History overview
Its not easy to gather all facts correctly as the first developers are not available. So the following was determined by Thomas Finnern in the files or told from lately active developers.
- 2001 Ronald Smit started the creation of rsgallery for mambo around 2001. Therefore the first gallery is called rsgallery.
- 2005.08.18 Creation of Joomla 1.0
- RSgalery was ready to move too as it had already a good version
- 2005.08.17 Daniël Tulp, Jonah Braun, Ronald Smit, Tomislav Ribicic started the second version of rsgallery2
- ...
- 2008.01.22 Creation of Joomla 1.5
- 2005 - 2010 Owning Domain RSGallery2.net with forum
- 2012.01.24 Creation of Joomla 2.5
- This was a major change with new structures and code breaks.
- There were a lot of "futuristic" functions in the RSGallery2 code like "user templates to load" so when the new Joomla 2.5 structure was introduced It was very hard to upgrade to the new structure
- Therefore some developers left
- 2012-2014 The RSGallery2 Code was adjusted to run under new version 2.5 but no real development was done.
- 2015 Start of redevelop of RSGallery in 3.X style
- 2017 Backend nearly finished
- 2018 Introduction of Drag and drop upload
Old RSGallery2 logo
The beginning
Ronald Smit started the creation of rsgallery for mambo around 2001. Therefor is is called rsgallery.
He hints in 2004 that his relationship with rsgallery is three years so it started all in 2001. The oldest copyright inside the actual files is from 2003.
Mambo is the predessor to Joomla! see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_(software) started in 2000 and published as open source in 2001. After a disagreement with the open source developers it was forked in 2005 and named Joomla with Version 1.0.
For mambo there are only modules or plugins to be found. The german web site http://www.joomlaos.de/ has still some download files from the mambo times. There are plugins and modules but no original download. This leads to the assumption that RSGallery (without a 2 ) could be directly downloaded on his web page http://rsdev.nl
In 2005 Daniël Tulp, Jonah Braun, Ronald Smit, Tomislav Ribicic started the second version of rsgallery2. If it was a fork or in consent with Ronald Smit is not clear. From 2006 he is again in the development with the others.
Surprisingly the changelog tells following story
+ major reorganization of code
Greetings from founder Ronald Smit
The founder of RSgallery2 is normally not reachable.
In January of 2019 surprisingly he left following message in RSGallery2 forum.
Hi guys,
It is great to see the work I started over 15 years ago is still alive.
I had a great time building the original RSGallery so to I did not expect to find this project, nor that my account would still be accessible!
I just wanted to say hi and good luck on further developing RSGallery2!
Cheers,
Ronald
Link to message in http://www.forum.rsgallery2.org
So it's definitely true that everything started in 2003, and yet it can be expected that 2001 can be a valid first launch date
The website RSGallery2.net
Logo of RSGallery2.net page
RSGallery2.net: Long time web page for RSGallery2 (see excerpt below). Sadly not paid for in 2010 and catched by a web page hunter and still owned by one.
It hosted a big forum using SMF 1.1.7
Links to this page were widely used in books, referenced in forums and inside the code itself. Sadly after it was not renewed or someone captured (We don't know yet) the URL was used to generate money with content not related to RSGallery2 at all. When we tried to retain the web URL the site was worth more than 1000 dollar. Actually it is hosted by godaddy but the actual claim (amount of money) to sell is unclear.
Last known change is from 14. July 2010
Jonah Braun hosted the Udomain RSGallery2.net with
Creation Date: 2005-08-22 18:04:10 Expiration Date: 2010-08-22 00:00:00
until 2010-09-24 where it "petered" out
2010-09-28 REGISTRAR STATUS: EXPIRED, PENDING DELETE
2010-09-28 Protected Domain Services Customer ID: NCP-148293543
2010-11-27 Protected Domain Services Customer ID: NCR-2872671
Book reviews
Books listed were found in the internet or bought.
There may be more to be found
Mastering Mambo from Tobias Hauser, Christian Wenz
The RSGallery project is one of the most frequently downloaded Mambo projects. On one hand , this is due to the quality of this project maintained by Ronald Smit, on the other hand, because of the tremendous popularity of picture galleries
Professional Joomla! from Dan Rahmel (2007)
https://de.scribd.com/document/60530856/Joomla
The RSGallery2 extension is the most highly rated native gallery extension and is very rich in features.
It provides professional gallery and image management, integrated access control with Joomla’s user
The RSGallery2 extension (see Figure4-21) is written for native-Joomla execution. The rendered HTML
and CSS are standards-compliant. It also has complete support of Joomfish for language display. It can
even manage Flash content!registration system, and availability in almost two dozen languages.
Beginning Joomla! Website Development from Cory Webb (2009)
https://books.google.de/books?id=s4GCT31_RHQC&pg=PA106&dq=RSGallery2&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwju0efbiKHcAhUMEpoKHXP4DDwQ6AEIMzAC
RSGallery2 is a full-featured photo gallery component for
Joomla!. It enables photo uploads, batch uploads (uploading
more than one photo at once), automatic thumbnail creation,
user albums, front-end display templates, and more.
With the front-end display templates, you have unlimited
options for how your photos are displayed. You can have a basic
gallery/album layout, a MooTools-powered slideshow, a Flash
slideshow, or any other display option you can come up with.
You are limited only by skill and creativity. The component is
actively developed and supported by a team of volunteers who
are passionate about developing open source software.
You can find out more about RSGallery2 at http: / /www
.rsgallery2.net.
Mastering Mambo: E-Commerce, Templates, Module Development, Seo, Security .. from Christian Wenz, Tobias Hauser (2005)
The RSGallery2 project is one of the most frequently downloaded Mambo projects. One one hand it is due to the quality of this project maintained by Ronald Smith, on the other hand, because of the tremendous popularity of picture galleries
Joomla! 1.5 SEO from Herbert-Jan van Dinther (2009)
Praxiswissen Joomla! from Tim Schürmann (2008)
Joomla!-Websites erweitern und optimieren from Tim Schürmann (2009)
Links to youtube videos (J! 1.5)
Joomla 1.5 Tutorial How to Upload and Edit Photos in RSGallery2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgzJ_HJb_jQ&t=97s
Joomla Galerie erstellen ABC deutsch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unA0bi0-xm0
To be continued
The story doesn't end here and all haven't be told yet ....
