I’d like to spend a little time away from photos to talk about the next best thing: software for photos!

I have been running a blog and gallery since 2005, and since I did not have a large budget to work with, I was constantly researching web applications that were robust, but came with very low price tags.  You can imagine the Star Wars Cantina of software “characters” I ran into, but I also have to say that I found some absolute gems out there.  Today, I’d like to take a minute to write about one of these gems - a gallery software called PhpWebGallery created by a really sharp guy named Pierrick Le Gall.

My initial research took me to all of the mainstream players out there - names like Jalbum, Coppermine and the Menalto “Gallery.”  I entered my research with a good vision of what I wanted the software to do and also what I wanted it to look like.  What I ended up with was always short in one main criteria.

Let’s talk about my criteria:

1.  An active project with multiple developers (PWG boasts 14) and plenty of  recent releases.

2.  Clean, elegant design that allows maximum and intuitive customization for people like me who know just enough code to get into trouble.  (Examples: custom logo, links and a wide array of color schemes)

3.  Ability to create multiple categorized galleries with any number of sub-categories.  This is one area where PWG shines brightly.  PWG also adds “virtual categories” as icing on the cake which allows me to assign multiple categories to one image.  And - if that is not enough, PWG also provides a full tagging system which allows me to even further categorize for searches.

4.  A secure admin user interface that is intuitive and easy to maneuver in.  This is one area where all galleries with any kind of robustness run into the “ugly admin zone.”  The “ugly admin zone” is an almost unavoidable tangle of toggles, radio buttons, forms, pull-downs and fields that many apps just fail miserably at.  PWG is not without issue here, but it is superior to the confusing admin interfaces I encountered in most other apps.

5.  Cost.  I noted that there were some beautiful apps available for big-time photogs with big-time budgets, but that was not me.  I needed free, or close to it.  PhpWebGallery is GNU General Public License - W3C compliant ( HTML4.01, CSS2 ).  In short, this means it is FREE.  So, while it is not a big budget, big production software, it is definitely powered by passion.  Pierrick has been building on this little app since somewhere around 2002, and since then, a team of really smart French guys and one smart Swiss guy have been putting their heart and soul into PhpWebGallery.

6.  Last but not least, SUPPORT.  I mentioned that PWG is powered by passion, and that is what you get when you ask questions in the forums (both English and French versions).  The PWG forum area is a great place to research and ask questions about anything you need to get your gallery running.  In addition, there is a very detailed Wiki/Doc page and detailed ReadMe text files with all downloads.

Now - What’s in the future for Pierrick and his team?

Piwigo

PhpWebGallery is getting a new face and brand known as “Piwigo” and if you would like to see what it looks like in action, the demo is HERE

So, it is time for me to wrap up this discussion, and I shall do so by saying a big “THANK YOU” to the passionate and talented developers working with Pierrick Le Gall who have spent a lot of time creating a beautiful and well-done software that has been a joy for me to use.

Here are some useful links:

PhpWebGallery Home:  http://phpwebgallery.net/

Wiki / Doc Page:  http://phpwebgallery.net/doc/doku.php

PWG Current release demo:  http://demo.phpwebgallery.net/

Piwigo 2.0 demo (coming soon):  http://demo.piwigo.net/

If you like PhpWebGallery, then Vote for it at Hotscripts and Freshmeat

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The Passion Flower