This question may come up in the following scenarios:
- You are a Web designer who creates galleries others, and you need to send completed galleries to someone else
- You bought a new computer to replace your old one, so you need to move the Shozam program, the galleries and your images to your new computer
- You use a desktop computer and a laptop; you may want to use both to operate on the same gallery online
There are a number of solutions for each of the scenarios above. To determine what is right for you, it is best to understand how Shozam works. All the input you enter in Shozam when you create a gallery is captured and stored in a gallery project file named WebGallery.xml. This file is created by Shozam in the root of your gallery folder, which by default looks like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Shozam Galleries\[Gallery Title]/WebGallery.xml
This xml file includes the paths of all the images you add to your gallery, image captions, album descriptions and all other options and settings that you enter in the program when you create your gallery. The xml file is created the first time you generate the gallery and is updated each time you modify your gallery. In Step 1, if you choose to modify an existing gallery, you basically need to point Shozam to the folder that contains the existing gallery. The program then looks for the xml file and needs to be able to validate it and read it in order for you to be able to advance to the next step and modify your gallery.
The xml file contains several important references which need to be correct in order for the program to validate it as a Shozam gallery project file. You can open this file in Notepad and see some of those references. Here is an example of the pertinent information which can be found in the xml file (additional information in the file that is not relevant for this discussion has been removed):
<data version="1.1.0.19">
<WebInfo>
<Folder>C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Shozam Galleries</Folder>
<Theme>0</Theme>
<GenAdvOpt>0</GenAdvOpt>
<AlbumNameSeed>1</AlbumNameSeed>
<ThemeFolder>C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Shozam Themes\[Custom Theme Name]</ThemeFolder>
<ThemeName>[Custom Theme Name]</ThemeName>
<WebName>[Gallery Title]</WebName>
</WebInfo>
<album>
<info>
<albumpage>1</albumpage>
<albumimagepath>C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Pictures\8957ae.jpg</albumimagepath>
</info>
<group>
<picture>
<name>C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Pictures\8957ae.jpg</name>
</picture>
<picture>
<name>C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Pictures\B2_07.jpg</name>
</picture>
<picture>
<name>C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Pictures\B2_03.jpg</name>
</picture>
<picture>
<name>C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\My Documents\My Pictures\B2_04.jpg</name>
</picture>
</group>
</album>
</data>
NOTE: As a convention, we are placing variables in square brackets and italics; so, for example, when you see [User Name] in a path above and the name for your Windows user account is John Doe, then you should have that name instead. So your My Documents folder path will be C:\Documents and Settings\John Doe\My Documents
As you can see highlighted above, the xml file contains references to the folder containing the gallery folder, the folder containing the custom theme (if a custom theme is used) and the paths for each image used. For Shozam to be able to open and edit an existing gallery, it needs to ensure that at least the first two are valid.
So, if you want to be able to edit on a new computer a gallery that was generated using an old computer, here are the general steps you should take:
- Install Shozam on the new computer.
- Copy the gallery(ies) from the old computer to the same relative location on the new computer; so if the gallery files resided in My Documents\My Shozam Galleries\[Gallery Title] , copy the [Gallery Title] folder and paste it in My Documents\My Shozam Galleries on your new computer. If the new computer is used by another user, then you will need to edit the xml file and replace [User Name] with the correct one.
- Copy the custom theme(s) from the old computer to the same relative location on the new computer; so if your themes resided in My Documents\My Shozam Galleries Themes\[Custom Theme Name], copy the whole My Shozam Themes folder (or just the themes you want) and paste it in the same relative location on your new computer. As above, make sure the new path is the same as the old path and if not, edit the xml file accordingly.
- Do the same for all images. Note that this is optional. It is not critical for Shozam to find the original images at the location from where they were originally added into the program (and captured in the xml file.) This is because if Shozam does not find the original at that location, it will then use the image it has previously generated and that is already part of the gallery files. However, it is important to understand that if the program does not find the original images, it will not be able to perform certain functions such as change the level of compression or place watermarks on the images. All image processing features require the program to be able to access the "original" images, at the location from where they were originally added from.
This content was also posted in the FAQ section of the Shozam Online Help:
http://www.helpconsole.com/Shozam/default.aspx?page=FAQs2.aspx