I had no idea that when I set out to implement a photo gallery on this site, that it was going to be one heck of an endeavor. Not even just with the implementation and adding all of the pictures, but with the decision of which gallery I was going to use! I had posted previously about some of the galleries I was toying with, and the end result was that I wasn’t happen with any of them. So I continued my search, hoping that I would stumble upon a relatively unknown and magical site that would have just the solution I was looking for. Lo and behold, that’s pretty much what happened.
There were several requirements that I wanted my gallery to meet, and they were:
- To easily integrate the gallery layout into my WordPress theme and design
- To provide the ability to leave comments on individual pictures
- The use of a database for comments, picture information, and gallery options
- An easy to use and intuitive folder-like structure for organizing and storing albums and photos
- Automatic thumbnail and preview image generation
- The ability to greatly and easily customize the layout and design of the gallery
I had mentioned that I had a fair amount of difficulty with Gallery2, and I did, but I decided to give the original Gallery a shot, just in case it was a lot different then it’s baby brother. I really like a lot of the features that are available in Gallery, and the fact that it is a lot smaller in overall size and in the amount of files that are required to upload compared to Gallery2. Unfortunately, as I soon found out, it is virtually impossible to integrate Gallery into a WordPress theme, without a lot of extra code hacking. Sure, some appear to have succeeded, but if you look closely at their gallery’s source, there are problems that make it impossible for a site to validate properly (such as two </head>s). I also didn’t particularly care for having to heavily alter the code of any software package, which would only make future upgrades a major headache.
So I set off on my quest to find this perfect gallery, and as it turns out, I was definitely not the only person interested in this kind of software. There were many discussions around the net regarding finding the perfect gallery. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I stumbled upon the Solano Systems, LLC web site, the home of Plogger. I was impressed with what I saw and read, so I downloaded the software and installed it on my server. Though it’s only in beta version, this thing looks promising. I also noticed in the discussions on the Plogger site that Ryan Duff, a WordPress user and hacker, has gotten involved in developing Plogger towards integration with WordPress. I’m very excited about this effort, and can’t wait for an updated version to be released.
So, for now, my gallery will remain hidden, while I perform more testing and hack things more to my liking. If you are interested in a simple, effective, and elegant solution for a gallery on your site, I recommend giving Plogger a try. If you are a user of any of the gallery packages I tried and didn’t like, but want to share some tips on how you made it work for you, please leave a note below.
February 3rd, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Their support doesn’t seem very enthusiastic or knowledgeable and their control panel is hard to use and doesn’t have many features.
December 21st, 2006 at 5:22 pm
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Scott