Integrating monoslideshow

Hi all,

I'm using monoslideshow, a $20 flash-based gallery program, to do a front-page gallery on a site. (Not an external site, sorry, so I can't show it.) I tried a few of the other gallery modules but I already knew monoslideshow and I like the look of it. Getting it integrated with Drupal wasn't too hard but there were a few tricks to learn along the way, so I'm documenting them here.

Step 1: preparing Drupal

You'll need to install SWF Tools and you'll need to turn on the PHP Filter module if you're on 6.x and not already using it.

Step 2: create a node and tweak the CSS

There's more than one way to do static content at the top of a list of node posts, but this is the way I did it. What I did was post a story and make it "sticky at the top of a list" and "promoted to front page", then I tweaked the CSS to remove the normal node title so that all that was visible in the node was the flash gallery itself. You could certainly modify your theme instead or do it any of a dozen other ways, but this was easy and worked well for my site.

One you create your node, you just need to note the number of the node. Then, in your CSS, do something like this to hide the title:

#node-7 h2 {
	display: none;
}

Depending on your theme and config you might need to tweak this or hide additional elements.

Step 3: Install monoslideshow and get it working

Monoslideshow needs three files to work, monoslideshow.swf, monoslideshow.js, and monoslideshow.xml. I put monoslideshow.swf and monoslideshow.js in a monoslideshow directory under /sites/default/files, and I put monoslideshow.xml under sites/default/files directly. This is because SWF Tools looks in the files directory by default. If you put the files somewhere else you'll need to tweak SWF Tools. For my gallery I put the images into a directory under files as well, and you can get more complex in the monoslideshow config with additional gallery directories, but I just used one. So, my final setup looks like:

/sites/default/monoslideshow/monoslideshow.swf
/sites/default/monoslideshow/monoslideshow.js
/sites/default/monoslideshow.xml
/sites/default/gallery/picture1.jpg ...

Monoslideshow comes with a default index.html file that runs standalone outside of Drupal. Because monoslideshow has a lot of options, I suggest you get your gallery up and running just the way you want it using that before you try to put it into your Drupal site.

Step 4: Create the node content

If everything else worked, this is pretty easy, although working out the right variables was the hardest part of this since SWF Tools is a bit different than how monoslideshow works normally.

Your node content should be set as PHP and look like this.

<?php

print swf('sites/default/files/monoslideshow/monoslideshow.swf', array('params' => array('height' => '200', 'width' => '680'), 'flashvars' => array('showLogo' => 'false')));

?>

Obviously, tweak the height and width to your liking. showLogo disables the monoslideshow product logo when the slideshow loads.

That's it for the config. As I said, monoslideshow is very customizable and has a nice clean look, which is why I like it. YMMV. :)