Why I have not yet upgraded to Gallery 3

To me, Gallery 2 has been a trusted companion since about October 2005 when I first starting setting up a site for the Homeworld Community over at Relic Forums. Since then the site has not changed a lot. Basically the same Carbon themed layout. For a while I had a customized theme, based on Carbon ColourPack and some css editing. I gave it up due to a server mishap, but I am considering re applying those styles as I type this.

Looking at Gallery 3 the changes in basic layout seems to big to (easily) accommodate the look I am after. Somehow it feels like a very big step to upgrade the site to v 3, and since I also have v 3 on a completely different place/host, I also have the impression that 3 is a lot slower than 2. Having been in the works for 5 years, 3 also seems to have very few basic themes to choose from. Is that due to a versatility I have yet to see, or lack of development? Please do not mistake these words for the usual nagging about lack of themes or functions or plugins, I have been in the Opensource Community for 17 years and I do know very well that these things can take time but I also know that they depend on interest and how easy, or not, it is coding these things for the current platform.

I type this to get some answers and I hope you can convince me to take this step on a site that is very important to me. Maybe others have similar concerns?

I've never done any theme development but I suspect you will find that people are creating themes for their own purposes (whether that is minor tweaking of colours or considerable redesign). However they aren't going the extra step to publish the theme (after all, they have possibly spent hours/days getting their own unique look and feel). Sometimes someone posts a link to their gallery on these forums and when I look at it, I'm surprised to see that Gallery is capable of such a style.

I can't comment on speed differences as I've never used G2. I see the occasional comment about slow performance of G3 on the forums but I've never experienced a problem (running my own host [a VIA 1GHz C7 board] with around 3000 photos). Sure it is slowish when I'm uploading photos but I expect this because it is a low powered solution using slow and low powered components. Browsing is fine however (with the occasional bit of lag as the slow spindle does its seeking). I guess the problem with shared hosts is that it is shared, so it is going to be busy sometimes (which makes diagnosing performance problems even more difficult).

Its a great game by the way and I still play it on occasions. A truly unique and engaging title for its time.