NextGen Gallery, share gallery in Multisite, use same SQL tables?

I’ve spent the past 8 work hours trying to find an answer to this problem and tried various solutions, but I cant’t seem to find a good solution – so even though I hate doing it, I have to ask for more specifically for help. =[

Anyway, I’m currently building a multi-lingal WordPress-based site using a Multisite WordPress installation for a client as part of my education (oh yay, multisites, I know people love that =] ).

Now, my client uses a lot of image material to promote his work, so I’d like to enable him to share galleries across the different subsites in the network to reduce the amount of server space used, and the amount of work he’s required to do to maintain the site in the future (he’s going to handle the day to day administration on his own).

Basically the multisite is currently setup on the format: “www.subdomain.domainname.com” with each subsite/blog mapped to the subdomains using the WordPress MU Domain Mapping and everything seems to work fine so far.

I’ve installed the latest version of NextGen gallery through my Network admin panel and specified the gallery path in Adminpanel -> Gallery -> Network Settings to “wp-content/gallery/”. I’ve also double checked on the individual subsites, that this setup also holds true there, which it does.

As far as I understand, this setup should make all the subsites put uploaded image files and so on into that folder and, from my testing, it seems to work as it is supposed to.

Now, the problem is, of course, that the subsites don’t actully share galleries at the moment. This makes sense, as their available content is governed by their respective database tables in mySQL:

• 1clk_xxxxxxxxxxxx_wp_Y_ngg_pictures
• 1clk_xxxxxxxxxxxx_wp_Y_ngg_gallery
• 1clk_xxxxxxxxxxxx_wp_Y_ngg_album

Well at least on my mySQL Database every site has such a series of tables! “Y” is the ID of the corresponding site.

Anyway, I’ve checked the corresponding “Ngg_gallery” tables of the different subsites in my mySQL Database after creating a couple of new galleries from the different subsites and, lo and behold, the tables are actually populated correctly.

However, as each site reads its own set of Ngg_tables, it only has those galleries available.

So my question is, how would I go about sharing the galleries between the subsites?

As far as I can tell, the fundamental issue is that the subsites don’t share tables in the database, and as such cannot “see” what galleries their neighbours “own”.

Now, I figure you could go about making all the subsites read and write to the same mySQL tables through altering the PhP code for reading and writing to the database, but I’m pretty sure that would be like installing the equivalent of a timebomb in the system, as any NextGen update would overwrite that change.

So, does anyone know of a sneaky solution to solve this problem, or am I up a certain creek without a paddle?

Regards,
Kristian.

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

– – – – Tech stuff – – – –
WordPress up to date: YES
NextGEN up to date: YES
MySQL up to date (5.2.4): YES
PHP up to date (5.0): Host runs PHP 5.2 afaik
The mod_rewrite Apache module activated: YES
PHP Safe Mode OFF: NO

Who are you hosted with: https://www.Unoeuro.com
What theme are you running: Twenty Twelve
Which plugins do you have installed and activated:

NextGEN Gallery Version 1.9.10
WordPress MU Domain Mapping Version 0.5.4.2

Does this error still occur if you switch your theme to the WP default, and deactivate all plugins except NextGEN Gallery?

Yep, no change.

The issue persists as with default WP theme and I cannot deactivate MU Domain Mapping, as that is the backbone of my domain based multisite.