Here are my picks for the most versatile PHP gallery scripts.  You may be surprised at the findings here as my values are different than the average person who wants to share their pictures. My value is based more-so on the flexibility and adaptability of a gallery script rather than being locked out from customizing it.  Gallery scripts are a good asset if you want to show items in a pre-established website/web application and do not want to have to write from scratch.  Reusing this code can help deliver an application expediently, but being able to have it resemble the host site is critical – it must be flexible if it is going to be used as “part of another website”.

Server Test Environment: These were tested these on  Ubuntu Server (LAMP install) – latest version. Approach to install:  Every click and drool wizard feature was attempted – no manual configurations were attempted to ensure the ‘as advertised’ feature would be accurate.

Flexible and adaptable come at a price. Sometimes the only method to add a photo is to ftp it up to the folder (that’s raw/flexible),  but it is considered flexible because a script can be written for exisisting application to control how/where a photo is uploaded.  So while reading these, keep this in mind.  So look for “stand-alone” if having an upload mechnism is a must for you.

You’ll find that most gallery scripts will boast of these features – comments will be limited to the most noticable of these features for each source in this post:

Features:

• On-the-fly Thumbnail/Low resolution picture generation
• Unlimited Categories and Sub-categories (it uses directories)
• Integrated fast text database mode (MySQL also supported if prefered)
• Users comments
• Rating system
• Web/FTP picture upload
• Top Rated/Last Commented/Last added pictures pages
• Slideshow mode
• User level support to protect pictures/directories from unwanted people
• EXIF/IPTC metadata support (hot!) (Only found in phpGraphy)
• Multilingual support (See TranslatorPage for complete list and status)
• Web interface management
• Lossless jpeg rotation support (via exiftran/jpegtran)
• Video, sound and text files support
• Layout/Text very easy to change
• Highly configurable (Themes/Templates)
• Installation Wizard

phpGraphy

http://www.phpgraphy.org/demo/index.php

phpGraphy did everything it boasted of, and was a snap to setup.  This will be one that will be kept around to help the next person that asks for a “quick gallery” install.  It’s lightweight, easy to modify (theme/css) – logic was easy to follow, and painless (which is a key feature).

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Plogger

http://www.plogger.org/demo/

Looks great, hard to integrate into an exisisting site, and install was less than bulletproof, but it worked after the 2nd try. Theme’s were not easy, but for a stand-alone, it’s useful.

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Simple Picture Gallery Manager

http://spgm.sourceforge.net/spgm/index.php?

As most do, it generates it own thumbnails and has a stripped down – very modern look.  Makes this script easy to include into another project if a sub-folder install will work for your circumstance.  Ironically, it’s more full-featured than it appears to be (looking at the demo had me believing that this was going to be a very light script).  Even has a few themes made specifically for the application available through the SPGM website making it intended to be a stand-alone gallery script.

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Qdig

http://qdig.sourceforge.net/qdig/qdig-demo2/index-Dark.php

It’s a one-pager script, but it’s quite details for being one page.  I’m always leary when a script says, “it will adapt to any server environment, but some settings….  http://qdig.sourceforge.net/Qdig/AboutQdig (details of setup).  In my case, setup was a breeze, and it shows well – easily themed, and the flash-like thumbnailing across the bottom made it appear to be more of an application.  Regardless, it worked well as promised.

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bolGallery

http://bolgallery.free.fr/

With some hesitation this was added, but there are just times you need this.  If you need something that you can just put a pile of jpeg’s into a folder, and send someone a link – this is the ticket….  There are many times where this is the perfect tool.  Want to show someone 340 proofs that you have to individually upload? (No one does!) .   Integration was quite easy, but I probably wouldn’t use this as an end user application, but the concept is great for the times you just need to show someone images quickly.

The quantity of findings were unending while searching for opensource gallery scripts.  Going through all of these gallery scripts will take time, and the task will be split up into parts.  These 5, that I felt were worth mentioning,  were the result of going through 50 scripts.  Please comment on any other projects you would like to suggest.  Part 2 will be coming in the near future.

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While not all the details are known about Carbon, the release is essentially an “installation profile” that combines the core Drupal code base with a set of popular and reliable contributed modules. Views 2, CCK, a WYSISYG editor named Kupu, Voting API & Fivestar, Tagadelic, PathAuto, and Organic Groups are just some of the popular modules that will be included in the release package. Other new features will include Mollom, an anti-spam module developed by Acquia, and Spokes, an auto-update module. There is also a “to be determined” social bookmarking integration slated. Carbon is sure to breathe a new inspiration into the Drupal development and design community. Some worry that it could threaten its Open Source development model, but that has been actively dismissed by Dries himself. Following this example, other design firms may move to build and release installation profiles with paid support that combine upon the core Drupal system and contributed modules with new themes and customizations.

A good discussion on this issue is found on webdevnews.net, and there are also some interesting posts on the Drupal site, such as:

http://drupal.org/node/282254

More information on the release of Carbon can be found on the Acquia website.

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A WYSIWYG editor has a user interface that allows the web designer to see a result very similar to what their website will look like on a web browser. Often, they also include tools that allows a web designer to create a webpage with little or no HTML knowledge, using visual tools. While this can be a good way to put together a page quickly, the code that is produced is often bloated, does not validate, and on some tools, is all table based.

NOTE: Why YWSIWYG editors often have their own rendering engines for displaying your website, be sure to still check it in actual web browsers, to see how the page actually renders. There are times when WYSIWYG editors can be horribly off.

Free WYSIWYG Editors?

For many years, in order to get a good WYSIWYG editor, a web designer would have to buy one of the many commercial packages on the market. In 2005, Daniel Glazman released NVU Version 1. NVU is an open-soruce WYSIWYG editor that is based on the Mozilla Composer source code. It has many of the same features of the popular commercial products, and based on my own personal tests, seems to generate more standard compliant code than Dreamweaver or Expression Web. NVU is a popular choice for web designers and developers looking for a powerful tool for free. As great of a tool as NVU is, it has been discontinued with some bugs going unresolved. For some users, these bugs are a deal breaker, and prevented them from using NVU as their primary development tool.
After NVU was discontinued, Kompozer was created. it uses NVU as a code base, and aims to improve and fix NVU. If you are deciding between one of these two products, you should pick Kompozer, as it is more up-to-date, and has not been officially discontinued (as of this writing), which means there can and probably will still be more future versions released.
If you are new to web design, or just want to try a new tool, I suggest checking out Kompozer (and perhaps NVU). It’s a pretty good tool for HTML and CSS, though doesn’t always play as well with server-side scripting as some commercial products.

Feel free to share your experiences with NVU, Kompozer, or another open-source WYSIWYG editor.

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• Is it crawling your way into the Technorati Top 100 and becoming an A-Lister?
• Is it making money from your blog and becoming a professional blogger?
• Is it having thousands of loyal readers who keep coming back time and time again?

While all of these things could be classed as a making a successful blog it depends on how you measure your success or who is measuring your success. Quite simply, if you are happy with your blog, it is a success and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you any different. Set yourself realistic achievable goals and work towards them. When you reach them, set the next. If you don’t reach them concentrate on your successes and learn from your failures. If it doesn’t work, try something new, but above all keep trying.

I know that, that is a simplistic view but so many people give up blogging after just a short time. I believe that part of this is due to the fact that in the early days of a blog the blogger is talking to themselves and nobody seems to be listening. It is quite easy to become disillusioned and think you have failed when nobody visits. Of course, maybe they weren’t cut out to be bloggers.

So, my first tip for creating a successful blog is perseverance and a good measure of patience. Not many blogs become popular overnight. Yes there are the exceptions but they usually have some other angle that boosts their popularity. For instance how many popular bloggers command an audience because of who they work for or for the project that they contribute to – quite a few I bet.  A readership takes time to build, so you better be in it for the long run.

Once you  start to get a few readers, you’ll want to keep them, so you need to write the best content you can. This is much easier if you know and like the subject you are writing about. I know this sounds obvious, but I have read blogs where the writer appears to know nothing about the subject. I think the key here is that you need to write with authority and build a good reputation with your readers. You can only do this if you know what you are writing about.

Be yourself and write sincerely. There are successful fictional blogs but you need to be good and know the subject extremely well. What I am trying to say here is don’t adopt a false persona and create a fictional being who writes your blog unless you are a very good writer and can pull it off. Don’t pretend to be something you are not.  If you are yourself, you will sound sincere and that will come through in your writing. 

How often you post is always one of those questions that will get different answers depending on who you talk to and depends on what you are writing about. It also depends on how much time you want to commit. Some subjects need to be posted about several times a day, news sites for instance, where others may be fine twice a week. I think you need to work this out for yourself but I visit my favourite blogs once a day. I’m always disappointed if there isn’t a new post so once a day seems a good idea.

For me, that the most important aspects of creating a successful blog. Perseverance, posting good, sincere content and posted often enough to keep your readers interested.

I have only touched on a fraction of what could be said about creating a successful blog and there has been masses written on the subject. I would suggest you take a look at the blogs I linked to earlier if you want some more.

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Firstly, make sure that you have created a database on your web-space – and assigned a user the correct privileges to use the database (all).

Secondly, go grab the archived file from the Etomite website. Etomite comes pre-loaded with TinyMCE – If you want to use Xinha, or FredCK Editor, grab those archives from the site too (don’t grab them from the maker’s websites – these archives on the Etomite site have been customized for use with Etomite).

In this example, I am using a fictitious domain name, www.youretomitesite.com, and it’s installed in the root folder of the domain, in public_html.

Ok, so you’ve got the archive now.

Extract the contents of the archive file. You will then end up with some files and folders – Folders: assets, install, manager, templates … Files: ht.access, index.php

Before you upload – do you want the full version (preloaded with some templates and sample documents), or do you want a blank canvas to work with (If you want a blank canvas, do this next bit first, otherwise skip past the next paragraph) I will explain how to integrate the other editors afterwards.

Etomite Lite:
Navigate into the templates folder, and remove all the files and folders EXCEPT the AlexisPro Redux Folder (and it’s contents).
Navigate back into the install folder, then into SQL. Remove the etomite.sql file. Rename etomite_lite.sql to etomite.sql
Now, follow the instructions for Etomite Full. When it comes to the configuration step, in the configuration pages, set the Error Page ID to 3 instead of 6.

Etomite Full:
Upload the extracted archive to your web-space. This will take a few minutes.
Ok, now it’s all uploaded, firstly, you need to CHMOD the assets folder, and it’s contents so it’s writable. Do the same for /manager/includes/config.inc.php … then once you have done that, you need to navigate to the following page.. remember to replace the domain name with your actual domain name…

http://www.youretomitesite.com/install/

The installer will then load up. There are only a few install pages.

During the install process, it will ask you for database details – these are what you have previously created earlier. If you don’t have any prior etomite installs, just leave the table prefix as etomite_ – this means that if you have something already in the database, it won’t wipe it out

Ok, once installed, you will have a congratulations page – do what it says: remove the installer folder, and CHMOD your config.inc.php file back so it’s not writable.

Now you’re all set to get ready to use it! Navigate to http://www.youretomitesite.com/manager/
Use the admin username and password that you defined during the installer.

Configuring for First Use
If you installed Etomite Lite, remember at this stage to set the error-page ID as 3, not 6
Flick through all the tabs – all the settings *should* be correctly configured for your site – make sure the last tab has the physical path to your etomite install – if it doesn’t, set it (usually something like /home/yourusername/public_html) … then press Save at the top.

If you want to use friendly URL’s with etomite, then make sure you’ve switched both options on that configuration page to Yes.

Then, FTP into your webspace public_html folder, and rename ht.access to .htaccess (if there’s one already there, rename that first – you may need to merge rules if you have some special rules already in place).

Adding The Other Editors
Upload the contents of the archive to the manager/media folder – so if you downloaded the xinha package, it should have extracted an archive to “/xinha/files-here” … upload the xinha folder into /manager/media. The same applies to the FredCK editor – upload the fckeditor folder to the media folder within the manager folder.

I’ve just thrown this quick-install guide together for www.attackr.com – if you have any problems during install, then don’t hesitate to head over to the Etomite Support Forums.

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1. Duplicate the page.php file of your theme and name it home.php
2. Right before the line that starts with “< ?php if (have_posts())...", add this line: "< ?php query_posts('pagename=home'); ?>“
3. Create a page in the wordpress admin, and make sure that it’s post-slug is “home“

Done. Now the page called “home” will show as your homepage.

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