Web Gallery Software/Templates

I have recently been looking at setting up a gallery for my nature photography. I *may* eventually use it to sell from with a cart. I want to keep it simple and easy to maintain. - doesn't everyone???

I am a software engineer by day so I am not afraid to code. But writing a lot of custom code when I get home from work is usually the last thing I want to do.LOL... So far it looks like there are three main options:
1. 100% custom coded site (HTML, PHP, Javascript, DHTML, etc...).
2. Photo Template Software (Coppermine, Jalbum, Gallery2, Breezebrowser, etc...).
3. Hybrid of both

After reviewing several member's galleries such as Scott Bacon, I can see advantages in having a custom site. I am just wondering what members are currently using? How easy is it to maintain once setup???

What advantage do you see in using PHP, mySQL type site verses a simple HTML presentation approach? If it is easier to manage I could see an advantage. I don't want to have to rebuild my site every time I want to add some new photos. Are there any recommended open source, flexible templates which people use to generate their galleries?

Thanks for any input you can provide.

Hi Derek,

I don't have a web photo gallery yet. That's one of my winter projects. A search on SourceForge for "web photo gallery" gives 13410 results. You can probably find whatever features (automatic thumbnails, watermarking, etc) and infrastructure (Java, CSS, PHP/MySql) you want.

Cheers,

One other option for showing your work on the web: try Googling "photo web gallery service" (and similar phrases) for a comparison of what you can get with a subscription to a template-driven service vs. developing your own site.

For example, .Mac allows for customization, presents a professional look, and is inexpensive. And there are lots of other photo gallery services out there like pBase and Flickr. You owe it to yourself to check out the best ones and consider if it would be appropriate to use a service instead; even temporarily. Developing a custom web site from the ground up can take a long time.

If you choose to build your own site with a custom designed interface, follow the lead of the template driven services: keep it super-simple. You want the photographs to take center stage, so eliminate any interface design elements that don't support this.

Having a web site you can be proud of is a critical step for photographers who want to show their work. If you build your own, you'll need to practice self-restraint when considering features to get good results.

I agree that if you do build a custom site you should at least start with a base of open source code. Sourceforge is great for this, and you can also try download.com and internet.com.

Good luck! I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

You could try smugmug for $50 a year. It's the best online gallery service in my opinion.

Hey Derek,
I heavily modified a free PHP gallery, with the permission of its original author. I customized it for my own needs (and wants). This particular solution does not use a database, but rather, an XML file to store all the image metadata.
Its easy to manage - web interface for adding/editing/deleting new galleries and images. It grows with me - no need to add an HTML page for each image. So, along with CSS and SSI, and I can make changes to my design by modifying a few pages - not hundreds.
I'd be happy to share it with you. Just drop me a note. But I'll warn you ahead of time, that this is not a "drop in" solution. It'll take some of your programmer skills.

Derek, Try www.firmtools.com I used their software for the gallery portion of my site and built the rest from scratch around it.

Derek, as I mentioned in a post recently, I just had my website upgraded to a wonderful php backend. It was designed by Jack Brauer (RMNP Member) specifically for the needs of photographers. You might want to check it out if you are really wanting to get a site to match your great photos. I'm absolutely thrilled with it. You can see what it looks like on my site or visit Jack's site: widerange.org.

Nat - Yes, I have been using image hosting sites for the past 5 1/2 years (printroom, pbase and now imageevent). I *really* like the convenience but do not like the limitations they impose. Before looking into building my own site I gave a serious look at some of the other highly rated ones such as smugmug, zenfolio, photoshelter, photoreflect, etc.... But as I read their features/benefits I soon find I want something with more options. For example, I think smugmug is very customizable. But if I ever want to sell/provide prints online I need to go thru *their* service and they take their cut.

I guess I am at the point of wanting to try my own as long as it is not too painful to maintain. I like the idea of not reinventing the wheel when it comes to software. There are so many tools already out there it is more daunting just determining what to start from. I know there is no *one* right answer for this. But with the goal of finding something simple, flexible and realtively easy to maintain I am beginning to narrow the field.

Scott - I am really impressed with the layout and flow of your site. I think using XML verses a DB is a good idea, especially when the aim is simplicity and portability. The content management system you use is exactly what I have been looking for. I really don't want to have to write HTML for every page. Templates seems so much more efficient and easier to maintain. I will email you for the details.

James - the software you use looks good, especially for the price. I'll have to talk with you more about the features.

Thanks guys.

Eric,

I am *really* impressed with your new site. But I am not quite sure what you have done new with it (where do you end and Jack begin ). It looks to me like you have done all the graphical design/layout/etc... and now you have have a new content management system along with shopping capabilities. Is that basically correct?

I guess I had thought that Jack custom coded your entire website at first. It would be great if he productized his PHP backend software as it is obviously working great in your case.

Derek, you are right. I had most of the general design in place, as pathetic as it is, and then Jack implemented his backend with my design. If I had the $ I would have had a really hot design done first and then implemented the backend. Jack is able to do the complete project with both design and backend if that's what you need. He's spent the last couple of years working the bugs out of his software but I think it is now at a mature enough stage that he can market it to other photographers. I highly recommend it.

Here is my 2 cents. I don't know what PHP, XML... mean. I picked up a copy of MS Frontpage and Designing websites for dummies, and 6 hours later I had a website. I am sure it's not hi-tec, but it works. I did not write a single line of code. Have fun.

I'll throw out a 2nd recommendation for FrontPage. Everything on my site including the scripts and DHTML has been done with FrontPage. Very vesatile - easy to get started, easy to add non-html code. There are 3 tabs at the bottom of the window - one for basic WYSIWYG design, one to switch to direct html coding (though you can code java, php, etc.) and a preview tab to see how things look in the browser.

I've been using FrontPage as well for everything. What I found though is that as the number of images increased to over 700+ that it became difficult to maintain. I also wanted a more automated shopping system. I would say that if you are looking to develop a smaller website that FrontPage is probably all you need. I agree with Rick and Momo that it is easy and powerful. If you want something quite extensive, want to show images in multiple galleries, and have an inbuilt shopping system, then a database driven site might be the way to go. Right now, I have the php backend but use FrontPage for the front end.

Eric,

Wow, I am surprised you used FrontPage for this. I have gained new respect for FrontPage since your site has one of the best look and feels as well as work flows that I have come across. This is of course based on my goal of keeping things simple while offering a nice presentation layer that doesn't distract from the images. The navigation is really smooth as well.

I guess FrontPage has come a long way since I used about 6 years ago. It used to add a lot of wierd FrontPage tags throughout the code and was really hard to customize and maintain. I prefererred hand coding HTML after using it. I have used Dreamweaver before and liked that much better. It seemed to produce much cleaner code which was easier to maintain and customize.

I had an old version of Dreamweaver which I had purchased about 5 years ago. But I hadn't used it in so long I can't even find the disks.

Thanks all for the input!

http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php

Thanks Phillip,

Is this what you used for your galleries?

I have been looking at Coppermine, Gallery2 and Jalbum. The only downside I came across with Coppermine and Gallery2 is that they will only run on hosts that support GD or ImageMagick which limits hosting options. Jalbum seems to be more portable and can even be loaded onto a CD and run.

In our discussions about FrontPage and web development I noticed that MS announced it will be discontinued and replaced with two other MS tools - SharePoint Designer 2007 and Microsoft Expression Web Designer.

Here is the anouncement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/feb06/02-15Designer.mspx

Derek,

I have coppermine up and running in a test environment and I like it a lot. I especially like the capability to have one photo in any number of galleries through the use of keywords. Mark Graf uses coppermine on his website: http://www.grafphoto.com and has it set up very nice. Some day, when I get some free time I'll revamp my website with coppermine set up for stock photography.

Phil

Phil,

Thanks for that link to Mark's gallery! That is the best Coppermine implimentation I have seen. This really helps to illustrate what is possible with open source software. Of course it is obvious that Mark put in a lot of his own style and work into the design. But that also shows that it is customizable.

I am still in the research and discovery phase of my website design/development. There is just so much out there. The hardest part is deciding where to start. I really don't want to start from scratch. So you have convinced me to give Coppermine another look, in spite of the host server requirements for GD or ImageMagick support. I'll have to see how many hosts actually offer this option.

Meeting GD/ImageMagick requirements aren't too tough; I believe GoDaddy offers a Linux hosting solution with Coppermine available as a one-click install. I use Tera-Byte for my hosting, and their solutions come with GD (and ImageMagick) pre-installed, so it's pretty easy to add in Coppermine or Gallery2 (and in fact I'm using Gallery2 both with a PostNuke blog and as a standalone). Most sites will offer one or the other (I prefer GD, as it's a library-based addon to PHP as opposed to ImageMagick's command-based approach).

I designed my own web site around Coppermine. I did a couple of customizations to implement a shopping cart and to reduce image theft. My Coppermine enhancements are available for free, and I am willing to share my enhancement to help reduce image theft (basically a transparent GIF overlay).

Coppermine requires a MySQL and PHP backend, but is very powerful and customizable. It includes a built-in search function, supports importing IPTC data, can read the EXIF data if you want, allows for a few custom fields, and more. It is free, but you have to have a place to host your site.