I’ve started to look a little into online galleries. I previously installed Gallery2 that had a huge number of features (most of which I did not know existed). And last night I installed ZenPhoto which does quite a bit less. The question is – what do I want?
Gallery2 has a lot of features. Users can “Add to Cart” photos they like, and buy prints immediately and easily off Shutterfly.com (which I’ve used for photobooks, but never for prints as it takes too long, compared with just going to Costco or Blacks). I don’t see any feature that kick-backs money to me for sending them to Shutterfly – but I guess it’s convenient for family members to just have it done.
ZenPhoto seems to have a lot less. My domain name web hosting site provides easy installation of apps where they handle all the maintenance (like upgrading and patches) and I just worry about the content. Call it free outsourcing. I tried it last night and I’m not convinced that Gallery2 should go away just yet.
The reason I’m looking is because Picasa and Flickr all have content limits of 1GB or so unless you pay. I already pay for a website with a gallery – so it makes sense to figure out how to create something usable.
So my business requirements are:
- Free or an inexpensive one-time charge to install
- Allow part or all of the website to be hidden from the public
- Integration with online photo labs (preferably in Canada like Blacks, Costco, Walmart or Loblaws)
- Referral bonus from those online photolabs, since I’m sending business their way (gallery2 apparently pockets the money to go toward development and only has two willing photo labs)
- Able to present photos on dark grey or black for optimum viewing
- Able to upload lots of jpegs all at once (a difficulty for Gallery2 sometimes)
Nice to Haves
- Plugin to upload directly from Picasa and/or Photoshop
UPDATE:
With the most recent trial version of Photoshop Elements 9, I can upload directly to smugmug.com – which for a yearly fee allows me to sell photos commercially, or just give clients access to a professional photolab at Costco prices. It saves them the trouble of uploading the large files, they get a decent price, and I can update them at will, with no upload limits. Clients can also get non-public access to the website galleries. Cost is $160 or so for the pro fee. My recent reading indicates Gallery2 is still a contender – it now integrates with a Pro photolab that now sends photographers a check each month if users buy their photos. Cool.
