So what next for Gallery Users if no longer supported?
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Patr100
Joined: 2014-02-14
Posts: 13 |
Posted: Mon, 2014-06-23 09:16
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Typical. I find an established gallery system that seems to meet my needs and then I read it is going into "hibernation" which is misleading as it doesn't seem to be expected to be waking up! |
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Posts: 1857
I don't know that anyone can really say.
Several years ago, I used PixelPost for a few smaller things I was working on that Gallery wasn't good for (G2 at that time). That project (pixelpost.org) basically had the same thing happen: http://www.pixelpost.org/blog/
The pixelpost site is still up, but the forums aren't and no developments/updates have happened in the last 5 years.
Posts: 808
The code is there so if anyone finds a bug someone with the knowledge can patch it. I don't expect anyone to find any holes or anyone to even look for them.
As for the users they will migrate to something else. Be it smugmug or squarespace if you want something hosted or a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress if you want to roll your own. I think the days of someone just wanting software for photo galleries is past. I think that was the problem with G3 from the start. All the young developers go work on the big full featured CMS platforms. To me Gallery should of transformed itself into a plugin for either Drupal or Wordpress, but that's not what the devs wanted to do.
I believe the message said the forums would be going read only and when they run out of money they will vanish from the internet unless someone new steps up and takes over.
Posts: 1857
@lvthunder: That's a bit harsh, I think. A few things, though: (1) Yes, someone could patch it, but there'd be no way for that code to be easily disbursed and made available the current community of users. (2) If Gallery had been rolled into another CMS system, I'd never have used it. (And, FWIW, there are TONS of abandoned WP/Drupal plugins that have security holes, no longer work, etc.)
For me (and, I suspect, many others) Gallery has been a great solution and works best as a stand-alone--with options to embed or otherwise integrate.
@Patr100: The biggest long-term challenge to your private Gallery will be compatibility with future changes in php. (That's exactly what happened to PixelPost.) If you have a private or virtual server, you can delay those php upgrades until whenever you feel the security risk of outdated php outweighs the benefit of keeping the Gallery. You may also be able to upgrade to future versions of php just fine; it really just depends on what is deprecated/modified in the future and what's not.
Posts: 80
Hopefully one of the CMS project teams can pick up the gauntlet here- this would make a great CMS module if nothing else.
> I think the days of someone just wanting software for photo galleries is past. I think that was the problem with G3 from the start.
Yup. One of the best things about G1 was that it was integrated into pretty much everything. G3 was always standalone and IMHO that was always its Achilles heel.
If there had been a priority to make it work as a Wordpress/Drupal module there would, IMHO, been a lot more interest in it.
Posts: 13
But for many, if they want a user friendly gallery, or an image based portfolio site, installing a full fledged CMS is overkill. The simple CMS's cannot provide the flexibility and the larger ones are too cumbersome. I looked at scores of CMS systems for a simple portfolio site for potentially many members and finally believed I found it with Gallery 3 which could be tweaked for my needs, I never experienced previous versions as I only discovered Gallery a few months ago via it's inclusion in Scriptaculous in CPanel. Alternatives like Coppermine (which I installed and tested out ) were awful.
Posts: 1
I'm really disappointed in this latest development but completely understand where the developers are coming from. My only issue is that they don't just drop the project cold without making some effort to let those in the developer community know that it's now up for grabs.
Posts: 16504
I suppose this is probably one of my last posts. The writing has been on the walls for a few years and we've tried to make a push to revive the project a couple of times. Sorry but there seems to be this perception by the vast majority of software users that there is this huge pool of developer type people just waiting to jump into a project. Unfortunately, that's not the case. For nearly everyone on the team, life has taken over. It's been a fun time for me and probably the rest of the team, but I have a life to focus on that was suffering due to being over-committed.
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Posts: 241
For me, I never wanted my gallery to be part of my blog which uses Wordpress. (other than the random gallery image that shows in the sidebar). Earlier today I was poking around with Zenphoto to see what that was like. Supposedly they have some method (plugin or script) of importing Gallery3 images but I haven't looked at it that in-depth.
I tried Coppermine before but didn't really like it at the time and it wouldn't do pretty URLs if memory serves.. but I might look at it again. I'm in no big rush.
- Mark H.
Using Gallery 3.0.9 - gallery.markheadrick.com
Posts: 1857
Exactly. I don't expect anyone to have any (new) issues with Gallery for quite some time (meaning, likely a couple of years or more--barring some out-of-nowhere security exploit).
No one should feel that Gallery is all of a sudden useless--that is not the case. Take time. Plan, but don't worry too much in the short term.
And, who knows, maybe Gallery will be back up and running by then. (Though I'm not sure how word would get to the Gallery community; maybe with an update notice to the admin interface?)
Posts: 25
I've used Gallery for a few years. I really liked much about it. It was clean and fresh. I liked the way that the pictures looked in it. When Gallery 3 came out I installed it and put a lot of pictures into it. But as I used it more I saw that it was lacking some very important (to me) features. I really tried to make it work. I had such good feeling and a good impression of Gallery 2 that I wanted Gallery 3 to work. Eventually I began looking around to see what else was available. I tried out a number of image galleries at OpenSource CMS Image Galleries. I eventually tried Piwigo (what a strange name), which use to be Php Web Gallery. I think that they used the initials of the old name to create the new name. After some initial hesitation at first (I really hated to move away from Gallery) I must say that for the most part I am very pleased with Piwigo. It really has some nice features. Have a look at the demo, or try out the demo at OpenSourceCMS.
I love the fact that the update process is automatic. It automatically updates Piwigo core and also automatically updates the plugins. I think back to years ago when I first tried to update my Gallery2 gallery. I crashed the whole site. Ouch. I highly recommend Piwigo.
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Posts: 25
For any of you who might be interested, here is a thread about Migrating from gallery 2 to Piwigo.
Here are some videos about "Using Piwigo."
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Posts: 13
I've looked at Piwgigo and installed to take a working look, but
most of the image galleries I've looked at , including Piwigo as far as I could see, do not have a facility to allocate albums to specific users so the album are visible to all visitors but only editable etc by and admin and a specific user. I think Piwigo has private albums for specific users but that is no use to me if they are also invisible to the rest of the world.
I need that option for a community artists group so they potentially can add their own photos of their work AND edit a small amount of text as a brief profile for each artist.It needs to be user friendly as most will not be tech minded.
If anyone has any suggestions for that, let me know.
Posts: 8339
http://galleryproject.org/time-to-hibernate#comment-409943
-s
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All New jQuery Minislideshow for G2/G3
Posts: 241
I might give Piwigo a whirl and see what it's like to deal with. Have been looking at Zenphoto but there seems to have been a sort of bruhaha within the development team that caused a fork in the code recently but I'm still playing with it. So far looking at Piwigo it looks like getting URLs to look something like http://gallery.markheadrick.com/misc-pics/computer-desk-12apr2012/ is not going to be an easy task. The less I gotta screw around with rewrite rules and hack up the core code, the better.
- Mark H.
Using Gallery 3.0.9 - gallery.markheadrick.com
Posts: 25
Hi Mark,
With Piwigo, actually you can get your own names and file structure by using ftp, no writing code or rules or anything.. Look at this message thread here. "Don't want my files renamed when uploading"
Like you, when I first was looking at Piwigo I HATED that fact that, using the standard upload procedure, that it changed my filenames and wouldn't let me keep my file structure. I almost passed it by for just that reason. However, as I read, studied, and tried it out I began to like Piwigo more and more. I read that above message thread and found that I could keep my folder structure and my file names. but then I began to really question myself as to why it was important to me to keep control of those things. As I read more about Piwigo I learned about Virtual albums. I can upload bunch of pictures into an album, and then create additional albums from those same pictures. Here is my Piwigo Gallery: Winters Sewing Picture Gallery. As an example of using one set of pictures in multiple galleries, look at this picture. Then find that chair here under Pattern Matching and also here under Wing Chairs.
By the way, Even though I could use ftp to keep my own file structure and file names, I finally decided that I didn't need to do that. I'm actually beginning to like the way that Piwigo handles the pictures and the folder. I still don't like the file names, but decided that it wasn't important to me.
Now, back to Gallery. I had used Gallery 2 for years. It was a great piece of software with lots of wonderful modules. I uploaded thousands of pictures into the albums. For many of the albums, after I had uploaded the pictures I used the slideshow feature (my favorite feature). I copied the links to the slideshow over on my upholstery website to play the slideshows. I really liked the way I could just set up those slideshows. The worked great for years. However, when I moved to Gallery 3, it had a much nicer slide show, BUT I never could figure out how to grab that link to the slide shows. I really wanted Gallery 3 to work for my purposes and tried and tried. I probably tried for a year to get it to work. Eventually I found Piwigo. Now I have my slideshows back, and I'm happy about that. To see them, go to this page Winters Sewing Pictures and Slideshows and click on all the pictures and links for chairs 1-6. I'm still working on the other pictures.
Although I upgrade my Drupal websites all the time, it was a real struggle for me to upgrade Gallery. I crashed at least a time or two. It was a really problem to try to get it up and running again. I kind of got gunshy and didn't try to update it any more. In contrast to that experience I love the fact that Piwigo does automatic updates of both the core and the modules. Just click on a link and it's all done automatically. Beautiful! You can install a module or a theme just by clicking on another link. No downloading, uploading, extracting. None of that, it's all automatic.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with Piwigo. I was sorry to let go of Gallery, but I'm just as happy with Piwigo as I was with Gallery.
Best Wishes,
Stephen
Posts: 56
I' going to use Drupal and make a custom Gallery...