Simple Picture Gallery Manager
Posted on Sunday, June 25, 2006 at 2:57 PM
What is Simple Picture Gallery Manager (SPGM) ?
SPGM is a program that - once installed on your website - renders pictures galleries dynamically. That means you just have to add pictures into your galleries and everything is taken care of ! Neither HTML nor PHP programming skills are required. It runs OK as is (meaning out of the package), and even Internet newbies can get it to work. The only requirement is the use of an FTP client to upload your pictures to your website and to set up SPGM
Why doesn't SPGM generate thumbnails automatically ?
That's because it is actually more of an administration task, which is not part of SPGM's scope for now. And that is why putting new pictures on line means putting their associated thumbnails as well. That being said, thumbnail generation could be done on-the-fly using GD (the PHP graphic library used for image manipulation), but this toolkit is not provided on every web hosting service, and SPGM must be compatible with as many configurations as possible. Most of all, such a process is awfully time consuming However, there is an EXCEEDINGLY good tool for creating thumbnails, pictures, descriptive text all ready for FTP to SPGM called Image Mage available from this web site which you can use as a standalone application.
Is SPGM it configurable ?
SPGM is massively configurable though, and you can tune the layout just as much as you want to match your exact web site's design. Several cool features are also included, while keeping in mind that the program aims to be as lightweight, simple and portable as possible. Don't expect automatic thumbnail generation, advanced search functions, nor per-gallery full statistics then. SPGM generates XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant code and makes extensive use of CSS style sheets to render galleries. It only requires PHP version 4 or higher and does not rely on image manipulation libraries (like GD), or any database system whatsoever.
Where can I get SPGM ?
From this web site and here is my site (also available from the top menu bar on the "Photo gallery" tab) with just a few picture galleries I prepared and uploaded - and it took no time at all.
