New Photo Album
posted December 7th, 2005 by George
Well, I’ve been working on a new photo album. It’s not quite where I want it to be yet, but I have decided to go ahead and expose it to the world. I’m using a software called Gallery2. This is an open source project that I have been watching for a few years now. I tried it out in the earlier days, but wasn’t completely sold. But with this latest version, I’m convinced that it’s the coolest photo album software out there.
The new version is data base driven instead of flat file, it has all kinds of customizations and add-ons, theme support, it’s highly configurable, and just all around cool. One of my favorite features is that it resizes all of my photos and creates thumbnails for me. If the developers on the project could just come up with a module to take great pictures for me, then I’d be set.
Now, before you go running off and look at my new album I want to say this. I have only just begun to use many of the capabilities of this tool. The album that I have set up now is pretty bare bones, but we like our album to be simple and clean too. Well, check it out and tell me what you think.
My next big challenge is to migrate my existing album over to this new software. This will be a big undertaking. I’ve been putting it off, but I will not be able to ignore it for very much longer.
BTW, if you want to see some other examples of themes, I have set up a sample Gallery2 at my hosting site WebFamilyConnection.com. If you’re interested in photo albums, blogs, PHP portals, and the like, you should visit that site from time to time. I’ll be posting tech tips there regularly.
Filed under: Geek Talk on December 7th, 2005
I meant to talk to you about the new photo album when I was there but forgot. I probably need to convert over to the new version. Just want to make sure I can get to the old pictures… The new one sounds much easier although there will probably be a learning curve. Also meant to ask about setting up a blog. Still deciding if I am ready for that.
I think you will find that Gallery2 is much easier to use than the photo album I wrote. And I think the learning curve is much less.
A fundamental difference is that mine forced you to deal with files and folders. You had to FTP the pictures to the server and set up a strict folder structure. Then you had to create albums on the web. With Gallery2, you will do everything through the web interface. There is an Applet that takes care of the upload of the files and creation of any folders needed for you.
We’ll talk more when you are here for Christmas.