Photo gallery software

Photo gallery software can make a world of difference to the look and feel of your website.

People love looking at pictures and in these days of broadband download speeds, you don't have to wait for ages on a dial-up connection while a large image downloads on a page.

In addition, Google image search is becoming a significant part of people's online traffic and cannot be ignored ... so if your website lends itself to visuals, make sure you integrate lots of images into your pages.

Photo gallery software basics

When I started work on my first commercial website idea, it was based on photo gallery software.

These were the days before Flickr and Picassa, and let me tell you, it was a real problem to achieve in those days.

My pals and I used a free Open Source programme called Coppermine which - although very good - has become completely superceded by the 'new kids on the block'.

Here are the things you need to look out for in modern photogallery software:

• The ability to upload video and images
• The ability to grade images as private, restricted or public access
• Offers a fast uploading option ... it can take ages otherwise
• Gives you the abilty to take feeds from your galleries and display those on your website in a variety of ways
• It's free!

My photo gallery software favourites

I have two photo gallery favourites, both which I use regularly for domestic and business use.

I'll set my stall out from the start, there are many other photo gallery software options available, but these are the ones I'd recommend you use ... because they're easy, accessible, popular and have decent supportt and add-ons available.

Flickr

Can anybody remember life before Flickr? It hasn't been around that long, but boy what a difference it's made for people seeking photo gallery software.

I'm not going to go into the basics of signing up for and using Flickr, as that element is well supported on the site, but I am going to show you a great trick for use of your website.

How do you fancy being able to put image galleries like this on your website?

You can create feeds of your photos or other peoples' images, so long as they are in public galleries, and they're created in an iframe on your page, with very little techie stuff involved.

Firstly, you have to create or find the gallery that you want to use.

If you're using your own gallery you need to 1) organise the photos in a set 2) make sure that each photo is accessible for public viewing ... any other level of privacy will result in the gallery not displaying on your web page.

The next step is the same for your own pictures and those belonging to somebody else.

You need to use the idGettr page to find the Flickr user of group ID ... this is the crucial information you need to set up your feed.

The way I usually do it is to get my photos - or those belonging to somebody else, displaying as a slideshow, just like this.

If you cut and paste that slideshow URL into the idGettr page, you are given the code: 20686360@N07

Next you need to look at this useful page for details of how to add that code to HTML to create a photo feed.

So, for the gallery below, I start with this code:

<iframe align="center" src="http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?
user_id=12345678@N00&tags=YOUR_TAGS" frameBorder="0" "width=500" height="500" scrolling="no"></iframe>

I adapt it by inserting the code in bold:

<iframe align="center" src="http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?
user_id=20686360@N07" frameBorder="0" "width=500" height="500" scrolling="no"></iframe>

And this is what you get:

There are many more fabulous things that you can do using feeds like this from Flickr, but I hope you'll agree, as far as photo gallery software is concerned, this is pretty simple and impressive.

Picassa

If you don't get on with Flickr, or you have a portfolio of Google products already, you might find Picassa a better choice.

If all you want from your photo gallery software are straightforward collections of your own images, Picassa is more than sufficient as you can see from the example below:

To create a gallery like this, you need to get yourself a free Picassa account, then create a photo album of 'Public' images.

Click on the gallery of images so that you can see the individual photos, and on the right hand side of the page you'll see this view, giving you the options to 'Link to this album' or 'Paste HTML to embed in website' ... you want the second option.

You'll be given a long string of code that looks pretty meaningless, but when you add it to the HTML on you web page it creates the rather nice gallery which is displayed below.

As you add or remove photos - directly via Picassa - your gallery will automatically reflect those changes, so it's ideal for use in a gallery of your previous work if you're a painter, a florist, a photographer, a model, a sportsman, a dog breeder or whatever it is you like to take photographs of in your line of business.

By the way, if you want to change the size of the gallery, click on the 'Embed slideshow' link just below all the HTML code and you'll be able to customise fully.

Other photo gallery software to note

If the two options above don't meet your needs, try the following:

• jalbum.net
• coffeecup.com
• fotopic.net
• photobucket.com
  
  

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