What web application framework should I use for a web gallery?

Question

I need to create a photo gallery for a website running IIS 4.0 or IIS 5.0 (im not sure which). It needs to display a low resolution version of the gallery to anyone, and it must show both the low and high resolution images for "priviledged" users. So I need access priviledges, photo albums and once the site is complete, the person I am doing this for needs to be able to upload their own images to the gallery. It also needs to have a minimal interface as it needs to be integrated into an existing website.

So I need some advice on this with the direction I should approach it.

Does anyone know if their is a customisable gallery out there that can do something like this, such as Coppermine or Jgallery or something. The alternative is to use a web framework like Ruby on Rails, CodeIgniter or Sproutcore (each which require learning a new language). The framework would be more work, but the existing galleries may not be customisable enough. The important bit is the user privileges in an admin panel.

I am relatively new to "web programming", although not new to normal/games programming. I have a few years experience with C/C++ OpenGL and Java. I have also read up on MVC etc, and did hello world with sproutcore, so I kinda get the idea. Although learning a framework is a much heavier investment.

What are your thoughts?

Answer 1

Flickr.com and their API may be suitable from what you described.

http://www.flickr.com/services/api/

Answer 2

you could always go the route of Dotnetnuke and then use Ventrian's Simple Gallery module (http://www.ventrian.com/Products/Modules/SimpleGallery/Demo.aspx)

Using DNN offers a ton of functionality, including the security you need, and it would save you from doing any web development.

Answer 3

Having faced a similar dilemma myself I have to say that I found Gallery2 and Coppermine both far too all-encompassing and difficult to customise to the degree I would have wished. I ended up rolling my own using straight, procedural PHP with various bits of jQuery for the GUI fancy bits. At the same time I was able to bake in some e-commerce and data gathering for my wedding photography clients, ending up with something which exactly matched my needs. Certainly, the gallery aspects of this project were, for a complete programming (although not HTML) neophyte, the least challenging - it's exactly the sort of thing PHP is made for.

I'm now taking my first faltering steps with CodeIgniter for my next project (photoblogging software) and I can already see that the framework would make a gallery project very quick, simple and secure.

Answer 4

I would recommend my own but... If it weren't for the low/high resolution thing with permissions I think it would fit 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 is not the best) and you can change it at will if you want. The code itself is clean and self-explanatory. The downside is that I haven't developed it for some time now :(

Answer 5

If you are a bit more adventurous, try Smaltalk based Aida/Web and specially Aida/Scribo CMS (currently still in beta), which include Gallery so called scriblet as well. Scribo scriblets are otherwise web components which you can include directly into a text. You therefore add a gallery directly into a surronding text. See for instance a presentation as a Gallery for example.

Answer 6

If you don't want to re-invent the wheel you could use Gallery2 (requirements here). It runs on IIS -- you'd just need PHP and a database. It's very configurable (including user accounts), has lots of plugins, and its open source if that's not enough. Also, the development and support communities are large and active.