Online Photography Display System

April 14, 2009 1:06 PM

I'm planning to post photographs to my own website as a travelogue. I'm looking for an eye-catching interface that is easy to use and maintain. What would you recommend?

I'm not interested in one of the photo sharing sites like Flickr. This will be on my own site. I've seen many of the Flash interfaces and photo-a-day blog types. Some seem to work fairly well, but others just aren't very viewer-friendly. Free obviously is best, but I don't mind spending something to get a nice, pleasant looking product. I am somewhat computer savvy, so I can probably deal with setup and configuration. In your experience, or from what you have observed, what is best? Thanks for your help.

posted by netbros to media & arts (12 comments total)

SimpleViewer is pretty nice. The same company has some other interfaces available.

SlideShowPro is very customizable. This is something I just started using, but it's really very nice when paired with their Director product. They aren't free, but the cost is definitely reasonable. SSP is a flash file that you can embed on your site. It can either read an XML file and load pictures from a directory, or it can be paired with SlideShowPro Director and get its pictures from that. Director can be either hosted on your own site, or you can buy it as a service from the company and point your SSP files to that.
posted by odinsdream at 1:13 PM on April 14

I use ZenPhoto. It's really simple, clean looking, free and lightweight. I like it, but... YMMV, depending on what you want to do specifically.
posted by wrok at 1:27 PM on April 14

JAlbum.net
You get the software to construct the album with many features.
Also space for the album (depending on size).
posted by Drasher at 1:37 PM on April 14

Mac or PC? iPhoto exports some fairly nice looking and easily navigatable web sites. IIRC, Picasa does also.
posted by wongcorgi at 1:44 PM on April 14

For static albums I second JAlbum. For dynamic albums, ZenPhoto is better.
posted by devnull at 2:27 PM on April 14

Unfortunately, I don' t know which interface they use, but I do find the 'look and feel' of antartic fox very good, and it really makes the pictures the centre of the site.
posted by PaulZ at 2:30 PM on April 14

Mac or PC?

I am working with Windows Vista SP1.
posted by netbros at 2:48 PM on April 14

I've used the Gallery project, both Gallery1 and Gallery2, with great success. Both are PHP based, Gallery2 uses mySQL as well. It's an active project that is well maintained with a decent community and lots of options and plugins. It's also Open Source. You can also embed it inside some Content Management Systems, like Joomla, Mambo, or Droopal - you can check out the interface on my site if you would like (It's embedded in Joomla in this case, which gives it the side menu).
posted by GJSchaller at 3:03 PM on April 14

Doug Bowman's photo gallery template looks pretty nice. However, it requires a Moveable Type blog and quite a bit of configuration to get it going, if you're up for that.
posted by teg at 3:26 PM on April 14

I also like SimpleViewer, but it can occasionally be a PITA.

You say you don't want to use Flickr, but it has an excellent API and photo management tools, and others have made many, many tools that work with it. Some of these will let you post your flickr pics seamlessly on your own website (SimpleViewer-like).

In fact, this question has inspired me to try switching my gf's modeling site from SimpleViewer to FlickrViewer (demo).
posted by coolguymichael at 12:38 PM on April 15

Thanks for all the tips everyone. I will follow-up when I have something in place.
posted by netbros at 10:19 AM on April 20

I chose to use SimpleViewer. I found it extremely easy to setup, I'm pleased with the results, and will continue using it for future projects. And you can't beat the free price. For those with an interest in seeing the result, check here and here and here. Thanks again to everyone for the suggestions.
posted by netbros at 3:48 PM on April 30