Hello people

This being my first post I would like to say hello.

A friend sent me a link to this site and forum about the photo album design work going on. I'm here mostly to check out if the programs available is easy enough for me to use. I still don't know what it has to offer since I have not yet downloaded any part of it.

I have downloaded many free programs from all over the net that for me are simple to use, like start the program, import a folder or group of picture, select a temples, output webpage. Then use the output to add to my website. For me this is about all I can handle for now. Even though there are many nice programs available each one I tried has something I either don't like or a feature I want added.

Untill I uderstand what this place has to offer I will do much reading and hope to find many examples to view.

My main needs are possibly not simple and may be why I am having problems finding a solution.

A friend and myself take pictures of junior motorcycle racing and often sell some of the picture to keep the hobby going, like funding new cameras or paying for the cost of getting from one place to another to take the photos. We have been requested many times by members of the motorcycle clubs to publish the pictures online so they can select one or more pictures to buy. Basic programs we have used so far allow this, but we found many of the parents were simply printing their own pictures from the website. This doesn't help fund our hobby. So we wanted to watermark our pictures and also stop them right clicking and saving the pictures, these two things we can't seem to find in a single easy to use program. Remember we are not that good with website designing yet.

So starting off I spent many months learning how to setup a web server, first trying with linux then to windows, I never got the linux setup to work the way I wanted so tried windows IIS, at that point I got it working so I could serve a webpage of pictures from my computer and have stuck to that since, and was I able to use the currently download programs to make my webpages and upload them to the web server.

So apart from still being stuck with what I call picture protection I think I am almost there.

I was reading the introduction to this site and when it lists features of what the programs offer it only lists a few then says " and more ... " , for me that doesn't help in finding out what it can do for me if i use it.

Anyhow, enough of me dribbling on, if your reading and have some example website for me to view then place let me know. As for how to setup and run it that is a lot more reading I see, and learning about the other requirements.

If I get what I need from here I believe I will be a regular poster.

By the way, my name is Andrew and I am from Brisbane, Australia.