Recently, I've been working on changing up my gallery. Currently, the gallery uses Flickr as the host which is definitely nice for reliability for hosting but it does pose the problem of not being very dynamic. What do I mean by that? Well, for every new Flickr album, I have to create a new page. I'm sure I could work out a way to get around that but I'd rather host all the images myself.
So, what advantages does my script propose over my previous method?
- Dynamically updates - Everytime a new folder of images is uploaded, a new album page is created for the album. No coding required by me
- The script automatically creates thumbnails for the images as needed using sizes specified by the user
- Exif data is pulled from the original image during the thumbnail creation process. This allows me to display time taken, ISO, camera, image description as image title, etc.
- The display of the pages are easily customizable with css.
- The gallery requires only 2 files, the main page (for displaying the albums and pictures) and the thumbnail builder
I will admit that this has taken me about a month to get the scripts to the point they are now but it's honestly because I've been learning as I go. Image manipulation is something new, and thankfully, I had a buddy of mine help me out along the way. Thanks Joe.
The new gallery has not been uploaded yet as there's still a few things I want to make sure are completely polished. I may release it for download for anyone to use but I haven't quite decided yet.