Posted by Derek Sedillo on November 16, 2006 at 2:19 PM
After a lot of good input from the folks here as well as some research and testing, I have implemented several open source gallery solutions:
1. Gallery2
2. Coppermine
3. JAlbum
I am currently evaluating these gallery frameworks for ease of management, functionality, out of the box usability, aesthetic appeal, customizability, etc...
Here are links to the two I have uploaded with very little modifications:
So far I like Gallery2 the best and Coppermine next. JAlbum was the easiest to create but I couldn't really find any skins that appealed to me. Many are flash based.
I have noticed that most people with professional looking websites who use gallery software embed the gallery inside their outer website look and feel. Mark Graf's site is a great example of this: http://www.grafphoto.com
Ultimately I would like to go this route with a main page that navigates to the gallery and other content as well. So I next need to design a main page probably in PSCS. I would will probably go with a collage of images and some basic text below with a similar grey background theme.
- Derek
Posted by James H Egbert on November 17, 2006 at 12:36 AM
I after a lot of trial and many errors have come to the conclusion that Templates Suck. I think they pidgion hole your versitiliy and function. Beside they are too cookie cutter. The templates I have used look exactly like what they are, Templates.
When I rebuilt my site a couple months ago i was very happy because i took a template design and reworked it to fit my personal theme ideas. It worked perfectly, or so i thought. When i more recently did a cross platform check in Mozilla, Opera, Maxthon, IE6 and IE7 and not to mention Safari too, i found that the CSS did not hold up well and the border recognition was horrible at best. So i took a perectly good day off from my real life to Start from scratch and do a straight HTML build. The only Java Script on my site is my shopping cart system and some security scripts that help me monitor my traffic and protect image contents.
For the past few years it has been said i redesign my site more than most people change under wear, but i guess I am a little more hygenic than most. But through it all i learned one very valuable lessoon which I have been applying to my photography but not with everything else. Short cuts are only shortcuts to long term problems and lessons. Short cuts cheapen the work and show clearly.
What's the moral of the story? If you will go to great lengths to photograph a subject and take the time and efforts to make it 100% your own work, why not take the time and make the same efforts in your marketing, web design and presentation?
My $0.02 worth. BTY PSCS does well in the graphic design aspects to create the Collage you want. I think you're making all the right moves in researching this project, you've already done all the right things I did wrong.
Posted by Mel Ladewig on November 17, 2006 at 2:13 AM
Derek, I think what you've done is fine and I agree that a webpage wrapped into Gallery or Coppermine is most common and a reasonable way to manage and organize content.
I'll give my opinion from the opposite side from James. While I agree that templates can have some serious downsides in formatting across multiple browser platforms, they offer excellent advantages on the maintainability side of things. Sometimes it is worth giving up some things gain maintainability and to make it easier to keep web content fresh and new.
For example, I work in the financial software business. Until recently, I was a consultant for Fortune 500 companies and a federal agency. The software that I work on is part of the Oracle family. In the past, these companies used mainframe software to store their financial records. In some cases they bought packaged software, but usually it was very heavily customized software. Some companies were built entirely from scratch. The customizations are not supported by the software vendor, so you need to keep a staff on hand to manage changes. Regulatory changes affect how you need to track financial data, so sometimes, your business requirements change (along with everyone else's). Software projects come and go, but the maintenance remains, because no code is perfectly written. As time goes by, you need more and more employees to manage the software. The loss of key employees could result in the loss of masive knowledge capital. All of this results in a great financial burden on the company. The software was a perfect fit, but the maintenance was bursting at the seam.
Now modern ERP systems allow a blending of support, maintenance, flexibility and customization. They provide functionality in multiple languages for instance. They allow the application to be deployed over the web in many cases. They have built in interface points and allow you to do things like load data from formatted excel spreadsheet to be shared across continents. The ERP companies have relatively large staffs working on the regulatory changes and problems that may arise. Maintenance costs go down while flexibility and capability increase because some of the maintenance costs (for things like regulatory changes) can be shared across several organizations. Some browsers may not be perfectly compatible. That is a cost of doing business. You've got to find a way to reach the majority of your customers and today that means 75% IE, 20% Mozilla, 5% Safari and a little of everyone else.
Another cost of doing this business is that these tools are often more complex than simple HTML. You may have to learn how to alter the underlying code yourself in order to make everything work. You may need to use an SDK. You may have to dig deep to find solutions to vexing issues. Or you may just have to log on to a support forum for the software. But if these things allow you manage your content more fluidly and quickly, they may all be worthwhile.
Mel-
Posted by Derek Sedillo on November 17, 2006 at 9:21 AM
Yes,
I think I understand where both James and Mel are coming from. I have hand coded HTML websites from scratch before (used Dreamweaver and Frontpage as well). I have also used other online hosting galleries such as pbase, printroom, imageevent, etc...
On the one hand you have total design flexibility and on the other freedom from having to do anything but upload pictures. In both cases there are tradeoffs.
Because I look at code all day as a software engineer I wanted to get away from doing everything from scratch. So the template based systems appeals to me. Once completed the only thing neccessary is uploading pictures and textual content.
I can also see that these systems have their downsides. Gallery2 for example seems to have so many modules and code that perfomance takes a hit.
While not perfect, if a gallery tool gets me 80% there I think it will be worth for me. Then I can build around a manageable framework.
But who knows... Maybe one day I throw it all out and start from scratch again like James I think he *has* changed websites more than most folks have their underwear.
- Derek
Posted by Derek Sedillo on November 21, 2006 at 9:43 AM
Well,
I have been trying a new gallery software called Exhibit Engine by Pekka Saarinen which I really like so far. It has less bells and wistles than the others but it is very flexible. Here it is so far:
I am still customizing this one. But I like it more than Coppermine out of the box and it performs faster than Gallery2. I would stick with Gallery2 if it wasn't so darn slow to load. I have been removing some of Gallery2's PHP code which I don't use like voting, comments, etc...
- Derek
Posted by Michael Renner on November 21, 2006 at 12:19 PM
Derek,
I have been playing with a gallery2 implementation myself, as my current website is static and I just never sit down and update it. I find my implementation is slow as well unfortunately when running stock. Have you tried messing with the performance acceleration settings? It caches the pages instead of creating them each time you hit the page. This does have some limitations, but you can specify the level of "acceleration" so that you still get some dynamic updates on things like shopping carts etc on the partial acceleration feature. When I enable that I do get a decent performance gain.
Good luck.
Michael
Posted by Derek Sedillo on November 21, 2006 at 3:07 PM
Michael,
I have tried *almost* everything to speed up Gallery2.
1. I use maximum acceleration.
2. I use PHP compression via a change to my php.ini using zlib.compression
3. I have removed some of the *extra* PHP code from album.tpl.
It seems to me after reading as much as I could on their forums and FAQs that the main focus is on adding new features right now. Performance is not a primary goal. But this may change as it matures. For me and on my host server (Globat) it seems like no matter what I have tried it is just too slow. Album thumbnail page takes up to 1 minute to load. Photos can take more than 30 seconds. It will speed up locally after it is saved in browser cache and run a few times. But I think most new visitors won't want to wait that long for initial loads and why should they?
That is why Coppermine and Exhibit Engine appeal to me now. They both perform much better. I can also see why creating your own site from scratch as James has done can be an advantage. That way you only add the functionality and supporting code that you *need*.
Most if not all of these tools continue to add extra features to appeal to a wider audience. The obvious downside is bloated code and poorer performance. I don't want blogging, voting, forums, etc... But that code is still sitting there. Some is harder to remove than other parts.
- Derek
Posted by Derek Sedillo on November 21, 2006 at 4:26 PM
Ok,
I have just changed my Gallery2 site to an older theme (matrix) which performs a little better. If people could comment on the *performance* of these three options I would appreciate (i.e. - OK, pretty good, way too slow).
Posted by Michael Renner on November 22, 2006 at 12:38 PM
Hi Derek,
I went through each of the galleries and here are my grades. ;)
1. A little slow at times, but not too bad. Vast improvement from the previous theme. Although since I am working with a Gallery2 implementation, I may be biased here. (This is how I feel about my page as well)
2. Seems about the same as Gallery2 overall. A bit faster on image to image pages than Gallery2 I would say...
3. Very quick
Coppermine is definetely speedy, but that may come at the cost of originality. Coppermine sites always look a bit more like a generic template to me. I will say that Mark Graf's site is the best I have seen in Coppermine, so maybe I need to look into that more. I really like the potential that Gallery2 has, but speed is an issue.
I used the Siriux theme and have started to modify it, but I still have a lot of work to do. I guess now I am wondering if the speed issue is too much to overcome and I should try something else.
Thanks for any comments folks have about the speed of my site as well...
Posted by Derek Sedillo on November 22, 2006 at 2:16 PM
Micheal,
I just checked out your gallery. I really like the look by the way
I would have to say that in terms of performance I would rate it the same as you did my Gallery2 setup. A little slow at times, but not too bad.
There is a bit of a lag when moving between images for me at work on a high speed connection. Although it seems a little faster than my G2 matrix site. It took about 8-12 seconds wait between images when clicking next. This will vary from user to user/high speed vs. dialup of course.
I asked other friends as well via email and got varied responses with regards to performance. But the vast majority found G2 to be the slowest performer While Coppermine was consistently rated higher.
I, like you, prefer G2's out of the box look and feel. But I want *both* performance and a look I am happy with. If a site is sluggish people get bored and move on. So for me it looks like I will need to look into what it takes to customize Coppermine themes, write my own theme or find a lighter weight product like Scott Bacon uses (Gallery Thingie).
I did talk with Mark Graf about his experiences with Coppermine. He did quite a bit of customization of the Transmission Theme. But he is happy now with both performance and the presentation he was able to achieve.
Posted by Derek Sedillo on December 1, 2006 at 3:23 PM
Well,
I decided to go with Coppermine for now. Gallery2 was just too slow on my host server. I have created my own custom CPG theme based on a G2 theme. I have a rough template of it working now. You can see it here: http://www.lightquestphoto.com/coppermine/?theme=derek
I am still working on layout and look and feel. Mark Graf also gave me some good tips. He did a lot of custom work on his CPG site. He helped me figure out how to create a custom frame in PS and then lay it out around an image using splices and repeating patterns.
I am not quite happy with the colors yet. The darker greys just all seem to kind of blend together. So I may experiment with more shades for contrast.
I think you are making the right choice. G2 is just way to slow, and I guess I am surprised that they haven't found a way to speed it up more. I think I will be looking into Coppermine as well. Just haven't had any time to play around with it lately. I think you have a good start - but I agree that maybe some added shades will give it some more pop.
Good luck with your design!! Keep us in the loop as you work on it!
Discussion
11 replies1. Gallery2
2. Coppermine
3. JAlbum
I am currently evaluating these gallery frameworks for ease of management, functionality, out of the box usability, aesthetic appeal, customizability, etc...
Here are links to the two I have uploaded with very little modifications:
http://www.lightquestphoto.com/gallery2
http://www.lightquestphoto.com/coppermine
So far I like Gallery2 the best and Coppermine next. JAlbum was the easiest to create but I couldn't really find any skins that appealed to me. Many are flash based.
I have noticed that most people with professional looking websites who use gallery software embed the gallery inside their outer website look and feel. Mark Graf's site is a great example of this:
http://www.grafphoto.com
Ultimately I would like to go this route with a main page that navigates to the gallery and other content as well. So I next need to design a main page probably in PSCS. I would will probably go with a collage of images and some basic text below with a similar grey background theme.
- Derek
When I rebuilt my site a couple months ago i was very happy because i took a template design and reworked it to fit my personal theme ideas. It worked perfectly, or so i thought. When i more recently did a cross platform check in Mozilla, Opera, Maxthon, IE6 and IE7 and not to mention Safari too, i found that the CSS did not hold up well and the border recognition was horrible at best. So i took a perectly good day off from my real life to Start from scratch and do a straight HTML build. The only Java Script on my site is my shopping cart system and some security scripts that help me monitor my traffic and protect image contents.
For the past few years it has been said i redesign my site more than most people change under wear, but i guess I am a little more hygenic than most. But through it all i learned one very valuable lessoon which I have been applying to my photography but not with everything else. Short cuts are only shortcuts to long term problems and lessons. Short cuts cheapen the work and show clearly.
What's the moral of the story? If you will go to great lengths to photograph a subject and take the time and efforts to make it 100% your own work, why not take the time and make the same efforts in your marketing, web design and presentation?
My $0.02 worth.
I'll give my opinion from the opposite side from James. While I agree that templates can have some serious downsides in formatting across multiple browser platforms, they offer excellent advantages on the maintainability side of things. Sometimes it is worth giving up some things gain maintainability and to make it easier to keep web content fresh and new.
For example, I work in the financial software business. Until recently, I was a consultant for Fortune 500 companies and a federal agency. The software that I work on is part of the Oracle family. In the past, these companies used mainframe software to store their financial records. In some cases they bought packaged software, but usually it was very heavily customized software. Some companies were built entirely from scratch. The customizations are not supported by the software vendor, so you need to keep a staff on hand to manage changes. Regulatory changes affect how you need to track financial data, so sometimes, your business requirements change (along with everyone else's). Software projects come and go, but the maintenance remains, because no code is perfectly written. As time goes by, you need more and more employees to manage the software. The loss of key employees could result in the loss of masive knowledge capital. All of this results in a great financial burden on the company. The software was a perfect fit, but the maintenance was bursting at the seam.
Now modern ERP systems allow a blending of support, maintenance, flexibility and customization. They provide functionality in multiple languages for instance. They allow the application to be deployed over the web in many cases. They have built in interface points and allow you to do things like load data from formatted excel spreadsheet to be shared across continents. The ERP companies have relatively large staffs working on the regulatory changes and problems that may arise. Maintenance costs go down while flexibility and capability increase because some of the maintenance costs (for things like regulatory changes) can be shared across several organizations. Some browsers may not be perfectly compatible. That is a cost of doing business. You've got to find a way to reach the majority of your customers and today that means 75% IE, 20% Mozilla, 5% Safari and a little of everyone else.
Another cost of doing this business is that these tools are often more complex than simple HTML. You may have to learn how to alter the underlying code yourself in order to make everything work. You may need to use an SDK. You may have to dig deep to find solutions to vexing issues. Or you may just have to log on to a support forum for the software. But if these things allow you manage your content more fluidly and quickly, they may all be worthwhile.
Mel-
I think I understand where both James and Mel are coming from. I have hand coded HTML websites from scratch before (used Dreamweaver and Frontpage as well). I have also used other online hosting galleries such as pbase, printroom, imageevent, etc...
On the one hand you have total design flexibility and on the other freedom from having to do anything but upload pictures.
Because I look at code all day as a software engineer I wanted to get away from doing everything from scratch.
I can also see that these systems have their downsides. Gallery2 for example seems to have so many modules and code that perfomance takes a hit.
While not perfect, if a gallery tool gets me 80% there I think it will be worth for me. Then I can build around a manageable framework.
But who knows... Maybe one day I throw it all out and start from scratch again like James
- Derek
I have been trying a new gallery software called Exhibit Engine by Pekka Saarinen which I really like so far. It has less bells and wistles than the others but it is very flexible. Here it is so far:
http://www.lightquestphoto.com/gallery
I am still customizing this one. But I like it more than Coppermine out of the box and it performs faster than Gallery2. I would stick with Gallery2 if it wasn't so darn slow to load. I have been removing some of Gallery2's PHP code which I don't use like voting, comments, etc...
- Derek
I have been playing with a gallery2 implementation myself, as my current website is static and I just never sit down and update it. I find my implementation is slow as well unfortunately when running stock. Have you tried messing with the performance acceleration settings? It caches the pages instead of creating them each time you hit the page. This does have some limitations, but you can specify the level of "acceleration" so that you still get some dynamic updates on things like shopping carts etc on the partial acceleration feature. When I enable that I do get a decent performance gain.
Good luck.
Michael
I have tried *almost* everything to speed up Gallery2.
1. I use maximum acceleration.
2. I use PHP compression via a change to my php.ini using zlib.compression
3. I have removed some of the *extra* PHP code from album.tpl.
It seems to me after reading as much as I could on their forums and FAQs that the main focus is on adding new features right now. Performance is not a primary goal. But this may change as it matures. For me and on my host server (Globat) it seems like no matter what I have tried it is just too slow. Album thumbnail page takes up to 1 minute to load. Photos can take more than 30 seconds. It will speed up locally after it is saved in browser cache and run a few times. But I think most new visitors won't want to wait that long for initial loads and why should they?
That is why Coppermine and Exhibit Engine appeal to me now. They both perform much better. I can also see why creating your own site from scratch as James has done can be an advantage. That way you only add the functionality and supporting code that you *need*.
Most if not all of these tools continue to add extra features to appeal to a wider audience. The obvious downside is bloated code and poorer performance. I don't want blogging, voting, forums, etc... But that code is still sitting there. Some is harder to remove than other parts.
- Derek
I have just changed my Gallery2 site to an older theme (matrix) which performs a little better. If people could comment on the *performance* of these three options I would appreciate (i.e. - OK, pretty good, way too slow).
1. http://www.lightquestphoto.com/gallery2
2. http://www.lightquestphoto.com/gallery
3. http://www.lightquestphoto.com/coppermine
Thanks,
Derek
I went through each of the galleries and here are my grades. ;)
1. A little slow at times, but not too bad. Vast improvement from the previous theme. Although since I am working with a Gallery2 implementation, I may be biased here. (This is how I feel about my page as well)
2. Seems about the same as Gallery2 overall. A bit faster on image to image pages than Gallery2 I would say...
3. Very quick
Coppermine is definetely speedy, but that may come at the cost of originality. Coppermine sites always look a bit more like a generic template to me. I will say that Mark Graf's site is the best I have seen in Coppermine, so maybe I need to look into that more. I really like the potential that Gallery2 has, but speed is an issue.
Here is my page, maybe you could hit it and see what your thoughts are?
http://www.timberlineimages.com/g2/main.php
I used the Siriux theme and have started to modify it, but I still have a lot of work to do. I guess now I am wondering if the speed issue is too much to overcome and I should try something else.
Thanks for any comments folks have about the speed of my site as well...
I just checked out your gallery. I really like the look by the way
I would have to say that in terms of performance I would rate it the same as you did my Gallery2 setup. A little slow at times, but not too bad.
There is a bit of a lag when moving between images for me at work on a high speed connection. Although it seems a little faster than my G2 matrix site. It took about 8-12 seconds wait between images when clicking next. This will vary from user to user/high speed vs. dialup of course.
I asked other friends as well via email and got varied responses with regards to performance. But the vast majority found G2 to be the slowest performer
I, like you, prefer G2's out of the box look and feel. But I want *both* performance and a look I am happy with. If a site is sluggish people get bored and move on. So for me it looks like I will need to look into what it takes to customize Coppermine themes, write my own theme or find a lighter weight product like Scott Bacon uses (Gallery Thingie).
I did talk with Mark Graf about his experiences with Coppermine. He did quite a bit of customization of the Transmission Theme. But he is happy now with both performance and the presentation he was able to achieve.
I decided to go with Coppermine for now. Gallery2 was just too slow on my host server. I have created my own custom CPG theme based on a G2 theme. I have a rough template of it working now. You can see it here:
http://www.lightquestphoto.com/coppermine/?theme=derek
I am still working on layout and look and feel. Mark Graf also gave me some good tips. He did a lot of custom work on his CPG site. He helped me figure out how to create a custom frame in PS and then lay it out around an image using splices and repeating patterns.
I am not quite happy with the colors yet. The darker greys just all seem to kind of blend together. So I may experiment with more shades for contrast.
- Derek
I think you are making the right choice. G2 is just way to slow, and I guess I am surprised that they haven't found a way to speed it up more. I think I will be looking into Coppermine as well. Just haven't had any time to play around with it lately. I think you have a good start - but I agree that maybe some added shades will give it some more pop.
Good luck with your design!! Keep us in the loop as you work on it!
Michael