I've been using jalbum for many years. I had always assumed given a .jap file I could recreate a photo album to look just like it did. I had a problem with an old album and opened jalbum (24.1), pointed at the .jap for this album and the output is totally different. I want it like it was. Furthermore, I want to make more that look like this so now I know I don't know how...

I've attached what the main page looked like before and now...

I've always spent a lot of time configuring the look of the galleries with the intention of being able to make them all the same. This album was probably made in 2017. I've been updating jalbum because it has been getting better and easier to use... But my guess the problem isn't jalbum but updated skins?

Now I'm worried that I wont' even be able to update my business photo album -- from which I sell photography... It has a totally different look and was last updated without any problems in 2022. Photoblogger is 3.29.1 and it looks like the current version is 5.1.3. So I am using an old photobogger which I would think would be good...

It looks like I was still using Tiger for the business photo album. If I click on it in jalbum it says Tiger.

How can I get back to what I had?

A "preview local album" of one I made in 2022 looks at least pretty much like I had it in 2022. I know I can copy settings from one album to another. It's how I make a new gallery. Both are Photoblogger. So I did File > Import > Settings from Project and chose the .jap file from the gallery that looks correct in its preview (I don't DARE rebuild it!), and the preview result is the same as it was (jalbum new attached) and NOT like the preview of the one I presumably copied the settings from.

I guess since the settings appear to still work (at least in preview) I could start all over with this album.

The problem with the album was I noticed in one folder it could not find the larger images. What I saw was a pulsing dot... The other folders worked fine. So I thought the easy answer was to rebuild it... NOT!

To add to what RobM has posted, please give us a link to an album that looks the way you want it to. Screenshots aren't much help, since the choice of options in a skin can produce very different-looking albums. In this case, for example, your "old" screenshot appears to be an older version of Tiger, while the "new" shot looks like Photoblogger.

Last question: what version of jAlbum do you have? If it's not the latest version, why isn't it?

This is the album in question. I noticed the other day that I had not uploaded it, so I did. Then I noticed the links to the larger images in Bangkok don't work. I reuploaded the images but that did not fix the problem. So I tried to rebuild it. All of my travel albums should look like this.

The links to larger images in the Bangkok folder do not work, but, for example, Golden Triangle does. That was the reason I was trying to rebuild this one.
https://nichollsfamily.us/galleries/Thailand1999/index.html

This is another one with the same settings which I think is OK.
https://nichollsfamily.us/galleries/China1997/index.html

Jalbum 24.1. If I cannot reproduce old albums, my first idea would be the last thing I would want to do is update anything... Unless of course recommended to do so by people who think it might fix this problem...

Those albums were created with jAlbum and Photoblogger versions that qualify as "archeology." In the IT world, seven years is an epoch.

The reason for the failing images in the Bangkok folder is difficult to sort out - the slide images are present, but can't be retrieved. Perhaps Laza can sort it out. Alas, there is no lifeboat file included with the album, so we can't even examine the project settings.

There are also problems with calls to resources. Browsers have become much more strict about mixing secure (https) and non-secure (http) content. That old version of Photoblogger predates the time when the browsers started tightening the screws, so the browser is now refusing to fetch the Google fonts - it's trying to load a Google font with a non-secure link. The current versions of pretty much all active skins are coded to avoid this problem.

The skin has been completely rewritten several times since then, so you will never be able to recreate, pixel-for-pixel, the appearance of the older albums. This illustrates the hazard of settling on a design and then trying to stick to it for years. The world changes.

I'll move this to the Photoblogger forum section, where Laza will see it.

OK. I cannot create a new album that looks like my old albums. I put a couple of photos in a new project and set it to photoblogger dark, then copied the settings from the gallery that I linked below. What I got looks nothing at all like this album and looks like what I get from my attempt to recreate the problem album.

So I need to know how to use old settings to make more albums like my old ones. There are thousands of settings! I did it years ago and have no idea what I did... Thinking the settings were safe in the .jap file.

So the problem with the large images showing up is not my problem. My problem is I can no longer make a gallery like the ones that I have. I can't be sure, but I doubt I upgraded anything since I worked on a gallery.

I see the .jap file is text so presumably I could figure out settings from it? The file has 269 lines in it... And with a new version of photoblogger, or even the old one, could I figure out what to do with these settings?

Another complication is it probably was not this computer that I built these on... I used PCMover to move everything from my old computer to this one. I could reinstall jalbum if that could have anything to do with this problem...

I'm going to now go have a good cry...

https://nichollsfamily.us/galleries/Danube1999/index.html

Edited by: nichollsphoto on 22 Aug 2023, 01:49

Looks to me like I want a Photoblogger before 2.0, which was a "complete rework of the skin" and has warnings... I made some of the galleries in 2021, but I am generally reluctant to upgrade working things. I made a mistake and upgraded to 3.29.1. I see I knew there were problems, but did not pay enough attention, and just fixed a couple of things that went wrong.

Looks like I want 1.9.7, Aug 3, 2018.