Gallery & CMS for photo-website with e-commerce?
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dh003i
Joined: 2010-01-11
Posts: 6 |
Posted: Mon, 2010-01-11 07:03
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There are a few things I want to accomplish with my gallery: 1. Have a simple elegant layout that is easy to navigate with a minimalist design, like Bruce Percy's website. 2. Have an integrated e-commerce solution for customers to buy prints, and for that to be easy for me to keep track of. This website is an example. 3. It would also be nice if it integrated easily with some kind of CMS so that managing my website is not a tedious process. But I'm a little bit confused about Gallery/Menalto. It seems almost like a photo-specialized CMS? What about the other parts of the site? I've read that Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, and CMSMS for a smaller CMS are nice ones to work with. Can Gallery integrate with them? 4. What if users don't have javascript? Is there a fallback? Does it degrade gracefully into something that looks nice? Is there the option to use non-JS galleries (i.e., an HTML/CSS gallery)? 5. SEO. How does Gallery deal with that? |
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Posts: 16504
1) That's all hand coded HTML, each and every page, from the looks of it. Though I don't see why you couldn't do something similar with G2 or G3
2) That's Gallery 1 (no longer developed and very little support provided). Though I don't know where the shopping cart comes from, if that's part of G1 or an add-on or not. It's been years since I've really used G1.
3) G2 (gallery 2) has tons of integrations that've been done:
http://codex.gallery2.org/Integration
Gallery (all versions) is a standalone application for hosting your photos on your website.
4) For G2, users don't need JavaScript (unless the shopping cart depends on it). There are cart modules for G2, not much for G3. However, for G3, if a visitor has JS disabled, they'll loose functionality.
5) SEO? Pretty much how ever you want. G2 and G3 are very customizable and you can get pretty much anything done you need or want. Check out this thread for G2:
http://gallery.menalto.com/node/36854
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Posts: 6
Thank you for your reply.
The Gallery 3 page says, "You can upgrade from Beta 1 or Beta 2 (but not from earlier releases)." So does that mean that if I start out with using G2, and later want to move to G3, I'll need to re-upload all of my pictures, re-do everything?
Regarding G3, if JS is turned off, what functionality disappears? Do the photos disappear?
It looks like G3 has a cart-module for PayPal, that should be good for me.
For the galleries, are they customizable? I.e., can I have a gallery to look like way the gallery looks on Bruce Percy's website? What I envison is some kind of breadcrumb history of where people have been (so they can go back), organized by a variety of keyboards; i.e., the gallery page might start off with links to landscapes, macros, portraits, architecture, night-shots, abstract. These would be via a tag for "type" of photo. Then there might be a variety of other tags to select from (i.e., I envision when entering this in, a few fields about each photo, such as type, location, year, location, color, mood, etc; then possibly also a field for as many keywords as may be relevant. So users could navigate from the gallery to Landscape >> Letchworth >> Orange >> Gloomy Mood. Is this possible?
Posts: 16504
Gallery 1, Gallery 2, and Gallery 3 are all completely separate software programs (they do the same things just differently) That statement is talking about upgrading from the G3 line, not referring to G2. For G2, if you go that route, to "upgrade" to G3, there is a G2 Import module you can use in G3, that will import your photos, titles, descriptions, comments, users, etc.
Not that bad, but if you have it set so users can view full size photos, they won't be able to, no slideshow. I'm not sure what else. It also means no logging in, few to no admin abilities, etc. Install it and try it, takes less than 5 minutes to get G3 up and running
I don't know how polished that is or if it works with the current code base. G3 is still under heavy development and hasn't had a final release yet as we're still in Beta, working toward a RC. G2's available cart and checkout modules might be a better fit for now.
G2 uses Smarty as the template engine so you need to know a little Smarty, HTML and CSS and maybe a little PHP.
G3 uses just PHP and is setup so you really shouldn't need to know much PHP at all and if you have a strong HTML and CSS background should be able to make it look how ever you want.
Install them, play with them. The breadcrumb is there in G2 and G3. Organize your albums how ever you like
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Posts: 6
Thank you again for your response. I am reading a book on (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL before starting my website, so I'll probably have some time before setting it up. Maybe G3 will be more towards a stable version by then.
Re integration, it is my understanding that even with no plugins or what-not, you can still stick Gallery3 gallery into a website that is maintained on CMSMS, Drupal, Joomla, etc, right?
Posts: 16504
You can do that with anything
However, G3 won't integrate with any CMS system as yet. It can run side by side with them, but G3 won't integrate with them yet.
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Posts: 6
Thank you again for your replies.
For the CMS for the rest of the photo-site, given that it will just be a photography site without a user-community or forum, do you think CMS Made Simple (CMSMS) might be a better option than Drupal or Joomla?
Posts: 16504
I don't have a major opinion about CMS systems as I haven't used many heavily. I wouldn't use Joomla, but my grips with Drupal and CMSMS are petty. Drupal is probably fine. From a usability standpoint I like WordPress the most myself, but it's had it's fair share of security issues. Though I think CMSMS would be beating WP out if it was widely used.
There are more CMS systems out there than I care to even think about.
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Wow, thank you so much nivekiam for the integration guide! I am primarily a wordpress user so am glad to see gallery integrates well with wp. Frankly this script looks much better than the free wordpress photo gallery plugins I have seen so far.
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You could use zen cart (well I could!) Its basically creating a standard layout then updating "products" is easy. You can encorporate payment options and calcualte delivery prices. I found drupal and wordpress not very good to work with although i didnt give them much of a chance.
I have built a few websites with zen cart with it though the thought of an art gallery hadn't occured to me - but i have been contemplating looking or designing a bespoke system with some flashy effects, not to sell, just to display. I would like to find something out there as alot of standard cms are over complicated and dont encorporate transitional effects - will read around or get to work!
If you want a hand i can help out freelance....