What web application framework should I use for a web gallery?
I need to create a photo gallery for a website that is running IIS 4.0 or IIS 5.0 (they don't know which one). It should display a low resolution version of the gallery for everyone, and it should display low and high resolution images for "privileged" users. So I need permissions, photo albums, and once the site is complete, the person I am doing should be able to upload their own images to the gallery. It should also have a minimal interface as it needs to be integrated into an existing website.
So I need to take a little advice on this direction with which I should approach.
Does anyone know if there is a custom gallery out there that can do something like this, like Coppermine or Jgallery or something. An alternative is to use a web framework like Ruby on Rails, CodeIgniter, or Sproutcore (each of which requires learning a new language). Frames will work more, but existing galleries cannot be customized enough. The important bit is the user privileges in the admin panel.
I am relatively new to "web programming", although not new to general / game programming. I have several years of experience with C / C ++ OpenGL and Java. I also read MVC etc. and said hello to sproutcore so I got this idea. Studying the structure is a much harder investment though.
What are your thoughts?
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If you don't want to reinvent the wheel, you can use Gallery2 (requirements here ). It works on IIS - you just need PHP and a database. It's highly customizable (including user accounts), has tons of plugins, and is open source if that's not enough. In addition, the developer and support communities are large and active.
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you can always go the Dotnetnuke route and then use the Ventrian Simple Gallery module ( http://www.ventrian.com/Products/Modules/SimpleGallery/Demo.aspx )
Using DNN offers a ton of features, including the security you need, and it saves you the hassle of building web applications.
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If you're a little more adventurous, try the Aida / Web based Smaltalk and specifically the Aida / Scribo CMS (currently still in beta) which also includes a so called scriblet gallery. Scribo scripts are other web components that you can include directly in text. This way you add the gallery directly to the text. For example a presentation like Gallery .
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I would recommend my own, but ... If it wasn't for low / high resolution stuff, I think it would suit the rest of your needs. I'm going to leave a link just in case you want to take a look at it: nzFotolog
It's also open source (although the license isn't the best), and you can modify it as you like if you like. The code itself is clean and self-explanatory. The downside is that I haven't developed it for some time :(
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I faced a similar dilemma and I must say that I found Gallery2 and Coppermine to be as comprehensive and difficult to customize as I would have liked. I ended up my own using straight forward, procedural PHP with various bits of jQuery for GUI graphics. In the meantime, I was able to bake some e-commerce and data collection for my wedding photography clients, ending up with something that exactly suited my needs. Of course, the gallery aspects of this project were for complete programming (albeit not HTML) for the neophyte, least complex - that's exactly what PHP is built for.
I am now taking my first steps with a CodeIgniter error for my next project (photoblog software) and I can already see that the framework will make the gallery project very fast, simple and secure.
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