Alternatives to the Gallery Photo-Publishing Web App





From: florin@andrei.myip.org (Florin Andrei)
To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2007 19:03:45 -0700
Subject: [svlug] alternatives to Gallery ?

I'm currently using Gallery to put my pictures on the Internet:

http://gallery.menalto.com/

It's very powerful software, but a chore to upgrade and troubleshoot. Not for lack of knowledge, I hope, but I just don't want to spend too much time fiddling with software on my site. I just want something that works and covers the basic stuff well. Moreover, an upcoming Gallery version will require PHP-5.2 to enable all features, while I will very likely stay with PHP-5.1.

So I'm looking for alternatives. Please suggest a similar software, ideally easier to maintain.





From: bill@macgod.net (Bill Teeple)
To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 22:00:04 -0700
Subject: [svlug] alternatives to Gallery ?

Gallery is nice and all, but I prefer to upload my own templates, so I use a quick script/app called JIGL - it is a perl based script which (in conjunction with Imagemagick and a few other apps - listed on the site) allow you to upload pictures to a folder and then apply a them to the folder - it is all static (however) and has to create the thumbnails and places them in separate directories.

Check it out here: http://xome.net/projects/jigl/





Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 01:25:05 -0700
To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
From: Rick Moen (rick@linuxmafia.com)
Subject: Re: [svlug] alternatives to Gallery ?

Some people seem to like "tngal": http://www.foxbow.de/software/tngal/

"Album": http://marginalhacks.com/Hacks/album/
http://www.linkstationwiki.net/index.php/Album_-_Photo_gallery_generator_which_has_theme_support

"llgal": http://home.gna.org/llgal

The latter's the leanest choice, I think.





From: Mark Weisler (mark@weisler-saratoga-ca.us)
To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 07:54:42 -0700
Subject: Re: [svlug] alternatives to Gallery ?

Digikam works well for me. http://www.digikam.org/

It's easy to tag and comment on photos for organizing them; also to export in various formats including HTML to make a web site or store on a CD or DVD.

Some features are...





Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 04:09:19 -0700
From: Drew Bertola (drew@drewb.com)
To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] alternatives to Gallery ?

Bill Teeple wrote:

> Gallery is nice and all, but I prefer to upload my own templates, so I
> use a quick script/app called JIGL - it is a perl based script which
> (in conjunction with Imagemagick and a few other apps - listed on the site)
> allow you to upload pictures to a folder and then apply a them to the
> folder - it is all static (however) and has to create the thumbnails and
> places them in separate directories.

I wrote my own that does much of the same. What's nice about creating static content is that it can be burned to a CD, then sent off to mom or dad. All they have to do is open the index.html on the disc and start browsing your images.

On the server side, once the pages and thumbs are generated, it's much faster, naturally.

I was thinking of rewriting this though under Zend Framework. I'd just utilize the included caching capabilities with a very long ttl.





Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 14:00:21 -0700
From: Florin Andrei To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
Reply-To: svlug@lists.svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] alternatives to Gallery ?

Thanks everyone for suggestions! If you have any other ideas, please post.

Drew Bertola wrote:

> I wrote my own that does much of the same. What's nice about creating
> static content is that it can be burned to a CD, then sent off to mom or
> dad. All they have to do is open the index.html on the disc and start
> browsing your images.

That's a plus.

What I like about Gallery is that it's pretty much point and click. I need to setup a separate Gallery for my wife and, while she's smart, she's not a technical person. Scripts are OK, I guess, if they're really simple to use.

Second good point for G2 is that the project is huge, has a big community, it interoperates with Drupal and stuff like that (or they plan to?). It has lots of plugins, and for stuff like "generate a CD for mom" there's definitely a plugin somewhere that you can just install and use.

A pet peeve is that Gallery (and most other applications like that) do not seem to make sense from an interface design perspective. I want to dedicate a lot of screen real estate for the pictures, and keep everything else at a minimum. Navigation elements should just "make sense" (a la Apple) and be non-intrusive and stay the heck out of the way.

What do you mean "scroll down each time after clicking Next in order to see the entire image"? Are you crazy? I want to be able to just click Next-Next-Next and not move the mouse at all! So then the portion above the image should be as slim as possible, so as to not obscure the bottom part of the image.

And what's the deal with the tiny non-obvious navigation controls? If my 5 year old kid cannot figure it out in 10 seconds, it's basically worthless.

I hacked Gallery's Matrix theme a bit, in a bid to make it comply with at least some of the requirements above...

http://florin.myip.org/gallery2/main.php

...and it worked fine for a long time, but then G2 broke (no thumbnails anymore, but normal pictures are OK, Edit Album doesn't work anymore, no Apache errors, no SELinux messages - this is really screwed up) after upgrading the OS so I'm not sure how much you can figure out by just looking at it. Just imagine it still has thumbnails. :-/

I don't want to waste time fixing the damn thing. I'd rather just install something else, or reinstall G2 from scratch. But that means I need to rebuild all the albums. :-(

Hm, maybe I should just sign up with Flickr? :-)





Apache::Gallery
http://apachegallery.dk/

Apache::Gallery is a mod_perl handler that sits on top of your DocumentRoot and creates an image gallery of the files and directories there. It creates an thumbnail index of each directory and allows viewing of pictures in different resolutions. Pictures are resized on the fly and cached.

Pro & Cons: Ideal for simple screenshot albums if you don't need user comments, view counts, ratings and other extras. Does not fit if your albums contain pictures of many sizes and you want to show the actual size of each one of them.

Coded in Perl by Michael Legart. Artistic Licence.





fastcgi-gallery
http://platon.sk/projects/main_page.php?project_id=13

fastcgi-gallery is a Web gallery based on Apache::Gallery, but is hacked for usage with Perl FastCGI scripts. Therefore, this version is about 10x quicker (with cache turned on) than Apache::Gallery. With the best template system (Template-Toolkit) you can customize your gallery as you wish; for example, you can create a multi-language gallery. A database is not used; everything is stored in files. Output and generated thumbnails are cached for speed optimization.

Coded in Perl by "rajo". GNU GPL.





phpAlbum
http://www.phpalbum.net/

phpAlbum.net is an open source PHP script which allows you to create your personal Photo Album / Gallery in just a seconds. All you need is a web space with FTP access. No database is needed. After a few clicks with our phpAlubm.net Installer you are ready to upload your photos, create new directories /galleries, and use your photo album.

These are the features which phpAlbum.net offers you:

Coded in PHP by Patrik Jakab. GNU GPL.





PHP Album aka phpimagealbum
http://phpimagealbum.sourceforge.net/

This project was registered on SourceForge.net on Aug 7, 2008, and is described by the project team as follows: PHP Album is a light and easy to use and administrate web album. v0.7.0 is the first public relase (released under GNU AGPL) Important: This release is NOT yet stable release! If you want a stable release, please wait for v1.0.0. Current version 0.7.1

Coded in PHP by Aki Makinen. GNU GPL.





albumshaper
http://albumshaper.sourceforge.net/

Album Shaper strives to be the most friendly, easy to use, open source application for organizing, annotating, framing, enhancing, stylizing, and sharing your digital photos. Album Shaper embraces open formats like XML, JPEG, and XSLT, while supporting Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix users who speak a multitude of languages around the world.

Coded in C++ using the Qt graphics toolkit by Will Stokes. GNU GPL.