Can Gallery2 do all this?
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jhack
Joined: 2007-06-13
Posts: 2 |
Posted: Wed, 2007-06-13 20:24
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Hi all, I've been looking around for a way to build a stock photography site. My options have been narrowed down to Gallery2, PhotoStore (http://www.ktools.net/photostore), and LightboxPhoto (http://www.lightboxphoto.com/). To be honest, despite the other two programs being commercial products, they don't seem to compare to gallery. They do have some neat and important features that gallery2 doesnt have (ie: LBP's Rights-Managed Pricing), but their administration of images, albums and the gallery as a whole is not very user-friendly. So I'm here to find out what Gallery2 can do. I don't expect it to do everything that I need it to, and I'm not opposed to developing features that are missing. However, I need confirmation of what it is capable of, and what I can expect to have to develop. Then I can tell my boss and we can decide if the project is worth going ahead with. I'll do my best to explain what we need it to do. As a stock photography site it will need to: - Have a shopping cart feature. With: - Perform watermarking: - Have advanced search capabilities: - Have keywording or tagging capabilities: - Lightboxes / Favorites: - Have various admin functions such as: - Other: I think that's all that we've been talking about on end here, if my boss mentions anything else I'll come back and add another post. If someone who knows Gallery2 well (ie valiant, mindless, bharat, ?) could go through this list above and let me know if those things are included in G2, if they are being worked on, or if we'd have to do it ourselves, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you in advance. By the way, I have read through the feature comparison chart for G1-G2, but I still had these questions after reading through that page and many forum pages. Thanks again, have a great day! Jonathan Hack |
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Posts: 10
i've been in exactly the same position for some time now and have come down to choosing between the same 3 programs (Gallery2, PhotoStore and LightboxPhoto. I would love to use Gallery2 but it doesn't have user-created lightboxes which makes it useless for any serious stock photography applications. I have tried to find out whether anyone plans to develop this feature but have had no response. If I was a developer I'd do it myself...!
Please let me know if you have any luck with your wishlist
Thanks
Posts: 2
Hi guyfreer,
Sadly, I have no new information for you. No one answered me on the questions I had, so I was not able to make much progress with Gallery2, although it still seems like the best of the three. For now, our project has been put on hold, so I won't be looking at it again for a while now. Hopefully one day we'll be able to devote some programming time to develop some of the features we need for G2. Until then, we probably won't be doing much in this regard. Please post back here if you make any progress on your project, I'm interested in knowing what you end up deciding on.
Good luck with your project.
Cheers,
Jonathan Hack
Posts: 4342
To answer then, from a user's point of view - the Permissions system isn't flexible enough, for instance, to allow photographers to set the prices only for their own pictures. I don't think the keywords system is as flexible as you want either. Custom fields? Not with a friendly interface. Immediate downloads are implemented, but are on the very fringe of the development (still 'under development' in the community) so probably not as robust or flexible as you'd like) There are no facilities for commision rates, nor anything about model and property release fields. The watermarking is a bit "clunky". There are no sales reports available, although there has been much talk of someone sorting it out. Payment gateways are limited - to Paypal, as far as I can tell. You're welcome to write more.
You're asking for a fully fledged commercial multi-user photo sales and management system, which Gallery isn't. You could use the Gallery code as a base, but it would need an awful lot of work to do everything that you want.
I understand that the permissions system is due an overhaul in the near future. I don't think most of the rest of what you're asking is on the cards. Sometimes you have to settle for 80% of requirements right now, rather than 100% after three years of development effort, by which time the business is either dead or has moved on.
Posts: 32509
> You could use the Gallery code as a base, but it would need an awful lot of work to do everything that you want.
actually, not that much code.
e.g. the permission system is powerful enough, but the permission management / configuration doesn't expose all these features.
each and every single item in g2, not just albums, items, can have different permissions.
it's a matter of a very small module to add your own permissions or adjust how permissions are set automatically.
as for commerce features in g2:
- there are the official printing modules
- there's the user-contributed checkout module series (paypal integration and the like).
- there's a zencart integration
with the g2-only solutions, you won't get a full fledged commerce solution. there's just not enough man-power / resources behind the commerce features of g2 to date.
with the zencart integration you'll have to add some work such that it really is a nice looking solution with a good workflow. but i've seen it work. and the good part of this solution is that zencart is a really great commerce solution.
there's interest to improve the commerce solutions built with g2, e.g. merging the cart and checkout modules, building high quality commerce modules etc. but as most core developers of g2 are busy making g2 better overall and with very few dev resources dedicated to commerce, this could take a while.
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Documentation: Support / Troubleshooting | Installation, Upgrade, Configuration and Usage
Posts: 4342
But you'd still need to rewrite every module that changes anything to make it test permissions first. For instance, per-image prices are set in Checkout using custom fields (and not very elegantly), so in order to implement a permission to change per-item prices, for example, you'd need to hack that module.
I think Gallery is fantastic, but I'm actually glad that it's not so completely feature rich that it becomes intractable to understand and modify.
Posts: 8
Hi there,
I just found GALLERY 2 and I'm so thrilled to learn about you. But I was sad to see that there meager commerce support (?) as I too am also trying to build a stock photo site, using Joomla.
I thought I could implement most of what I need with Gallery2 with the bridge to joomla, (http://trac.4theweb.nl/g2bridge)
(Aside: I read in a Joomla forum post that Gallery2 is buggy on PHP 5. Is this [still] true? I'm hoping to use Joomla 1.5 with mySQL 5 and PHP 5. So would be curious about that platform support - please post a URL if this is posted somewhere in the Gallery forum, TIA)
Creating lightboxes is one feature my client really needs.
Really, what I need to know is if Gallery2 will allow a user to create a new gallery of photos residing in another user's gallery. If this can be easily done, then Gallery2 is for ME!
I was also curious if anyone knows if swish-e search tools has been implemented into Gallery2. They do a mean implementation of swish-e at http://www.ipnstock.com/
check out the results on the keyowrds "red bus":
http://www.ipnstock.com/SwishSearch?submit.x=0&submit.y=0&Keywords=red%20bus&spec_idx=&searchinclude=photography
What's cool about this interaction is you can create a fine-grain search, and you can also select the display of your results: "huge", large, medium or small images.
I look forward to hearing from you and getting to know you all at Gallery2.
I'm a novice programmer, with a background in web design and interface development, though my degree is in photography
I'm taking the plunge into communities like Joomla and Gallery2 and am keen to contribute in whatever way I can to the open source cause.
Thanks so much for being here!
Regards,
madamep
So many thoughts...so little time
Posts: 4342
>>Really, what I need to know is if Gallery2 will allow a user to create a new gallery of photos residing in another user's gallery. If this can be easily done, then Gallery2 is for ME!
I'm only a novice Gallery programmer, so I could easily be wrong but.. as things stand, there are two different permissions set on an album - 'Add Item' and 'Add Subalbum'. So you can be allowed to add a new album somewhere that you're not permitted to add a photo. On the other hand, new subalbums pick up their parent album's permissions by default, so once you'd created a sub-album it might be that you still couldn't add pictures to it.
>>Creating lightboxes is one feature my client really needs.
Is a Lightbox like a user-selected collection? The Favourites module I'm working on might be what you want.
Posts: 27300
Sure there is some commerce support as valiant suggested. Perhaps is not a customizable and targeted as the $300+ (only has GD Library support) and $400 - $1100 software sites mentioned above.
Gallery is not targeted as a ecommerce solution ( but it could ). The developers working on the project work on what they feel is important and what they would would like to work on. There is limited resources on a project that is only volunteers. I am sure that a better solution will come, in time, but you have to do one of a few things:
1. Develop the solution that works for you. As you know each and every user has their idea as to what would be the best solution. Share that solution with the community.
2. Hire a developer to do the work for you. Contribute back to the community with the solution.
3. Contribute time to the community ( answer questions in the forums ) to free up some time of developers, to let them do what they do best; write code.
4. Contribute time to the community ( write better documentation ) to free up some time of developers, to let them do what they do best; write code.
4a. Find a student ( taking a technical writing coarse ) to do the docs to free time for developers.
5. Find a developer & sponsor to get a bountie http://codex.gallery2.org/Bounties.
5a. Raise funds to pool monies to get a developer to write some code for a ecommerce solution.
6. Find a student that would like to get paid for a summer project: http://codex.gallery2.org/Summer_of_Code
"Can Gallery2 do all this?" I am sure that in time it will; sooner, given the resources.
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 8
Hi Alec,
Thanks for your reply! This is great.
The way a lightbox works is exactly a user-selected collection! But it is discrete in that it isn't shared unless the creator of the lightbox wants to share it (--perhaps in a non-commercial application that might be the case). Ideally, it would be shared by sharing a url (by sending an email, as one might share an article at the NYTimes website) to the collection/lightbox and isn't password protected, at least I don't see an immediate reason for it to be password protected to view it, but it shouldn't be possible for strangers to browse it by accident. However, the owner of the site, or superadmin, should be able to view it and delete it if it's been dormant and is taking up space. But then again if the lightbox is just a list reference, I guess it's not really taking up space is it? Items in the list can't exist unless there's a photo in the library. BTW, I'm using the term library to mean the database or imagebase, however that works. Kind of like how iTunes or iPhoto works.
Let me explain how my client would use a lightbox at her site:
She has clients like advertising art directors or marketing directors of travel companies who desire to review her collection of travel images. Let's call the art director/marketing director Sandra.
Sandra is often just shopping and is usually not sure if she wants to make a purchase at this point (but sometimes she does want to purchase right away). To accommodate this workflow, photographers and stock sites will offer either free or low-cost, watermarked/low res images that Sandra may download. They also provide an user account with a place to store these images, which is called a lightbox (not lightbox, as in the popular javascript that fades the screen and enlarges a single image). At this point, Sandra will create a mockup document with the low-res download, go to *her* client to get the OK on the design, and if approved, return to the site to purchase the high-rez version.
The lightbox is vital because it allows Sandra to save access to the image after leaving the site so once she returns, she doesn't have to search the entire site for that image all over again. Amazon's wishlists are comparable to lightboxes. Sandra spend hours and hours on the web looking for images, and gets very impatient if she has to redo work. If possible Sandra would like to make more than one lightbox, so they can be grouped by theme or by project. Just imagine if your job was searching clip art, for just the right icon! And having to manage these icons. What a nightmare!
In an ideal commercial scenario, Sandra returns to the photo site, moves images she wants to purchase from her lightbox to her shopping cart, makes payment and then is allowed to download the high-rez files.
And we all would live happily ever after.
So let me know if that describes what you are working on, or rather, how close it describes what you are working on?
I'm more of a designer/interaction designer than a programmer, though I want to learn. If I can support your efforts by creating icons or other graphics let me know! I'd be happy to do that. I'd also be happy to help in creating documentation for you.
Regards,
madamep
PS. FYI: I'm on a Mac with Firefox and the form textboxes for this forum is somehwat buggy. It only shows the third to the last letter I type and is difficult if I've made a typo to correct it. So I'm having to write the response in my email client and paste it over. I thought I would pass that on ...
So many thoughts...so little time
Posts: 8
Hi Floridave!
I apologize if I pressed a button by my comment about commerce support. I certainly didn't mean to ruffle any feathers. My comment was more from my exasperation of coming so close to what I'm looking for and then discovering a piece missing, that's all. It wasn't a criticism against the Gallery community by any stretch.
I'm certainly aware of the realities of open source projects and their voluntary natures. I also believe in open source and hope that I might be able to make a contribution where my strengths lie.
But since I'm new to this forum, I need to learn what it's all about, so I can volunteer in the place I am best suited. So you see, not all newbies are silly ignorant fools. ;)
It would be great to have links to the commerce support you refer to so I could check them out. Have you got any?
Thanks for your help!
madamep
So many thoughts...so little time
Posts: 27300
You did not push any button(s) about the commerce support. I just wanted to poin out some stuff that some other that are reading the thread might think that we just abandon the ecommerce stuff.
4 stock solutions:
shutterfly
photoaccess
fotokasten
digibug
Various 3rd party modules:
http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Modules:checkout
google checkout; needs a codex page.
checkout-xx; has it's own SF page.
2checkout; needs a codex page.
pixaco; needs codex page.
So as you can see there is a dozen ways to go and everybody has their idea on how it should work.
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 27300
madamep,
Reading your reply to alecmyers, you have a skill in writing. Your, what we call user story was great. It often helps in development of of the flow of how stuff works.
Dave
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Blog & G2 || floridave - Gallery Team
Posts: 8
Hi Floridave!
Thanks a bunch for the links. They look fantastic! When I originally looked at this forum topic, it seemed to indicate that there was little commerce support, so that was my misinterpretation. I guess if I thought that, others might too, so that makes sense to set the record straight.
I'm a bit cross-eyed right now from working on stuff and am planning to hang my keyboard up for the night soon, but I do plan to check these out sometime tomorrow.
I really appreciate your help. More soon!
madamep
So many thoughts...so little time
Posts: 8
Thanks for the kudos. I'm big into designing INTERACTIONS rather than creating feature lists. Feature lists don't explain context. I've hired one or two programmers in the past and used feature lists and they technically fulfilled the list, but I couldn't use what they did for me. It's very painful to pay for something I can't use. If I talk about user goals, then that communicates spot on what needs to happen. I think it also keeps it real and it's easy to determine the main flow and eliminate possibilities for feature creep.
I'm a HUGE fan of Alan Cooper (creator of Visual Basic way back when). He has an interaction design company in San Fran (http://www.cooper.com) and wrote a fantastic book called, The Inmates are Running the Asylum back in 2000. The new edition's been out for a while now. It discusses the tribulations of software design and how it historically has been lacking interaction design. It's a fun read for anyone involved in the technology business.
Using personas, instead of the nebulous "user", developers, designers, marketers, etc can understand context, goals and interactions for a given user, of a given ability, etc. Personas are mighty powerful tools. From now on when I talk about Sandra, you'll know that she's an art director with specific GOALS. You can understand her work environment, etc. etc. Whereas if I say "user", "user" in your head is most likely going to be different than "user" in mine. It doesn't provide context and evokes the notion of a cardboard cutout with no soul! After I introduce Sandra, that's a handle to reference a specific user with specific behaviors and goals. It's just beautiful! (Don't you think?)
I hope I've inspired you to go check out the book. (BTW, I am in no way related to Mr. Cooper, professionally or otherwise. I just think his theories on Interaction Design are the best things since sliced bread.)
Cheers,
madamep
so many thoughts...so little time
Posts: 4342
Madamep,
I don't think Sandra's going to be too impressed with my Favourites module. Instead "Favourites" is designed for Zelda, (mother of Bert, and Auntie to Peter Paul and Mary, proud owner of a really annoying poodle called Fluffy). Now Zelda doesn't really *do* the Internet, she likes the emails from her Grandchildren but mostly she gets the help to read them out to her as the print's too small and all the extra stuff on the screen confuses her. Zelda's bored with calling up Bert every time she can't find the pictures of him dancing with his (then) wife at the party they all went to back in May 2006. They seemed to be getting along so well back then, how come they ended up separating? Anyhow, she's awful sad about it (what with the children) so she likes to look at those pictures of Bert dancing, and keeps hoping for some reconciliation. But, what with her failing eyesight, and there being *so many* pictures on that website she needed a quick way to find them. Again because of her eyesight (and to tell you the truth her fingers aren't as nimble as perhaps they once were because of the arthritis) Bert arranged a special page on the website, with just her favourite pictures that she likes, in small, so she doesn't have to click all over the site to find them. The simpler it is to use, the better, for Zelda: one click, and there they are - no fancy options, nothing she doesn't understand.
Posts: 8
Hi Alec!
I suffered great glee reading about Zelda. I suffered because Zelda is a poor soul, but with great glee because you made her goals very clear. You mapped them out wonderfully, but perhaps with extra panache to show her anguish in dealing with the Internet.
You are such a nice young man to help out poor Zelda! ;)
What wasn't clear to me is whether Zelda could create her own albums of Bert or if Bert had to create them for her? Or are both possible? And if Bert creates them, can Zelda edit them?
Do tell!
madamep
so many thoughts...so little time
Posts: 4342
In this setup neither Bert (and especially not Zelda) get to create albums - only I do that!
Posts: 1
Really a good posting. I'm also interested in Photography related themes. I've a big photography portfolio of myself. can u suggest me a good site offering best photography tips ?
Web designs
Posts: 2
I'm very interested in the idea of this lightbox idea.
(By the way - anyone else struggling to find any information on this that doesn't involve the javascript style slideshow? Surely there's another word for what I'm after - "user created gallery"?)
I was wondering if there was some sort of module out there that allows users to tag groups of photos and galleries and then view all the photos connected to that tag?
I'd be interested in developing or modifying a module if not.. *swimming rapidly out of my depth*
There are several modules that allow dynamic galleries based upon keywords that gallery creators can create, but none that allow regular registered visitors to tag photos for their own uses. It seems that it would be a case of adding a table that would cross-reference the user against the photo or gallery with a particular tag/word, and then that could be used to bring back the items assigned to that tag/word and by that user in the future...
Does that sound about right?
Posts: 4342
I'm pretty sure the tags module allows any user with the "[Tags] edit tags" permission over an item to add/delete/edit the tags for that item.
The tags are global, though, and not private to each user.