This is where I put other bits and pieces to do with 360 production. I’ll sort out something more permanent later; for now it’s just a bit of a list and links to different things…

Exif Fixer Tricks

This is a list (currently very short) of things that can be done with Exif Fixer – specifically the standalone app that runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.

Unzip on server (download link)

Uploading 360 virtual tours to web sites can take a LONG time, especially when the tour creation software generates thousands of tiny files. Each file transfer includes some communications overhead that happens behind the scenes, and that means many tiny files can take MUCH longer to upload than a single file of the same size.

  1. Put this PHP file into the directory (folder) where you want your tour
  2. Compress the tour into a zip archive
  3. Upload the zip archive to the same location as the PHP file
  4. Visit the PHP page in your browser

Your zip will be expanded into the same place on your server. You may want to move the files out of their own folder and delete the original zip file. If you compressed the zip on a Mac you may also need to delete the ‘__MACOSX’ folder and any stray ‘.DS_Store’ files that appear in non-Mac systems. Those are entirely unnecessary and can be removed in complete safety.

Password protect a web page (download link)

Sometimes it is necessary to password protect a web page. There are different ways to achieve this, but PHP is a good option and very secure.

This file needs to be edited in a text editor. Your choice of password needs to be entered in two places, and the entire code of the file you wish to protect must be copy-pasted in where indicated. If you want an image in the page background then change the placeholder name with your image.

IMPORTANT: make sure this file is called index.php. Either rename or delete any file called index.html or index.htm, or it will be served instead of this one.

All these things are free to use, but any tips help offset the cost of my software tools, time and hosting and really are gratefully received. You don't need a PayPal account to use this donation button:

Many thanks to everyone who has tipped me! It has directly helped support the development of this app and service and I really appreciate it.