Please help with website design photo display application

I'm a web designer. However, I have never designed a site to display my own work because I just don't have the time.

However, I have reached my limit of patience with pbase that has all but fallen apart in performance and support, so it's time to create one of my own.

Any recommendations on which photo display package works best? (Note: I utilize standard unix/linix hosts; and open source (as in free) would be prefered - but not mandatory.)

Thanks, /Dan

Coppermine or 4images for bigger galleries - both have strengths and weaknesses - both are hard to make "attractive" without a lot of scripting skill. Even so, they tend to look more functional.

Gallery2 is a great program and visually looks even better, but it has a serious issue with sucking up server CPU, which they apparently refuse to really acknowledge. My webshost looked at it for me and he confirmed that while it loads fast, server CPU was up at 90% useage just from refreshing the gallery several times in a few tabs. That's not acceptable to me thus I won't use it. For small galleries it's probably fine, but if you're with a shared host or running your own small server it could be a problem if you have a more than 10-20 users or so on at same time.

If a big gallery isn't your cup of tea, do a Google for "photo blog" software - pixelpost is popular. They're very simple programs but do the job.

CrazyPuma wrote in post #2862722
Coppermine or 4images for bigger galleries - both have strengths and weaknesses - both are hard to make "attractive" without a lot of scripting skill. Even so, they tend to look more functional.

Gallery2 is a great program and visually looks even better, but it has a serious issue with sucking up server CPU, which they apparently refuse to really acknowledge. My webshost looked at it for me and he confirmed that while it loads fast, server CPU was up at 90% useage just from refreshing the gallery several times in a few tabs. That's not acceptable to me thus I won't use it. For small galleries it's probably fine, but if you're with a shared host or running your own small server it could be a problem if you have a more than 10-20 users or so on at same time.

If a big gallery isn't your cup of tea, do a Google for "photo blog" software - pixelpost is popular. They're very simple programs but do the job.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I am placing a priority on site appearance as opposed to the ability to handle tens of thousands of photos, which I'll never have.

Because photography is inherently a visual medium, to me presentation is a priority. That is the reason I continue to stick with pbase thru all its problems - its flexibility in customizing pages.

I'll look into your recommendations. Thanks again. /Dan

This site might be useful - under CMS Demo Menu/ImageGalleries it lists a lot of the popular programs - plus browsers post ratings/opinion comments.

http://www.opensourcec​ms.com/index.php

I recently went searching for similar - I also like presentation more, but I ended up with the gallery vs. blog programs because it fits my current needs - just sharing lots of pictures - more. If I ever want/have the photos to need more of a portfolio/nice visual look I'll go back to some of the photo blogs and see what version they're on.

CrazyPuma wrote in post #2864561
This site might be useful - under CMS Demo Menu/ImageGalleries it lists a lot of the popular programs - plus browsers post ratings/opinion comments.

http://www.opensourcec​ms.com/index.php

I recently went searching for similar - I also like presentation more, but I ended up with the gallery vs. blog programs because it fits my current needs - just sharing lots of pictures - more. If I ever want/have the photos to need more of a portfolio/nice visual look I'll go back to some of the photo blogs and see what version they're on.

Thanks. That's another great link. I've started to review the various options. One thing I have found about open source, tho, is that choosing a popular, well-known package is important. Because you have no customer support, you can only rely on the open source community for answers and if you choose and obscure, little-used option you're left without any support whatsoever.

My current host employs cPanel and 4Images, Coppermine, and Gallery are on the auto-install menu, so script/sql implementation should be easy.

I just built an e-commerce/shopping cart system for a company. I used zencart. It's too bad somebody doesn't make a template for zencart to display and sell photographs. If they did, it would be a competition killer. As it stands now, zencart is a great cart but sucks at displaying images. /Dan

Agreed about the program support issue. Not only for answers, but for user mods/plugins that might have a feature you want but isn't included with the original default install.

CannedHeat wrote in post #2869893
I just built an e-commerce/shopping cart system for a company. I used zencart. It's too bad somebody doesn't make a template for zencart to display and sell photographs. If they did, it would be a competition killer. As it stands now, zencart is a great cart but sucks at displaying images. /Dan

Gallery2 has a plugin for zen cart and several other photo printers that allow people to order prints direct from your gallery.