SJ77

I think you've hit the nail on the head! This is exactly how it should work in my opinion. you're really great with process,  WELL DONE!! 
However, reading into what Lindy had to say, it seems he's concerned about private forums and forums with permissions to only specific groups. He cites "Mental Health". Suppose one of these sites have clients providing sensitive uploads to private forums. (for example a domestic violence site, user submits photos of injury). These users wouldn't want their private domestic violence photos view-able to the entire community on display in the gallery. Do you have a solve for this? Like maybe a check box on upload... "do not show in gallery"? Or maybe images have source forum ID connected such that gallery could respect forum permissions?
Interested in hearing your ideas.

I think you've hit the nail on the head! This is exactly how it should work in my opinion. you're really great with process,  WELL DONE!! 
However, reading into what Lindy had to say, it seems he's concerned about private forums and forums with permissions to only specific groups. He cites "Mental Health". Suppose one of these sites have clients providing sensitive uploads to private forums. (for example a domestic violence site, user submits photos of injury). These users wouldn't want their private domestic violence photos view-able to the entire community on display in the gallery. Do you have a solve for this? Like maybe a check box on upload... "do not show in gallery"? Or maybe images have source forum ID connected such that gallery could respect forum permissions?
Interested in hearing your ideas.

Yes, good point. Something like:
Choose files (upload image) >> "Publish images to this post only or to this post and your Gallery"
This is also good to have for one-off memes or funny images you don't need to be in your Gallery.
I think permissions would be too messy, I think it would be best to be user selection. Since I suggested they should not be able to be deleted from the Gallery since they are linked to content, what could happen is, they could remove from view if needed, or "delete" from Gallery but it did not remove it from the content. So you could go through your albums and be like "mmm I don't want that image in my album" (click), gone, but still attached to the content unless I actually go there and remove it.
Great ideas flowing........

I have a forum where that would actually be the case. How about if you could link the uploads of a forum to a particular category or album in the gallery (as a forum setting), so that you can set the appropriate permissions there?
I would like to force the images into the gallery, because I feel that is the appropriate area to have them, so I would disable or hide option to not link the image to the gallery. 
By the way, can't a user set the permissions in its gallery itself?

I think you've hit the nail on the head! This is exactly how it should work in my opinion. you're really great with process,  WELL DONE!! 
However, reading into what Lindy had to say, it seems he's concerned about private forums and forums with permissions to only specific groups. He cites "Mental Health". Suppose one of these sites have clients providing sensitive uploads to private forums. (for example a domestic violence site, user submits photos of injury). These users wouldn't want their private domestic violence photos view-able to the entire community on display in the gallery. Do you have a solve for this? Like maybe a check box on upload... "do not show in gallery"? Or maybe images have source forum ID connected such that gallery could respect forum permissions?
Interested in hearing your ideas.

It's about being able to see the "images" in one place, and an attachment is an image, and a Gallery is a viewing app.
If a member is always posting food pics in the forum there should be a place to see all those images. If that user had a Food album in Gallery, and when composing his forum post, clicked: Upload images >> Select an album? >> Food, that would be genius. If no selection, it would go to the generic Apps folder in Gallery. Only those with the Gallery app would see the selector, otherwise the images are stored in the backend app folder as discussed above, and enabled if they ever purchase Gallery.
Essentially attachments are treated as a different animal, but there is no reason they should not be treated the same as Gallery images. And with social media, users expect to see the app images in the Gallery in some sort of way, even if it is simply an Apps album.

Would be nice to close the gap.
Members use attachments for posts and Gallery for images usually not associated with written content. Why not tie them all together? Some of the best images are on the forum in topics, or in status updates, or in...
Say...
A member uploads images using attachments. If a member has Gallery, these images are stored (or viewed/mirrored) in a special "Apps" album, or even the name of the app it was uploaded to; "Status Updates" album. The image notes where it is attached with a link so the member can check the content out, like "chevy_impala77.jpg is attached to: These are my rides topic." (Notice the cross promotion of apps and content. Possibly even a blurb.) Since these are post attachments they are protected from deletion on the Gallery side, to avoid mistake deletions in posts. When a member goes to Gallery to browse a user's images, now they are all in one place, and they can browse these albums. You could also allow these images to move album to album (or be able to create sub-albums within) as long as they carried the delete protection and attachment info (link), but if you saw a bunch of "Chevy" images in your "Forums" album, you could move them to a Chevy album. Possibly even have a gallery album selector in the editor for attachments so when posting you select where the images go. So to the default app album or one you select. Album creation would not be good here but being able to select an album would be great as well. Similar to Facebook. You upload directly to the timeline with a status and image or with an image to an album, but you don't have to scroll the timeline to see a user's timeline images, you can go directly to the Timeline Photos album in Photos, where all the albums are. In FB you can also move a timeline album image to another album and the post is not disrupted. Exactly what I posted above. Would be nice!
If the disconnect is because Gallery is a paid app and not core, the solution for IPS could be, the app albums are simply storage folders created in the backend same as is done now. If a user buys Gallery those folders are simply visible in Gallery as albums, through making them Gallery albums or mapping or however they would do that, but the functionality would be within core.
But yes, would love to see integration, there's too much of a disconnect here.
Thanks!

I think these two posts above summarize quite well and in good detail how I would think the integration would be done elegantly. 
+1 (or more if I could give more )

There are many things I dislike about Vbulletin but one thing they do very elegantly is deal with this very issue.
If a user uploads images to the forum they are stored in a "forum" album (which is auto created). The album is then in the users gallery (under a media tab)
 It's fantastic integration and beautifully executed
 





.

There are many things I dislike about Vbulletin but one thing they do very elegantly is deal with this very issue.
If a user uploads images to the forum they are stored in a "forum" album (which is auto created). The album is then in the users gallery (under a media tab)
 It's fantastic integration and beautifully executed
 





.

Just how many topics are we taking about? I had a "post as video" option in the IPB 3.4 version that allows members to extract a media url from a post and add it into the Videos app. I could look at re-adding this in the next few versions if you don't mind going through each topic/post 1 at a time. I like the idea of some kind of importer but would probably be something I'd look at in the medium to long term.

I've been debating how to respond to this paragraph for 3 weeks, since the integration / fragmentation between IP.Board and IP.Gallery is truly a perplexing problem for me.  You bring up some questions that I'd like to address, even if I can only begin to scratch the surface.
For my particular community, I genuinely don't have a good reason as to why I still use image-only forums AND still offer IP.Gallery.  I actually have duplicate content areas for TWO subjects in both IP.Board and IP.Gallery (yes, it drives me crazy), and it really just depends upon the uploader where he wants to be (which is why I'm a fan of seamless integration either direction to show media).  
Some general observations, in no particular order:
In general, the forum tends to be the main 'hang out' area with more activity, so it makes sense to offer space there first.  You just don't get the same feeling of 'activity' in IP.Gallery, so members are naturally more attracted to the forums.   Viewing gallery images is more of a solo activity. Forums are great for progressing image topics. where new updates are posted in new replies. Galleries are great for a curated showcase.    My personal difficulty with the enormity of this question - how to consume, view, and share content in a multi-app platform - is how you can change your interaction with the same content through multiple perspectives.  For example, you can interact by publishing module:
IP.Board -- with categories to publish about Content A, Content B IP.Gallery -- with categories to publish about Content A, Content B It's equally valid to interact by theme:
Content A -- with permission to publish to IP.Board, IP.Gallery Content B -- with permission to publish to IP.Board, IP.Gallery  
Ultimately though, I decided a long time ago I shouldn't force my members to choose one app or the other.  IP.Board and IP.Gallery both equally valid places to upload, since they can both still serve the fundamental purpose of being an image container.   

A new version has been uploaded to the Marketplace. It contains a fix for this issue.

Yes, I will add it in the next version.

I've just installed the gallery app to see how this could work out for my forums. I have a lot of topics that are 'what did you eat today' or 'show your new purchases' in which members post pictures. Asking them to first upload that to a gallery, then go back to the topic and insert it as an image is just too much hassle if you look at it from a user perspective. Of course as admins, we would want them to do that, but reality is that people are used to post image links or just add a photo from their smart phone and dump it in a topic.
I would really like to be able to curate this content (even have a setting that would allow me to download images from external links and add them to my own media database). For instance to be able to display a masonry grid with all images posted in the forum. Showing off this content is a great visual and appealing way to show off forum content, which may then again drive visitors etc.
I am not sure whether the gallery app in its current form is the way to go for me (at least, I do not see the use case), now that the forum topics are really used as the content container.
I think this is a great topic, looking forward to hear your views on gallery / image content curation and the forum software.

THIS!!! well stated. I am concerned about fractured content but especially images. Although, as aforementioned, VBulletin has solved for this issue.

To answer your question my specific situation goes back to the old yahoo groups before there even was any real "forum" software. You see, we've had our community evolve through 4 different versions now going back to 1999. First it was phpbb to replace yahoo groups. Well, we setup picture forums as there was no Gallery as part of that package. We converted to SMF (7 years ago)  which had a gallery via MOD but it wasn't as solid as we liked and our community was already locked into forums as a way of life. 
Now that we have IPS which comes with a really fantastic gallery, I talked it over with my mods and we are really torn up about the right approach. We know our users will still want to use the forums but we think the gallery has a lot of potential. We like picture forums because posts with pictures foster a threaded conversation about the respective pictures. This we like. However, the gallery has a lot of added functionality. As it is now our forums are centered around pictures but we want to use gallery and can't figure out how to smoothly marry the two. We want to easily find all the image content someone has posted to the website without having to search for fragmented content in two different apps.

Hi Lindy,
Let me just say I am always REALLY impressed with how good you are with customer service. I love that you take time to interact with us and you have a great amount of patience in doing so. Thank you
With that being said, I don't claim to have the perfect solution to the issue of fragmented content between apps. Let me just clearly set up the issue in my personal situation and go from there.
I have a site that has been run as an image board for 7 years. We have forums designated specifically for posting pictures. The majority of my forums are focused around created threads filled with pictures. Forums such as "pictures of you" etc.  In this forum a user will start a thread about themselves and add picture updates whenever they like.
Now that I've added gallery to the mix users are asking often "Where should I post images, in the thread or in the gallery?"
Furthermore suppose I think Sally is a really great user and I want to see all of the images she has added to our website I go to her profile and I can only easily find content she's posted to gallery. Any images she's posted to the forums is near impossible to find without drudging through each topic and post.
So my solution is NOT to duplicate images. My solution is that when content (images) are uploaded to the forums they are stored in a special album in gallery.
This is the facebook solution already! If on facebook I post an image to my timeline, 6 months later I can find it in my "images posted to timeline" album in my facebook photos gallery. Essentially all images uploaded to MY IPS site should be collected in the gallery where they can be reviewed by other users. An image uploaded to my site should be one piece of integrated content that can be viewed in any app (forum or gallery).  I don't want to have to hunt down images in each specific app.
Does that help?
 

Hello,
I added a setting "Show attach size"

Edit: i've finally put custom icon in entire website (forum and database). But, instead to put entire code in custom.css, i've used this structure for pages:

+

 
and code in custom.css just for forum icon.
this preserve to put unuseful css when not required
 

Edit: this work in forum:
[data-forumid="1"] .fa::before {content:"\f1ea";} /* news icon forum id=1 */ and this in pages database:
[data-categoryid="1"] .fa::before {content:"\f121";} /* code icon database id=1 */  
U can choose icons from here: https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/
and copy "Unicode" format (+ a backslash).
 
thats is all (i've put all in custom.css)
 

Agree with both. Not happy with those buttons too. Maybe a more modern layout would be good there.

I think this is the right way: http://www.screencast.com/t/BLMN9oaa
Is that OK ?

fast and helpful support! That did the trick, you rock! Thank you
oh one more question.. is there anyway to have it used the most recent thumbnail in thread (from most recent post in thread) as the representative image? Right now it's using the first image in the first post in the thread. @onlyME

To answer your question my specific situation goes back to the old yahoo groups before there even was any real "forum" software. You see, we've had our community evolve through 4 different versions now going back to 1999. First it was phpbb to replace yahoo groups. Well, we setup picture forums as there was no Gallery as part of that package. We converted to SMF (7 years ago)  which had a gallery via MOD but it wasn't as solid as we liked and our community was already locked into forums as a way of life. 
Now that we have IPS which comes with a really fantastic gallery, I talked it over with my mods and we are really torn up about the right approach. We know our users will still want to use the forums but we think the gallery has a lot of potential. We like picture forums because posts with pictures foster a threaded conversation about the respective pictures. This we like. However, the gallery has a lot of added functionality. As it is now our forums are centered around pictures but we want to use gallery and can't figure out how to smoothly marry the two. We want to easily find all the image content someone has posted to the website without having to search for fragmented content in two different apps.