Crowning winners & handing out prizes

Winner mode freezes your event’s standing at a point in time and crowns winners from it. Without freezing, the result would keep changing later – when guests delete photos, for example. On the winners page you freeze the standing, see the ranked guests per category including their redemption code, and mark every prize you have handed out.

First: how to find the page

Winners sits in the sidebar – as a follow-up page under Tasks & Points.

In the sidebar, in the Gallery group, click Tasks & Points.
The entry unfolds: below its three tabs sit the follow-up pages Real Rewards and Winners.
Choose Winners.

Sidebar with the Winners entry highlighted under Tasks and Points — ① **Winners** hangs below **Tasks & Points** as a follow-up page – together with **Real Rewards**. Both only unfold once you are inside that area.

There are three more routes:

From the settings: in Settings ▸ Gallery features ▸ Joining in & points, the Leaderboard card carries the link Manage winners, freeze the standing and hand out prizes below the Winner mode tick box.
Global search: the magnifying glass at the top of the admin area, searching for “winner”, “freeze” or “prize” – the Winners hit jumps straight to the page.
Direct path: /admin/gallery/leaderboard-winners inside the admin area. Ideal as a bookmark for the award ceremony.

With the mode switched on and the standing frozen, the page looks like this:

Winners page with the Winners block, the Verify code field and the Points standings table — The page has three blocks: ① **Winners** – the state of the competition, frozen here, with the **Re-open the competition** button. ② **Verify code** – this is where you type a guest's code when handing over a prize; the block only appears once the standing is frozen. ③ One table per scoring category, **Points** here.

Step 1 – Setting up winner mode

Everything that follows lives in the settings under Gallery features → Joining in & points → Leaderboard → Winner mode. The section used to be called “Gamification”; the settings themselves are unchanged.

Joining in and points section with photo challenges, achievements, points system and leaderboard — Winner mode sits as a sub-area inside the **Leaderboard** card – further down this page, in the **Joining in & points** group. ① the tab row, with **Gallery features** open, ② **Disable All** and **Enable All** flip every feature at once, ③ a group header with its counter **4 of 4 active** – one click folds the group open or shut; below it every feature has its own switch, ④ nothing takes effect until **Save Changes** at the bottom (**Save** on a phone).

Ticking the box

The Winner mode tick box inside the Leaderboard card with its explanatory text — ① The **Winner mode** tick box inside the **Leaderboard** card. The text below states the reason: “Freezes the standing at a point in time and crowns winners. Without freezing, the result would keep changing later when guests delete photos.” Only after ticking it do the fields of the next three sections unfold.

Freeze the standing on

The two modes Fixed moment and Relative to the event date with the date field below — ① The two modes **Fixed moment** and **Relative to the event date** – one click switches between them. ② The field below follows suit: a date and time field for the fixed moment, a dropdown such as **1 day after** plus a time for the relative one.

There are two modes:

Fixed moment – a date and time field. Leave it empty and nothing happens automatically; you then freeze manually at the award ceremony. The hint below it explicitly advises against midnight: photos uploaded just before it only finish processing afterwards.
Relative to the event date – a dropdown with five options: on the event day, 1 day after, 2 days after, 3 days after or 1 week after, plus at and a time field. This moment moves along automatically when you change the event date. Photogala takes the timezone from your device and shows it in the hint text.

Scoring categories

Every selected category gets its own winners. The same thirteen rankings as on the leaderboard are available: Points, Likes Received, Achievements, Likes Given, Tasks Completed, Unique Tasks, Images Uploaded, Shares, Downloads, Views Given, Views Received, Comments and Comments Received.

Categories whose underlying feature is off are greyed out – Points needs the points system, Achievements needs achievements, Likes Given needs likes, and both task categories need photo challenges.
The list can’t be emptied completely: remove the last category and the selection falls back to Points.
Several categories usually feel better at an event than a single champion – that way different guests win something.

Places per category and organizers

The Exclude organizers tick box and below it the Places per category number field showing 3 — ① **Exclude organizers (otherwise you win your own party)** – on by default. ② **Places per category**, 3 here: that many places receive a prize and therefore a code.

The number field ranges from 1 to 10 and is preset to 3.

Leave Exclude organizers on if you upload a lot yourself as a host – otherwise you end up on your own podium.

Step 2 – Freezing the standing

At the top of the winners page sits the Winners block with the current state.

The Winners block with the running competition hint and the Freeze now button — While the competition runs: “The competition is still running. Freeze it when the winners should be final — later uploads or deletions won't change anything after that.” ① **Freeze now** records the standing of this very second.

If a moment is configured as well, it appears as a line below:

The Scheduled for line with date and time below the Freeze now button — **Scheduled for 27/02/2027, 22:00:00** – the moment configured in the settings. **Freeze now** stays next to it: you can always pull the freeze forward.

After freezing, the text changes to “The standing is frozen. Guests see the final result instead of the live leaderboard.”, and the button reads Re-open the competition.

If freezing doesn’t work, the message “Nobody has scored in the selected categories yet.” appears. Then the data is simply missing: only once somebody is ranked in at least one selected category can a result be recorded.

Reading the winners table

Below the freeze buttons, every scoring category gets its own block: a heading with the category name, below it As of with the freeze date and a line along the lines of “3 of 7 ranked guests win (top 3)”.

The standings table with the Code and Status columns and the action column highlighted — The table has six columns. **Place**, **Guest** and **Value** on the left, and on the right: ① **Code** – the six-digit redemption code, ② **Status**, ③ the unlabelled action column carrying **Remove** or **Put back**.

Place – the ranking. Removed people show a dash here.
Guest – the display name; without one it reads Anonymous. If the person voluntarily left their real name while collecting, it appears in small type underneath – “Sarah M.” below LinsenInspiration1480 in the shot above.
Value – the frozen number for that category.
Code – the six-digit redemption code in the format XXX-XXX. Only winners have a code; every other row shows a dash.
Status – open, collected or handed out.
Action – the button at the end of the row, see Removing winners.

The three statuses

Three table rows showing the statuses handed out, collected and open — ① **handed out** (green, with a tick) – you verified the code, the prize is gone. ② **collected** – the person has shown themselves their code in the app but hasn't received the prize yet. ③ **open** – nothing has happened so far.

The status is pure documentation for your side: it locks nothing, it records what is already done – handy when several people staff the prize desk.

All places instead of just the podium

By default you only see the winners. The link Show all N places below the table unfolds the complete standing, Show winners only folds it back. Removed people always stay visible so you can put them back.

Winners table with all seven places, places four to seven without a code — The same table after **Show all 7 places**: places 1 to 3 carry a code, every row below shows a dash – they win nothing but still see where they landed. ① The link now reads **Show winners only** and folds the list back up.

Several categories

If you picked more than one scoring category in the settings, each gets its own table below the other – with its own podium, its own codes and its own statuses.

Two tables below each other, Points and Images Uploaded, each with its own winners — Two categories: **Points** with seven ranked guests and **Images Uploaded** with five below it. The winners differ – which is exactly the point of several categories.

Handing out a prize – verifying the code

As soon as the standing is frozen, the Verify code block appears. The flow mirrors the one for real rewards on achievements.

The Verify code field with a code typed in and the Verify button — ① The code field with **664-208** typed in – in this shot it belongs to BlitzFanatiker5087 in place 3, status **open**. ② One click on **Verify** flips that row to **handed out**.

The guest shows you a six-digit code on their device (displayed as XXX-XXX).
Type the digits into the field. The field adds the dash itself; typing it makes no difference.
Click Verify.
On success Photogala reports “Prize marked as handed out.” – the status in the table flips to handed out. If the prize had been verified before, you get “This prize has already been handed out.” instead.
If the code matches nobody, “No winner found for this code.” appears. The most common reasons: a typo, or the code comes from a standing that has been re-opened in the meantime.

Removing and putting back winners

At the end of every row sits a button:

Remove takes the person out of the standing. Everyone below moves up – place 4 becomes place 3, and whoever slides onto the podium gets a code of their own.
Put back undoes that. Removed rows stay in the table, greyed out, so you can find them again.

Table with one removed, greyed-out row and the Put back button — ① **Remove** at the end of every row. ② This is what a removed person looks like: the row stays, greyed out, with a dash for **Place**, **Code** and **Status**, and the button now reads **Put back**. Below it BlitzFanatiker5087 has moved up from place 3 to place 2 and PrismenProfi1034 into place 3 – with a fresh code, **118-540**.

Typical cases: a device profile or a team member ended up in the standing after all, or somebody obviously gamed it.

Re-opening the competition

The Re-open the competition button lifts the freeze. It asks first.

Confirmation before re-opening with the buttons Yes discard the result and Cancel — The confirmation spells out the consequence: “The codes handed out so far will stop working.” ① **Yes, discard the result** (red) restarts the competition, ② **Cancel** leaves everything as it is.

After re-opening, the competition runs on as normal and you can freeze again later – with fresh codes.

What your guests see

The moment you freeze, every open device gets the notice The result is in with the text “The competition has ended — take a look at the winners!”. From then on the leaderboard page no longer shows the live ranking but the final result.

Leaderboard page from a guest's side headed by the final result and the podium — The guest view after freezing: **The final result is in**, below it **Standing frozen on 27/02/2027, 22:45:00**, the winners with their trophies and, at the very bottom, the **Other places** section.

With more than one scoring category, they appear as a chip row above the list:

Chip row with Points and Images Uploaded above the winners list — ① The chip row. Every chip carries the final result of its category – guests tap to switch between **Points** and **Images Uploaded**.

Whoever won additionally sees a card of their own:

You won card with the placement and the Collect prize button — The **You won!** card names the place and the category (“Place 2 — Points”). ① **Collect prize** opens the dialog with the code.

Place 2 Points dialog with the name field and the Show code button — The dialog reads: “You'll get a code to show the hosts. If you like, leave your name — that makes it easier for them to find you.” ① **Your name (optional)** – voluntary; if a name is there, you see it in small type below the display name in your table. ② **Show code** fetches the code and flips the row to **collected**.

The dialog showing the six-digit code with the Done button below — ① The code, **305-771** here, with the line “Show this code to the hosts to collect your prize.” Those are exactly the six digits you type into **Verify code**. The guest can re-open the dialog at any time – the code stays the same.

The full guest view of the leaderboard, points and rewards is described in Points & rewards.

When the page only shows a notice

Winner mode hangs off the leaderboard. Depending on what is missing, the page shows one of three cards – each with the matching button.

Winner mode is off notice with the Turn on winner mode button — **Winner mode is off** – the leaderboard runs but the tick box is missing. The text names the route: “Turn it on in Settings under Features → Leaderboard.” ① **Turn on winner mode** jumps straight there.

Notice that the leaderboard is switched off with the Turn on the leaderboard button — If the leaderboard itself is off, the text changes: “Winner mode is part of the leaderboard — and that is switched off for this event.” ① The button then reads **Turn on the leaderboard**.

Locked winners page with a padlock and the upgrade button — If your package doesn't include the leaderboard, a padlock card replaces the page: “The leaderboard is not part of your package — without it there are no winners either.” The **Upgrade now** button leads to the package overview.

Troubleshooting

I can’t find the winners page → The entry only unfolds once you are inside the Tasks & Points area. Otherwise use the global search or the path /admin/gallery/leaderboard-winners.
“Winner mode is off” → The tick box in the settings is missing, or the leaderboard itself is off.
The tick box can’t be set → The Leaderboard is switched off or not included in your plan. Turn it on first.
“Nobody has scored in the selected categories yet.” → Nobody is ranked in any of the selected scoring categories yet. Pick a category where something has already happened – or wait for the first uploads.
The scheduled moment has passed but the competition still runs → Freezing happens on the next guest visit to the leaderboard page. Freeze now forces it immediately.
A category is missing from the table → It isn’t selected under the scoring categories, or nobody has a value there.
A code isn’t recognised → Only winners have a code. Check in the table whether the code really belongs to this standing, and whether the standing was re-opened in the meantime.
My settings changes are gone → The click on Save Changes at the bottom of the settings page was missing.

Turning features on & off – where the leaderboard and winner mode get switched on
Redeeming rewards – the same code flow for achievement rewards
Achievements & rewards – tie rewards to activity instead of placements
Points & rewards – the guest view of the leaderboard and the winners