What I want versus what I can do: learning EE

[elektrik]

Hi all,

I'm a new user to the board, and new to high(er)-end coding and website design/development. So I have a few questions and concerns that I hope people can either answer or point me in the right direction of correct answers.

Until now, I've managed my website shots with JAlbum ( http://www.jalbum.net ), which is a generator of static html galleries and uses BeanShell scripting and template files, etc. I managed to develop a look and feel of a gallery that aesthetically, is pretty much what I want. I've run this site on webspace provided by my former university, with limited disk space and server-side resources. But now the number of shots has grown to such a size that I need to trade up to my own domain and webhosting service, and from what I've read, EE is the closest thing to what I'm looking for to generate these galleries.

My old galleries are located here, for reference: http://www.nd.edu/~mfeldman/ (http://www.nd.edu/%7Emfeldman/)

So with almost complete ignorance, I have a few questions and issues to throw to the board in my quest for help and comments.

1. Gallery/photo file management (the most important issue to me)
- How do I create and manage a local database of all my shots that fits into the MySQL architecture?
(I want to this in bulk locally, rather than one-by-one on a GUI of the web (see below). FYI, I’m a PC user.)
- Where can I keep track of what text goes with each image?
(I want each picture to have its own text info included on its page: date, location, keywords, other comments)
- How do I manage complex categorization? I have several distinct galleries (ex. trips abroad) with their own set/order of photos, but some shots that I want to span galleries (ex. many visits to Paris, outdoor markets, etc.).

2. Image handling
- I want only one size image shown and one size thumbnail. I want to create my images once in Photoshop with appropriate processing, upload them to the server and have EE deal with them, rather than process/resize/sharpen on the fly with ImageMagick. I know this removes a large chunk of the features EE offers to site visitors, but I want to keep control of my content :) .

3. Purchasing
- I dream of incorporating a PayPal shopping cart and the ability to select pictures for purchase, along with options for sizes, finish, etc.


There are more things I’m struggling with, but this is the info I need to get off the ground and start building my new site.

Thanks in advance for your patience, and many thanks to Pekka for the hard work of developing this software, these forums, and answering questions!

Matt

[EricKonieczny]

EE can do all the things you have asked for.


You will need to purchase a domain name, and a hoting package through a Hosting Company.


1 . Most of what you have asked for is already in EE, and other things can be managed, like one photo in many galleries using Keywords and or placing it in many galleries.

As for the innof on each picture, that is with the standard GUI that is the backend of EE.


As for coding Paypal and such, if you can dream it, it can be coded.

Good Luck stick around. With your previous skills, it should be a snap. Make sure you install version 1.5 now, and then use the update very soon when Pekka completes it. We are all waiting patiently.

[Oceanwatcher]

Here is what I do:

For local handling and archiving, I use Fotostation. It has all the categorization you need. Searching, editing of captions, batch adding of information is a breeze. The information is added to each picture in the IPTC fields. Fotostation has a special mode for working together with PS.

After testing several online galleries, I concluded that EE has the best support and display of IPTC and EXIF info of the "do it yourself" galleries. There are services like Flickr that do a nice job, but I wanted something on my own domain,

This mean that when you upload to EE, the information you have entered in Fotostation locally, does not need to be entered again. It is promptly displayed. And you can set EE to handle the pictures exactly the way you want.

This is the way I like to work. And this is what I understand you were looking for...

[UncleDoug]

b]1. Gallery/photo file management[/b] (the most important issue to me)
- How do I create and manage a local database of all my shots that fits into the MySQL architecture?
(I want to this in bulk locally, rather than one-by-one on a GUI of the web (see below). FYI, I’m a PC user.)
- Where can I keep track of what text goes with each image?
(I want each picture to have its own text info included on its page: date, location, keywords, other comments)
- How do I manage complex categorization? I have several distinct galleries (ex. trips abroad) with their own set/order of photos, but some shots that I want to span galleries (ex. many visits to Paris, outdoor markets, etc.).


I use iView Media Pro and folder heirarchy to manage my "in-house" version of what is posted to EE. One folder per gallery. iView contains all textual content to ref.

At one point I had a mirror of my site running on my PowerBook for this purpose, but the PB died.... :(



2. Image handling
- I want only one size image shown and one size thumbnail. I want to create my images once in Photoshop with appropriate processing, upload them to the server and have EE deal with them, rather than process/resize/sharpen on the fly with ImageMagick. I know this removes a large chunk of the features EE offers to site visitors, but I want to keep control of my content :) .


All of this is easy in the admin side. ImageMagic may still create your thumbs for you, but you can choose the size and how they are displayed. ImageMagic does not have to do anything to the full size image.



3. Purchasing
- I dream of incorporating a PayPal shopping cart and the ability to select pictures for purchase, along with options for sizes, finish, etc.


There is support for PayPal. I played with it a bit, but not seriously. I have seen a few sites with EE/PayPal and they seem to work fine.
The options you want could be done. but I don't want to speculate as to what would realy need to be done.



There are more things I’m struggling with, but this is the info I need to get off the ground and start building my new site.

Thanks in advance for your patience, and many thanks to Pekka for the hard work of developing this software, these forums, and answering questions!

Matt


Do you have EE installed anywhere where you can test it?
I'd highly recommend testing it out, trying what you have described above, and we will be more than happy to help you through your set up.

EE is very flexible. All things being equal, this is one of the most user (front and back end) friendly web galleries out there.

[UncleDoug]

The reply I just posted did not register as a new post...

This has happened to me before.

If I'm not mistaken I told CDS about this issue when it happened the last time.

Both times it was when I was using Safari Version 2.0 (412.2.2)

Just a heads up!

[Pekka]

The reply I just posted did not register as a new post...

This has happened to me before.

If I'm not mistaken I told CDS about this issue when it happened the last time.

Both times it was when I was using Safari Version 2.0 (412.2.2)

Just a heads up!

Thanks, there are dropout and other issues with this server, a new server is ready for the forums and I'll move it there in couple of days.

Also, some problems with posting can be remedied by clearing browser cache (to force it load Javascript code again).

[elektrik]

Hi everyone,

Many thanks for the helpful comments above. I've heard of (and downloaded) iView MediaPro and will test it out tonight. I've also heard about Cumulus and am looking to test drive that one. Anybody know it? Fotostation is new on me, and I'll look into it, too.

First things first, I do need to buy hosting (I just bought the domain name). I've certainly read a lot of good things about Lunar Pages and am likely to host there as it seems they're EE-friendly and offer what I'm interested in.

Regarding image-specific text handling, I appreciate the comments about adding it as EXIF/IPTC rather than a separate file merged into a database. The whole EXIF concept was off my radar as I don't shoot with digital eqipment and have never cared to enter/record all that info for display, but it certainly serves a purpose now.

So I look forward to getting to know more about this stuff in the days and weeks to come. I'm sure I'll have more questions to put to the forum.

Thanks all,
E