What do you use to display your photos on your site?

I'm thinking about trying to start selling templates, and am looking to design for photographers but I want to build a few for my portfolio first. On my site I have an html/css site that has galleries created with the photoshop web gallery script/automation which works fairly well. I've used JAlbum, but I actually prefer the simplicity of the gallery photoshop generates, and it is a lot easier to use workflow wise. So what I'm wondering is what do you use to display your photos?

1. I use a service such as smugmug, zenfolio, etc where I go to their site and upload the photos and it makes the gallery for me. This is my main site.

2. I have an html/css (no flash) template and I use some service to make a gallery of my photos (jalbum, etc.) and then upload that in my site.

3. I have an html/css site and have a custom gallery, so I save each picture and then edit the html code to include links to all of these photos, or display them, etc.

4. I have a flash site and use a service.

5. I have a flash site and have to go in and edit the .fla every time I want to include a photo.

I'm mainly interested in those of you that have a custom site, maybe like bludomain. Say you want to add three photos. Do you have to go into the .fla and add them in? Do you just have to go into the .html? Is there some other way of adding the photos that I'm not aware of (maybe it automatically detects them in the folder?)

Thanks... at this point I can make a pretty decent template, I am just not sure how templates like bludomain integrate the galleries. Adding each photo one at a time would be a huge pain. Maybe they use some software/code to automate this.

I'm on Option 3.5. HTML/CSS site with Flash Gallery.. Add the image and thumbnail to server and update XML file. (That's for the gallery.) For my prints page it's just HTML.

I've tried Java etc.. meh too slow! a bit buggy. HTML for my gallery required too much user interaction. My flash just now i find the thumbnails and images too small though.

I'm in category #2, using Jalbum. Key for me is not only the gallery, but the ability to take orders. JAlbum's ability to be customized is pretty fantastic in this way.

Dave

Since I only need one gallery at this point, I just use a simpleviewer slideshow. I have a custom flash site where I've defined the slideshow. When I want to update the portfolio, I just edit my portfolio in Lightroom, re-export it as a simpleviewer slideshow using the template I set up to match my site (and the same name as the original), and reupload it to my server. It's automatically replaced in my site. Basically, Lightroom is my CMS and I just do the uploading manually.

I'm #1 with a twist.

My main page is a WordPress blog that I post photography and other stuff. As I shoot a lot of events I want to keep things fresh but my gallery is smugmug.

Seems to work pretty well.

#2 for me - I made a simple html/css startpage and use JAlbum (slightly modified template) for galleries.

2.

Selfmade template, Simpleviewer as a gallery.

3 I guess. I add thumbnails to my site, and there are viewed simply in lightbox2. (nicer then a usual pop up).

I have an html/css site but I use Simple Viewer Flash as gallery. threw in some php code (used it as an incentive to learn php actually) and connected it to a db so i can be even lazier with updates as opposed to having to edit the html each and every time.

slappy sam wrote in post #6637460
2. I have an html/css (no flash) template and I use some service to make a gallery of my photos (jalbum, etc.) and then upload that in my site.

That. Flash annoys me. I typically export galleries from Lightroom (and before that, I'd generate web photo galleries from Photoshop 7.0). I then run a Perl script to process each HTML file that's generated and convert it into a PHP file with the usual includes for headers, footers, and other such for my overall site. That way all the galleries actually look like they're part of the site.

5.Flash can load jpg images from the srver , so there is no need to edit the fla.

You can use naming conventions for the jpg so flash can tell which one is a thumbnail and i what order to load.

With a simple php script you can read whats in a folder and pass the info to Flash.

pellepiano wrote in post #6666747
5.Flash can load jpg images from the srver , so there is no need to edit the fla.

You can use naming conventions for the jpg so flash can tell which one is a thumbnail and i what order to load.

With a simple php script you can read whats in a folder and pass the info to Flash.

Yeah, thats what I thought, just have to learn some php. Cool I will work on that as this sounds like the best solution.

slappy sam wrote in post #6667284
Yeah, thats what I thought, just have to learn some php. Cool I will work on that as this sounds like the best solution.

Or you can use one of the galleries that have already been written to do this stuff, if you don't feel like learning it all. I'm very happy with a couple of the galleries from FlashNifties (http://www.flashniftie​s.com/) and they're quite cheap (compared to developing it all yourself)

Dave

Yes, it can take a while to write this stuff yourself. But if you want a simple php script, you can use this one.
It returns all files in a folder and makes variables of all it finds ( file1=bridge.jpg&file2​=birthday.jpg and so on ). Its a very small but effective script.

<?php
import_request_variabl​es("gP","rvar_");
$dir ="/home/sitename/blabl​a/images/";


$i=1;
// Open a known directory, and proceed to read its contents
if (is_dir($dir)) {
if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
echo "file" .$i. "=" .$file. "&";
$i++;
}
closedir($dh);
}
}
?>

SlideshowPro is embedded in my sql/php/css/html website. To edit the Slideshow I can either do it in Lightroom via the Web module, or I can FTP the images then edit the xml file.