen roles and set their limit.
3. Adjust the layout under Settings, Extensions, User Photos.
4. Under Ultimate Member, Settings, Appearance, Profile Menu, decide who sees the tab.
5. Create a test album with a member account and check each privacy option.

To take photos beyond the profile you have three shortcodes. [ultimatemember_albums] shows albums from all members, with 1 to 4 columns and pagination. [ultimatemember_gallery] and [ultimatemember_gallery_photos] show a member's albums or photos.

If you want another way to show images

When images are published by your team rather than your members, Envira Gallery takes a different route, with its own add-ons in the catalog such as watermarking or photo proofing.

For the rest of your community, the catalog has the Ultimate Member extensions bundle, and Ultimate Member Social Login adds social buttons to the forms.

The practical side of opening the gallery to members

Why does the photos tab not appear?

Check that the feature is turned on for that user's role, since it starts off, and that the tab is active in Profile Menu.

Can I limit how many photos each person uploads?

Yes, by role, with the user gallery limit. There is also a per-album limit.

Can I remove comments and likes?

Yes. The Disable comment & like feature option hides both at once.

Can I show albums outside the profile?

Yes, on any page, with the extension's shortcodes.

Can a member take their photos with them?

Yes. From My Photos, in their account, they can download them.

Will I know when someone creates an album?

Yes, if you keep that administrator email template enabled.