Online Galleries we use, the good and bad and the cost!

We're looking at providing galleries. The first thing an assessment of needs for storage of all posted images. Then the next stage will be Personal Portfolios with just your very best. That is just the beginning.

For now, tell us what system you use right now for having on line galleries. If you use several then describe each separately.

1. hosting service name:
   
2. cost/space/features:
   
3. benefits:
   
4. features they don't provide that you want:

We'd like to know what you might like better than you have!

Asher

Feel free to PM me if you really want to say a lot more!

Why not just buy something like Photopost or use the free Coppermine? I use Photopost integrated into my forum and it works fine and I have full control over how it looks etc.

Steve Saunders said:

Why not just buy something like Photopost or use the free Coppermine? I use Photopost integrated into my forum and it works fine and I have full control over how it looks etc.

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Hi Steve,

Thanks for adding your own experience.

I like the navigation buttons that respond like real electronic push buttons and sequential dates and the color coding of St Patricks day! Your website is so easy to follow.

I will look at Photopost and coppermine. I expect these software programs have "next" and "bprevious" arrows or slide shows and purchase options if one wishes?

What would you like to have here in OPF in addition to what we already have?

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

For now, tell us what system you use right now for having on line galleries.

Click to expand...

Currently, for posting at OPF, I use the (limited) free webspace that comes with my ISP account (which also means I have to hold back at posting images/samples). I'll have to balance the available space between my technical pages and (amongst others, OPF) images.

We'd like to know what you might like better than you have!

Click to expand...

To maintain contingency, my guess is that you wouldn't need to host more than 'some+' upload space for images.

Bart

Bart, how much would you say per person on average?

Half the people don't even post, they just lurk!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Bart, how much would you say per person on average?

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Well, that's the question. When I look at my personal posting volume, and I've been holding back, I currently have maybe 10-20MB mostly dedicated to OPF (and it can only grow). As you said, most members don't post images, and then there are active posters.

Maybe you could start by making an assumption; 50% of the members post images; 85% of those (42.5% of total) would over time get by with 30MB, the remaining 15% hard core posters (7.5% of total) might require 500MB over time. If you go with these numbers, that would give (0.425*30+0.075*500=) 50.25MB per member. For starters you could assume 1/10th of that to see if the percentages change by offering the possibility of uploading.

I don't know which analytical possibilities the board's software offers, but you may be able to fine-tune the percentages and maybe the usage classes a bit. Making a model is so much easier if you have actual statistics, and their progression over time makes planning a lot easier. And of course the financial implications also matter, as do the number of dead links and the (reduced) usability experience.

Bart

Yes Bart,

We need to make some informed guesses/.estimations and then track use. We think we might be able to track posting of images over time until now. Certainly we should be ble to do this from the time of intitiating storage of posted images. The downside is that with each new version of vBulletin software we may need to update any plugins.

Anyway, as a start, perhaps 5MB x2000 people would cover us. That's just 10 GB.

What I'd like to know is what else people might like to see.

Asher

For info
the folder that contains about 70% of my images posted in OPF is 97 Mb…

Thanks, Nicolas,

That is helpful! This is an area we need to do perfectly if we do it at all.

Asher

I host about 2Gb of images on Linux shared host. I've tried many service providers and to be honest unless you go dedicated you end up with downtime or server overload at some point. Hence dedicated will be my next (and imminent) move!

As for what to use to organise your images online, it really depends what you want out of it.

I prefer to organise my images using a MySQL database, I also wanted shopping cart facilities. This limits what you can uses in a Linux enviroment, Gallery (1 or 2) is probably the most widely used and also well developed app.

Here's a feature list:

Basic Photo Album features:

• Easy to create Photo Albums
• Easy ways to add Photos, e.g. with Drag and Drop Tools
• Photo and Album Administration and Editing
• Auto-Generation of Thumbnails and Resized Images
• Handles Many Image Formats

Comprehensive Features:

• Easy Installation and Upgrades
• 100% Multi-User Ready
• User and Group Management
• Themeable - Change the Look and Feel by Switching Themes. Code and Presentation are Separated.
• Comprehensive Permission Management (Album and Item Level)
• Extensible - Add / remove Features by Installing 'modules' and Change the Look by Switching 'themes'
• Over 25 Integrations into CMS, Portal, Forum, Blog Software and other Systems
• Internationalized - Over 20 Mostly Complete Translations (and Many More Less Complete Translations)
• Community Building Features (User-Albums, Comments, User Self-Registration, ...)
• Scalable - Manage Over a Million Items and Thousands of Users, set group or individual quotas
• Image Firewall (Downloads are Protected Through Application-Level Permissions)
• Secure - Gallery has been audited by several core developers and by paid professionals for application security
• Portable - Gallery runs on any webserver with PHP 4 or PHP 5 and with a wide variety of database servers
• Multimedia Ready - Watch Streaming Videos, Listen to Music, ...
• Unlimited Number of Sub-Album Levels

Prior to closing EOSpix.com earlier this year, l provided ~200 user galleries using ~10Gb, it was breeze to administrate and I embedded into bbforum to reduce image post duplication.

I now user the latest version of gallery 2 embedded in wordpress for my personal site and it works well, although the downside is speed on a shared host.

Here's a link to demo site providing access to the myriad of styles available.

As for user space allocation, i'd also suggest 5Mb quota for starters and either offer upgrades based on level of OPF contribution or through donations.

Forgot to mention.....Its free!

Hi Asher,

I use DeviantArt (http://www.deviantart.com) to host most of my images, and here is my experience:

The good:
- Subdued, sophisticated user interface
- The whole 'friends' system, where you can 'watch' other people's work, etc.

The bad:
- Categorisation (though a better, 'tags'-based categorisation would be useful)
- Inability to post "photo essays" or series. I think this is essential.
- Romanian teenagers that comment on your photos, and then end up
filling the comments page with long, personal conversations between one another

I also think it's important that a gallery system ensure that the URLs to images stay constant over time, as people who rely on them (e.g. to embed them in forum posts) don't want the images disappearing
in a years' time. I hate finding interesting discussions with missing images.

I know there are many gallery systems out there, but if you ever feel you need to custom-design
something (in terms of unique features not available elsewhere, etc) I'm your man