I’m looking for advice on two seperate but related projects.
First of all, I want a good way to manage images for right here on my blog. Obviously, I want something that integrates into WordPress. Ideally, it should allow me to organize pictures in some sort of hierarchical directory structure, annotate pictures with metadata (title, date, place, categories/tags, etc), browse pictures in various ways, generate multiple sizes, and so forth.
The second one will be a standalone site for family members to share photos with each other, so it doesn’t necessarily have to integrate with WordPress. However, it should be multi-user, and super user-friendly for the non-techs. I was looking at Coppermine Photo Gallery, but I’m not very happy with the interface. I could also just point everybody at Flickr, but I think it would be too overwhelming for some of our family members.
Any recommendations?
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29 Comments
I switched to Coppermine Gallery from Menalto gallery 1.x a while ago, but then when Menalto Gallery 2 beta came out, I was blown away. Been using it ever since, and it integrates nicely into most blog engines.
Gallery2 Beta4.
I use it with Drupal, but there seems to be an easy way to integrate it with WordPress.
I recommend SimpleViewer. Unfortunately, working with SimpleViewer is no walk-in-the-park. For that, try adding SimpleViewerAdmin into the mix.
I use jalbum ( http://jalbum.net ) with the template BananAlbum ( http://www.bananalbum.net ), it suits me quite well.
I highly recommend using iPAP by Rebelpixel.com, he’s a filipino web developer and he and another web developer from europe came up with a standards compliant photogallery system that can be easily integrated into wordpress. I have used coppermine and simpleviewer and coppermine is a nightmare to customize and it doesn’t output standard XHTML… simpleviewer is very cool… but its also hard to implement into your page.
If you want to go the Flash route I highly recommend Slide Show Pro
There’s a Gallery 2 WP Plugin that integrates both quite nicely… my eval at:
http://www.loribravo.com/wordpress/index.php/2005/07/24/my-quest-for-a-wordpress-gallery-plugin/#more-26
I reccomend using Flickr with the Flickr Plugin for your blog. That’s what is powering mine and I love it. For me it forms a perfect loop. iPhoto > Flickr Exporter for iPhoto > Flickr > Flickr Plugin for WordPress > WordPress. Don’t know if your a Mac/iPhoto user, but if you are I recommend this path.
Flickr Plugin for WordPress (seems to down at the moment):
http://www.worrad.com/archives/2005/01/08/flickr-gallery-07/
Flickr Plugin for iPhoto:
http://www.speirs.org/downloads/FlickrExport/FlickrExport-1.2.6.dmg
My photo gallery using this setup:
http://digitalsandbox.us/photos/
My very biased opinion would be Gallery 2 as well. Beta 4 just out, next version should be 2.0 final.
I’d try Enhanced Simple PHP Gallery. It is great! It integrates well. And on the Simple PHP Gallery forum there are many people with instructions on how to integrate with WordPress.
My vote goes for Gallery. That is all.
I’d also go with Gallery2 (currently in Beta4). There is a very nice plugin (http://wpg2.ozgreg.com, http://devtest.ozgreg.com) to integrate Gallery2 with Wordpress. Seamless, no need to muddle with templates, random sidebar images, automagically link/control Wordpress and Gallery2 users from the same interfaces. Its just too good.
For a sample, take a look at http://floatingsun.net/blog/wp-gallery2.php
I have been thinking of picture galleries recently as well, although I don’t seem to have the same needs as you do. Basically flickr solves almost all my needs (quick, stable urls, good metadata, tags and sets work, good navigation, I don’t need integration), except for the fact that I don’t want to rely on them and the use of flash for slideshows. However, Kory’s demo of flickr integration was quite nice.
I’ve been wanting to write my own gallery (yeah, there are not enough out there
). Until then, I use Apache::Gallery, for my pictures. Just upload the pictures to a directory and point your browser there and it’s done.
I recommend Photostack (you can see it in action on my site) though they are currently getting ready to release the next version:
The New PhotoStack (v3) will be out within a month, taking major cues from a really excellent GPL project already available. Until then, hold your horses and wait - it’s gonna be a great release. Thanks for your patience.
The rest of the site is unavailable for a few days, while we clean up for the next release.
Have been using Coppermine for quite a while.
Inteface does seem a little limited at first, but once you get the hang of it, then it works really good.
I especially love its mass upload feature you can use when your an admin.
Simply add files to the folder you want and then do a mass import.
Have you taken a look at Plogger? They’re just about ready to release Beta 2 and it’s a wickedly-cool, XHTML-valid, lightweight gallery that the developers are trying to make easy-to-integrate, especially with WP.
Jo: Thanks for reminding me about Photostack. I remember being interested in that one a while back. I’ll keep an eye on the development.
Doug: Plogger looks really good from what I see on the site. Unfortunately, it uses some features of MySQL 4, and I’m still using the version 3 series. I want to upgrade, but I’m afraid that I’ll break something in the process :-/
I use photostack, simple to install looks clean and has a nice picture fade in. It does stick out a bit
from the theme on the main page. take a look; http://vanbos.com/gallery/index.php
You can take a look at passion. I use it on my blog and I am very happy with it. The thing I love with it is how easy it is to costumize, and it’s very easy to use.
Id also recommend Gallery. Its a great progrtam, and with gallery 2 comming out, it should be even better.
also i use http://geoffhutchison.net/blog/categories/wp-plugins/ to integrate gallery into wordpress. makes things really easy.
Dougal, at one point a friend of Eric’s was developing his own gallery, which had tagging and all in like 2000. For the life of me, I can’t think of who it was, though. I’ll keep trying to think of it.
I’ve been a Menalto Gallery1 admin. Please note the past tense of that. Yes, I know G2 is there. Still. Ugh.
Me, I’m very happy with Flickr. I’m about thisclose to just sucking it up and going for a pro account.
I have used on the past Anfy using Java, but today Flash aplications like “slideshowpro.net” are more compatible.
Whew, I know I’m REALLY late to this party but I had something to chime in. We just released Beta 2 of Plogger over at plogger.org and it is fully compatible with MySQL 3.23
PhotoStack should be done fairly soon, in the mean time, check out the video: http://photostack.org
After considerable research, I have come to the comclusion PixelPost at http://pixelpost.org/ is the best way to go. It is great opensource photoblogging at its best. It can be customized to look just like your wordpress blog, which is what I am doing right now. This is photoblog equivalent of wordpress: lightweight, easy to use, and a great community of developers.
Plogger (www.plogger.org) is really good in my opinion. It’s dead easy to set up, and very easy to integrate with Wordpress. The admin/control panel is a extremely clear and a piece of cake to use. Only complaint I have about Plogger is that there aren’t enough levels of depth of galleries: you have your top level which consists of “collections”, then you within that you have “albums”. Unfortunately you can’t have sub-albums, or sub-sub-albums. Yet, anyway! That apart though, I think Plogger’s absolutely brilliant. I’ve got it running here: http://www.croila.net/plogger
Pixelpost also has a hack section on it’s forum, I think there are several posts about integrating it into wordpress so they go hand in hand.
I don’t know, if You already found it, or use it, but there is a plugin, which integrates Your pixelpost photoblog into Your Wordpress blog:
http://www.raminia.com/weblog/wp-hacks
I’m running BLOG:CMS whioch comes with Singapore. I tried Coppermine, but since the photos I want to put in my gallery ate onteh same PC, I don’t want to duplicate the files (and waste the disk space). Also, since i do a lot of PhotoShop work, I’d like to be able to insert links to folders, so that a simple “update” would pick up all the changes/additions/deletions.
Do any of these do that?
My advise for image slideshow - use some server tools. Like flash gallery
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[...] A while back, asked for recommendations for photo gallery software. I still haven’t picked one (I’ve been using Flickr in the meantime), but I’ve been keeping my eye on Plogger as a strong contender. But today I ran across another good one: zenphoto. Both projects are working on WordPress integration, so I can’t wait to see where these projects go. [...]