Running an community photo site?

November 25, 2007 10:33 PM

I'm thinking about launching a web project where people can add text and photos related to public space art. How do I go about it? Got any personal experiences?

I'm looking for a CMS solution that allows me to create web pages for physical locations and the art at those places. People should be able to register and then add photos of the locations and the art. Metadata about the photos is important as it will be used to browse for the photos in various ways.

Usually, I would just get started with Drupal and make the best out of it, but I'm also interested in alternative approaches and more specific Drupal setups and modules.

So much for the technical aspects on the project. I'm equally curious about the human aspects of running a, well, community photo site. Recommendations and tips are gladly accepted.

Tons of work? No doubt. But this seems like a fun and challenging project that could end up being very useful for lots for people.

posted by Foci for Analysis to computers & internet (6 comments total)

That seems like something that would be better suited to a custom job than hacking away at Drupal. This is the type of thing RoR got tons and tons of press for when it first hit; maybe someone up on that could whip it up pretty fast. Essentially you just have a database with locations and images.. the spatial component is pretty trivial, unless you want to be doing more than you let on.
posted by devilsbrigade at 11:18 PM on November 25, 2007

I absolutely do not want to rain on your parade, but wouldn't Flickr (et al) be better suited for this? It has integrated users, metadata, mapping, etc.

No? Perhaps I'm not sure what sorts of metadata you're looking at storing.
posted by unixrat at 11:58 PM on November 25, 2007

My friend John did something kind of like this in 2005 (Found City), thought it might be worth you looking at. He built it ground-up, integrated with Google Maps.
posted by lia at 11:58 PM on November 25, 2007

devilsbrigade: This is the type of thing RoR got tons and tons of press for when it first hit; maybe someone up on that could whip it up pretty fast.

I'm not sure that custom solutions or RoR are needed because this project shouldn't be that difficult to implement. Also, I'm pretty restricted by my hosting, which doesn't support RoR. Thanks for the suggestion, though.



unixrat: wouldn't Flickr (et al) be better suited for this? It has integrated users, metadata, mapping, etc.

Actually, there are tons of useful and relevant photos on Flickr, but I find Flickr too limiting when it comes to navigation, themes, etc. Also, I'm not a photographer so my idea is to contact people who are and: encourage them to join the project, get permission to use their photos (when I put it like that it suddenly sounds wrong...). As for the metadata, I was mostly thinking about ways of describing the locations/photos and the way they are related to each other (I'm being vague on purpose to avoid getting attached to any particular tech/design).



lia: My friend John did something kind of like this in 2005 (Found City), thought it might be worth you looking at. He built it ground-up, integrated with Google Maps.

It's not exactly what I had in mind, but I didn't even thought about map integration, which sounds like a really nice idea. Thanks!



I feel like I've left out some important info, but I've got teh cold and really need to date my pillow, so I'll have to come back later.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:28 AM on November 26, 2007

this seems like the perfect thing for a gallery installation. I just installed it and it seems really nice and extensible
posted by DJWeezy at 5:12 AM on November 26, 2007

...but what about using flickr for image hosting and geolocation info, and the flickr api to integrate existing metadata with the additional interconnections you're talking about and with your own site design?
posted by myrrh at 5:41 PM on November 27, 2007