NextGen Gallery Integration – Security of the Digital Photos

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There are two slightly different ways you can integrate NextGen gallery with eStore to sell photos from your WordPress site.

A common question that users ask is the following:

Won’t my users save/copy the image that is being shown in the NextGen gallery display and then not order the digital copy?

Lets address this question for each of the integration methods.

Method 1) Configure Each Photo/Image as eStore product

Integration Documentation – http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/wordpress-estore-and-nextgen-gallery-integration-to-create-digital-photo-store-method-1-1232

Method 1 allows you to configure each photo/image separately in eStore. This means you deliver a different copy (the main good copy) of the image than the one on display for preview.

You are never delivering the image that you are showing as a preview using the NextGen gallery. So here is what you can do…

1) Resize the gallery images in NextGen Gallery to a smaller size.

2) Apply watermark to the images using the NextGen Gallery “Effect” option.

This prevents stealing of images from the preview you display in the NextGen Gallery.

Now, store the real high resolution and watermark free version in a separate location/folder on your server and use them as the deliverable for the eStore product. Once the purchase is complete the encrypted download link for this main/original image (high resolution and no watermark) is emailed to the buyer.

Method 2) Use One eStore Product as Template

Integration Documentation – http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/nextgen-gallery-alternate-integration-method-805

This method uses an eStore product as a template for the whole gallery.

It doesn’t have the option to configure a separate deliverable image of each photo. So it delivers the image that is being displayed/used in the NextGen gallery.

This method works better for people who are not really that concerned about the security of the digital image (example: selling prints of wedding photos).

However, there is one option that can be used to apply some security to this method of integration. Do the following for this:

1) Resize the gallery images in NextGen Gallery to a smaller size.

2) Apply watermark to the images using the NextGen Gallery “Effect” option.

NextGen gallery will create backup images (to keep the original image) with an extension of “.jpg_backup” when you do the above.

Now, you can tell eStore to deliver this backup copy of the image rather than the one that is on display for preview. Do the following to tell eStore to look for a backup copy (.jpg_backup) of an image.

Open the “eStore_advanced_configs.php” file and search for the following line of code:

define('WP_ESTORE_ENABLE_ADVANCED_NGG_FILE_SERVE', false);

Once you find it change it to the following:

define('WP_ESTORE_ENABLE_ADVANCED_NGG_FILE_SERVE', true);

This will make it to where eStore will first look for the “.jpg_backup” version of the image at the time of download and serve that one to the customer if it finds it.

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