Thread

I am planning a substantial photo gallery for my site (http://www.rouviere.com) and would like to see some good examples of how the Gallery has been used. Also, if anyone has experience using simple commerce with Gallery, I would like to hear about that as well.

Thanks.

Why are you posting this in Core? The Gallery module is part of the full version only.

Ingmar,

Excellent question. It was simply an oversight on my part. I wanted a section that wasn’t a technical problem or a how to. It is probably easier to create a new entry under the appropriate section.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

I just move it 😊

There is the Photo Gallery Showcase which is a good start. =)  You might also peruse the Site Introductions forum.

OK, now that we’ve properly started this thread 😊
Consider using a regular weblog instead of the gallery module, if you don’t need the added functionality. A lot of people are doing that.

Thanks for both of your replies.

Given the number of photos that I will be posting, I believe the Gallery is the more practical of the two options.

Lisa, thanks for the link to the Gallery Showcase.

Thanks.

One last question. Are you aware of anyone that has integrated simple commerce with the Gallery?

Thanks.

What do you mean here. How and why would you want to do that (if I may ask)?

To sell images, if you are a photographer?

Yes. Exactly.

I currently have a large collection of photographs posted online at http://www.rouviere.com, however, I am considering the possibility of moving all that and more to an EE Gallery environment. In order to do this, I would need to be able to continue to sell photos. Therefore I am looking to see if there is any examples of someone using the Gallery combined with simple commerce.

Thanks.

Hiya,

I would definitely say go with Ingmar’s suggestion of using a weblog over the Gallery Module if this is what you need to do. I am in the process of doing this on a site which will be selling photographs and there is absolutely no way that the Gallery Module would be able to offer me enough customisation to allow for this kind of inter-application. Admitted there are a couple of functions that the Gallery Module has that you can’t do with a weblog such as batch upload but I am very very serious when I say there are around 1,000 times more (probably a lot more than that actually!) features that you can implement if you go the weblog route plus you have total control over how to make the site look which is a definite plus.

Just a thought though and this is a thought that has come from definite personal experience. Our site is fully functional and we are just getting together many many photos to place on to the site now and once that is done it will be unleashed to the world. There would have been absolutely no way of doing what we have done in the Gallery Module though.

Not wanting to put down the Gallery Module but really if you are going to be selling images on the internet then you really do need to look at using a weblog I feel.

Anyway hope you get it all sorted to best suit you. It is a very personal thing after all.

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark,

Without stealing any of your trade secrets, I am certainly interested in learning more about this. When do you expect your site to be live? I am trying to envision how this would work with thumbnails and larger images, etc. So if you wouldn’t mind venting, I am all ears.

Thanks.

Forrest

Unfortunately I don’t have a date on the launch just yet as we are really working on getting many thousands (if possible) of images on the site before it launches. We are also tying the whole thing in with Amazon S3 at the moment so it is going to be a while yet. As soon as it is online though I will let everyone here know as always nice to get feedback.

In the meantime though any information you need I can give no problem 😉

As to thumbnails and larger images with my site I have a really really large image file (usually around 20MB-100MB) which is the main download-able file that the user gains access to upon successful payment. I take these images manually into Photoshop and create one large thumbnail image (all using a Photoshop action so I can do loads at once) which will be shown on the site on a single entry page using Lightbox. All other thumbnail images like the ones required for search results and so on and so forth are created automagically using the exceptionally excellent Image Sizer plugin by Lumis (David). This means that from the one uploaded image I can get all the images I need for the site and it is all dealt with dynamically. A definite must for photography based websites selling images as it cuts down your work by a load I can tell you! 😉

I am also using the Tag Module by Solspace to great effect on the site to deal with dynamically creating image categories. There is absolutely no way that the in-built categories would work in the way that I am using the Tag Module and this really really does offer so much power that I am totally in debt (although I did pay for the module! 😉 ) to Mitchell and the Solspace crew for such an amazing module. I don’t use any of the functionality of allowing users to apply tags to the photos as this is an entirely professional web-site and I don’t want the photos being tagged with incorrect words so just don’t use that bit but even on its own I could not have created the site without it.

If you need any more advice then don’t hesitate to ask. I can give as much as I know from what I have set up but I truly from the bottom of my heart can guarantee that the power you will gain from not using the Gallery Module is simply well worth it.

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark,

This is exceptionally helpful. I have been planning this for some time and I am so glad that I didn’t go the gallery route. I will certainly take you up on your offer for more advice as I work through this project.

For starters, I am familiar with Image Sizer and I have heard of, but not yet used Solspace’s Tag Module and therefore obviously need to learn more how to apply it for this project.

You mention Lightbox. I am assuming this something other than Adobe’s digital image management program? Could you elaborate?

The other question I have is regarding IPTC and or EXIF data that is stored in the digital image. Are you incorporating this information?

The last question (for this post) is about the weblog. Are you using many custom fields? And is there any way that you are able to automate the process, or is it simply one entry at a time?

Thanks again for sharing on this.

Forrest

Hi Forrest,

No problem with the sharing. I will help out wherever and whenever I can for a fellow EE user 😉

With regards to Lightbox, sorry I meant to provide a link to the script. It is actually a Javascript solution for showing images in an overlay on the page. Quite a standard effect nowadays but I think that because it is quite standard it doesn’t stick out as just being placed on the page because everyone else is doing it which is nice. Also really allows you to show the image at a larger size without too much of the background page detracting from it which in the case of a photography site is a definite plus.

With IPTC and EXIF data at the moment I am not using these but will be in the future, just need to figure out the best way of getting that information out of the images as the server we are currently hosting on (I think) doesn’t support this in their PHP setup at the moment but we do have full control over what we place on the server so that may well get integrated at a later date. I was wanting to go without at this stage and see how many enquiries we get for it before implementing it though.

As we are going to be selling very high resolution professionally shot images I’m not too sure that we will need to show the camera information. Admitted it is nice to see how others took their images but in our case we really just want to sell, sell, sell 😉 Of course if customer demand is high enough then we will look into adding this at a later date.

As to how many custom fields we are using it really isn’t that many at all. We have the title then some information about the image such as where it was shot and so on so forth. We then have an ID field that simply gets an automatically created ID number for each image. As we are going to be uploading all images via a clever implementation of using Freeform and the Moblog module plus a plugin that I created specifically for limiting how many images can be uploaded by a member group at any one time then this number is automatically created using PHP and inserted for the user. They don’t have to worry about any of that.

Pretty much the only other field we have then is the location of the image which I just store as the folder/image-name hierarchy as all our main downloads will be stored on Amazon S3 as they are pretty large 😉 and then the smaller images for the site (at the moment) are stored on the same server as the EE installation but I may well move them across to Amazon in time. As I have the exact same names for the files whether they are the large download-able item or the thumbnail version I can very very simply update this at a later date. The only other information that has to go in are the tags for each entry and the cost for the entry in the Simple Commerce Module.

Don’t know if any of that helps at all but anything else you need help with then don’t hesitate to ask.

I would really advise you to sit down with pen and paper first though and think about exactly what you want from the site and what weblogs, fields etc you are going to need and how you are going to pull them all together. Once you have this at hand and some web templates it really is pretty plain sailing from there on in 😉

Speak soon.

Best wishes,

Mark