Help me not have to write this myself.

June 16, 2006 7:21 PM

Is there anything less awful than Gallery for photo gallery software?

I've been using Gallery for a couple years and it's driving me crazy. I don't want to think in a strict hierarchy, I want tags.

Tags, multi-tag queries, customizability (sizes, view order, colors, etc), and a convenient uploading / resizing system are what I want. I'd love the ability to reorganize without breaking old URLs with gallery, but with tags it doesn't matter so much.

I don't care about a lot of gallery's features; comments, email tracking changes,

I've looked around, I've asked around, I've considered writing this myself. I'd rather pay $100 than write it myself though, so don't rule out not-free software.

Please don't suggest services; I want to host my pictures myself.

posted by aubilenon to computers & internet (15 comments total)

I think you've answered your own question already.
posted by cellphone at 7:27 PM on June 16, 2006

If it doesn't exist and you do write it yourself, please post it to projects. I want this too.
posted by TTIKTDA at 7:27 PM on June 16, 2006

cellphone: I did? could you summarize my answer, because I can't see it from this side of things.
posted by aubilenon at 7:30 PM on June 16, 2006

Just a joke about the lack of decent photo gallery scripts out there. What version of Gallery are you using?
posted by cellphone at 7:47 PM on June 16, 2006

I'm using Gallery 1, but 2 still doesn't support tags, which is my primary complaint.
posted by aubilenon at 7:52 PM on June 16, 2006

ExpressionEngine, a blogging CMS, comes with a photo gallery in the personal license edition.

They have a 30 day demo for $10, which counts against a later purchase.

More specific questions about it ? Ask in the pre-sales forum.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:54 PM on June 16, 2006

Oh yeah, the personal license costs $100.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:55 PM on June 16, 2006

Stop Design set up some photo gallery templates you could use or adapt for your own customizations. And the MT 3.3, the newest version currently in beta but only a week or so from being released, supports tags as well as categories.
posted by rhapsodie at 8:00 PM on June 16, 2006

I don't know if it has tags, but have you checked out Coppermine? It seems fairly full featured.
posted by lekvar at 8:22 PM on June 16, 2006

Brandon Blatcher: Okay, I asked in the ExpressionEngine forum. They said "nope, it doesn't use tags to sort photos", which is my main source of dissatisfaction with Gallery. I'm also wary of a gallery which is basically a checklist item as far the developer is concerned.

lekvar: Coppermine has keywords, which seem close and maybe I could bend them into doing what I want. But it still primarily thinks of things as being hierarchical.

Keep the suggestions coming, folks! I had not found either of these in my previous search. Hopefully the next one will be exactly what I want! :D
posted by aubilenon at 8:44 PM on June 16, 2006

ZenPhoto is pretty good. Though it doesn't do everything you want.

(Or everything I want: they've been promising sub-album support for months and months after finally realising that all the people requesting it weren't crazy. Dicks.)
posted by The Monkey at 9:04 PM on June 16, 2006

you might try building on these plug-ins for Wordpress: Taggerati or Ultimate Tag Warrior. If you can get that working the way you like, there are lots of Wordpress Gallery extensions, I believe.
posted by macinchik at 9:06 PM on June 16, 2006

I like folderblog. It's simple, clean, and file-based so you don't need to run a database. Uploading is convenient. It doesn't have tags exactly; it has categories, but you can add each photo to multiple categories so they're effectively the same.

The downsides: it doesn't do resizing, doesn't have multiple sizing, and the categories aren't exactly tags.
posted by beerbajay at 2:54 AM on June 17, 2006 [1 favorite]

You can press the file system into service to do tagging. Each tag is a directory full of links to all the photos that have that tag.

I use this trick to organize my own photos using Windows Explorer (the links are just Windows shortcuts in this case) because I hate every piece of personal photo-organizing software I've ever used.

You might be able to do something similar server-side, using symlinks.
posted by flabdablet at 7:41 AM on June 17, 2006

I use Arles Image Web Page Generator for all of my web design clients who want a gallery. Highly recommended.
posted by fvox13 at 7:56 PM on June 18, 2006