[Lunatique]

I've been using Dreamweaver 4 for all of my website design/maintenance, but I've always hated how tedious it gets--especially when you have a ton of new pictures to add. In my case I'd have to create a html file for each image, change the background to black, then set the link for the popup window and set the size of the window to match the image. That is way too much work, and at some point I had asked about some of the templates out there, but I wasn't happy with any of them. I'm just wondering if there are any new options available these days?

The most important thing for me is to be able to have the popup windows create themselves to match the size of the images--without me having to enter the dimensions for each image.

And please don't preach about popup windows. I've heard that a million times, and I still like popup windows for viewing galleries of images.

[Sumaleth]

You need a content management script of some description. A script, written in PHP or CGI, that automates everything except uploading new images.

The two most popular image-gallery scripts are Gallery and Coppermine Photo Gallery, but there are dozens and dozens. If you want it to work in a very specific way you might only achieve that through some tweaking of the code.

Only way to know is to download a few scripts, install them on your server, and take them for a ride around the block.
_________________
Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[-HoodZ-]

for the lazy...like me

Coppermine
http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php

Gallery
http://gallery.menalto.com/

currently im in the same situation Luna...except my knowledge on HTML is very very limited...i have wordpress and i have no idea what im looking at when it comes to code...i just want to change the navigation i.e. links, gallery etc. and i have no clue to where to go :/ i may need to read up some more to get my site up and running soon....

http://wordpress.org/

[LoTekK]

Some sort of CMS would probably be the best way to go about it. I think spooge and sparth both use Coppermine, which seems like a good bet.

If you're feeling adventurous, and know a little php, you can write one up as well. I did that with my own site, simply because I had time to kill, though the code is admittedly messy and pretty ugly. I also lost steam somewhere along the way, so I didn't add auto-thumbnailing code, which means I need to manually create thumbs, and I also need to maintain a .csv list for each of the sections.

[Lunatique]

I checked out the suggestions, and it doesn't seem like they can do the things I need. I guess what I'm looking for is one that can pretty much work with the kind of layout my website currently uses, with automatically generated popups implemented for each image.

[B0b]

thats possible

BOAN wrote a custom CMS for seaweed that pretty much gives them total control over all the content on the site (not the buttons) and even to add more pictures if they want etc

[DJorgensen]

I programmed a java script that resized the window to the image size or the screen size (smaller of the two) ... back when I actually programmed things.

It also centered the image to the middle of the screen and brought it to the front when it finished loading.

[jfrancis]

I went the blog route. You can put your images on flickr.com

[insane007]

if you need help I can probabaly help you code this for a very minimal price
or if you want to try and code it yourself I offer advice and help for free.

[Terry G.]

being medicaly retired i now build lots of web sites, the one thing i use quite ofter is "iview", you can group all of your pictures in one directoy on yr computer run iview and it will make thumbnails of the pictures and make a html page for you named what ever you want and a paage for each picture .
click on the thumbnail and it will take you to that pic with a next and back link on each pic page (sorry no popup) but works quite well for most usages.
the thing i like about it is i can do 20 or 30 pictures in a few mins and the thing that takes the time is just uploading the pictures to a site.
_________________
a painters mind is "not" a thing to waste - use it!

[Lunatique]

I've been checking out the options out there, and it seems at this point, for a guy that can't code (and has no interest in it), highly customized solutions are extremely limited. My current goal is to do a hybrid blog/gallery site with the following design:

-All pieces of art/photograph can be commented on, and have its own html page so that if I need to write stuff about the piece, I could. This also maximizes the amount of space a single piece can take up without having so scroll inside a frame.

-The blog section of the site is well integrated with the main site, so that it's seamless. I toyed with the idea of setting main frame of my site to access a blog site like livejournal or myspace, but it could get confusing to browse for people who aren't aware they're looking at two seperate sites in one window (for example, they'd click on something that leads them to some community crap on myspace, and all of a sudden, they're browsing crap that has nothing to do with my site, but inside a frame in my website).

I could just seperate the blog and the my site totally, by simply having a link to the blog from my site, but the whole point for me to redesign the site was to integrate both into a seamless whole. I currently blog on my own site, but I really want to implement the commenting feature and the archiving by blog subject feature. I looked into WordPress (I found it because RagNar Tornquist, creator of Longest Journey, uses it), and for a non-coder like myself, it's daunting as hell to install and work with. Originally, I was going to simply have a wordpress blog sitting in the main frame of my site (but hosting it myself), but now I don't even know if I could get wordpress up and running.

*sigh*

[Exclamation]

I suggest you look into WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org). It's a PHP-based content management system that has literally hundreds of available plugins and templates.

With the right template and plugins, you can do exactly what you're asking. It may still require some customizing on your part if you want to match your current site 100%.

I've been using WordPress for about a year now and I love it. It's so easy I'm running 4 blogs across 2 different domains with it. Plus, most hosts will have WordPress available for automatic installation (although not always the latest version).
_________________
Freelance Illustration & Design | A Portrait of Envy

[Lunatique]

I tried to install WordPress, but like I already mentioned, it did not go well. All kinds of errors and misformating. And I can't even figure out what I did wrong.

[Francis]

What about blogger.com? They do their free hosting/external blog thing, but I think you can also get a version you host on your own server. The "template" window shows all the code so you can customize it to match your site. Here is mine - I was able to use one of their stock templates and change a few colors and graphics to match the look of my site.

http://francistsai.blogspot.com/

I haven't bothered to host it on my own site though - sort of started it on a whim and hadn't really had any intentions of making it a permanent part of my site.
_________________
Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[Lunatique]

For me to access blogspot right now (when I'm still in China), I'd have to use a proxy tool. That causes problems because cookies can't be stored that way, and some stuff requires cookies to be installed on your computer. I'll have to wait until I move back to the States (in May) to try it out. I checked out yours and some of the guys you linked to--all just gorgeous! It's funny, but the artist blogs are always more content rich, because it's almost like artists feel they have to post drawings/paintings with the entries. But how long can you keep that up? My blog is all over the place--from pro audio equipment, camera reviews, travel, film reviews, to personal crap.

I noticed that blogspot doesn't have the "tag each entry with categories" feature--where you can archive entries by the topic. Take a look at Ragnar Tornquist's (creator of Longest Journey) blog to see what I mean: http://ragnartornquist.com/

See the Categories on the right and on the bottom of each entry? That's what I mean.

I've setup one with livejournal and myspace, but I haven't decided if I'm going to use either. Both can't be hosted on your own server, so that's a drawback. If I can get wordpress to work, I'll most likely use that.

[Lunatique]

Ok, I managed to get WordPress installed and running. I had to spend about two days just learning CSS coding, plus some javascripting for certain things I needed to do within some entries. I'm not a techie guy at all--so although this stuff might be just mundane crap to some of you, it's actually a big deal for me. It's like the guy who lived off of frozen dinners for years actually getting dirty in the kitchen and cooking a meal.

I discovered two CSS editors that made my life much easier--CSSVista and Topstyle. Just awesome programs for more intuitive CSS editing (I tried many others and they all weren't very intuitive).

Anyway, WordPress has been fully intergrated into my website now. I'm not sure if I still want to implement that whole gallery system with comments. Maybe not for now.

[Yarik]

Might be out of my league to post this here but

picasa from google is a great product



Worked great for me. It has an export function which allows you to create wanderfull gallerys.

[Lunatique]