# Building an online gallery website



## Mishel (Jul 24, 2010)

I need your help. I want to create a new website and present my photos and videos. I have decided to use Wordpress blog platform as the base of my website, but I need to know what plugins/software are available for batch uploading a bunch of picture, watermark them, resize them and rearange them in a specific post with Lightbox gallery and description that I will write for every picture (not a must). Is there any other recommended gallery platform for online sharing websites. I have my own server so I can install everything. Also very good wordpress premium websites will help. thanks.


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## UUilliam (Jul 24, 2010)

Simpleviewer is good.


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## RegRoy (Jul 25, 2010)

Mishel said:


> I need your help. I want to create a new website and present my photos and videos. I have decided to use Wordpress blog platform as the base of my website, but I need to know what plugins/software are available for batch uploading a bunch of picture, watermark them, resize them and rearange them in a specific post with Lightbox gallery and description that I will write for every picture (not a must). Is there any other recommended gallery platform for online sharing websites. I have my own server so I can install everything. Also very good wordpress premium websites will help. thanks.



A few thoughts:
1. If you are going to host videos on your site, strongly consider hosting the vidoes themselves on youtube, and then embedding them in your page/post.  If you host the videos on your own server, and you have any decent amount of traffic, your bandwidth costs will be tremendous.  

2.  You should consider doing as much production work as possible offline -- e.g .watermarking, resizing and the like.  Ideally you would upload only finished images so you minimize the work and time involved (it's generally MUCH faster to process images on your desktop/laptop vs doing it online).

Question:
Are you looking to host one large gallery with videos and photos, or are you looking to have individual posts, where each post has a gallery in it?


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## superhornet59 (Aug 1, 2010)

Hands down the best platform for galleries is Flashmoto CMS (Content Managment System). It's a flash based (though search engine friendly) website design, but without all the Dreamweaver work (yikes!). A little pricey for a template at around $250, but it's just so incredibly EASY to use, and looks absolutely fantastic. You don't even need an offline flash/html editor to change content (pictures text videos etc) you just do it in browser.

Check out the templates (there is also a trial feature that lets you get a feel for editing content.) Flash CMS Templates | FlashMoto


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## shuttercraft (Aug 27, 2010)

Wordpress is great for blogs but it does not scream pro as a website. 

I would use Professional Photography Websites by Qufoto.. Great SEO friendly flash websites for $19 a month.


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## skywalker (Aug 30, 2010)

In fact, a lot of gallery software can do so. Below are two handy I knew.

Flash Slideshow Maker
Ultraslideshow 

They can also generate code for embeding and offer free gallery hosting service.


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## Robert Pope (Sep 6, 2010)

Check out BluDomain -- sites for $100 (mine is a $100 template) and they host for $100/year. You can link to two other sites in addition to your galleries (blog and proofing, for example).

The interface is really intuitive.

One downside: a LOT of people have Blu sites so you'll look standard issue.

Upside: low costs (great for startup businesses and hobbies) and a professional look.


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## Robin Usagani (Sep 6, 2010)

Will LR3 gallery work? All of photo albums were created with LR3. The only bad thing is that it is hard to update. You have to reload the whole album even if you only added 1 photo.


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## KmH (Sep 6, 2010)

You will eventually discover Lightroom has many other notable limitations.


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## Robin Usagani (Sep 6, 2010)

@ Keith, yeah I am sure there are a lot.  If it is just making a photo album for clients to see, I think it is plenty good enough (html or flash).  The slideshow is nice too.  What are the other notable limitations that you absolutely hate?


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## Sachphotography (Sep 6, 2010)

Do a google search on Jquery. They have a bunch of different galleries and are great. Jquery can do a lot for you and it is all free. Galleria is a cool jquery plugin.


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## dmfw (Sep 8, 2010)

I have used the Gallery2 software (free).  (www.[B]gallery2[/B].org/)

Also, Joomla is a good CMS with many free and low priced addons for pic. galleries.


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## SEO Zach (Sep 9, 2010)

Joost de Valk would tell you that WordPress is the best content management system for search engine optimization (SEO). Check out his site for plugin advice. You can also check out my SEO for photoblogs site and ebook for help with optimizing posts and images.


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## Orrin (Sep 10, 2010)

Being a webmaster... I just went ahead and built my simple gallery in HTML with a little PHP code imbedded for some fuctions.

It's really not all that hard to do.


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## ShootProof (Sep 23, 2010)

shuttercraft said:


> Wordpress is great for blogs but it does not scream pro as a website.



This is true for a Wordpress.com website - (www.yourstudioname.wordpress.com), however Wordpress.org (self-hosted on your own domain name) can be an incredible content management system. I'm a big fan because it's user-friendly once you get everything set up. You may want to consider incorporating a professional photo proofing site with your own website for the actual photo proofs and ordering. You generally have the option to integrate the proofing with your website, (www.proofing.yourwebsite.com or some variation of this) so that your customers don't feel that they're leaving your site. 

This might be an easier solution than trying to work out a good viewing platform, shopping cart, etc on your own.

You may want to stay away from Flash as some people have mentioned - they generally look nice, however, more and more devices are not supporting flash - think of the customers who would view and share their photos on a mobile phone or iPad that will not be able to do so if your site is Flash...


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## allenjoel12 (Oct 25, 2010)

Nice sharing!
I hope your sharing information will be useful to to get better results from press release.


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## john.vanis5 (Oct 30, 2010)

As, even for me the topic is new , good to read about the topic and really different good opinions given by person.

HTML and PHP good to read the post.


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