July 20th, 2006

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A New Backend for the Hall?

I’ve got this static section of this site called The Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. People seem to dig it, and it gets a good chunk of traffic on an ongoing basis.

As you’ll see if you visit the Hall, it’s rendered as a gallery using some adequate but kind of hokey software called JAlbum.

I’ve got some new exhibits for the Hall, and I’m considering moving to some other solution. Here are my criteria:

  • I like the gallery model, enabling people to browse through a slideshow or click on thumbnails.
  • It’s crass, but I want to wrap ads around the content, so no remote hosting on Flickr or the like.
  • It would be cool if the Hall became RSS-enabled.
  • It would be great if people could comment on each entry.

I know a blog seems like the right approach, but I’m resistant to the idea. Really, I guess I’m looking for a bloggy kind of thing that can generate galleries. Any suggestions?

Comments: 5 Responses so far

Darren James Harkness
July 20th, 2006
10:47 am

You’re looking for Pixelpost.

[Reply]

Carlos
July 20th, 2006
4:11 pm

Darren,
Use JAlbum as well and yes, it is a bit weird but I think it’s a great simple product for posting simple galleries. The ads aren’t usually on a JAlbum template. I post some personal pics using different templates myself.

Pixelpost looks a bit intimidating to set up but I’m sure you’ve got the techie know-how to run it. If you can get RSS feeds off of it, even better.

[Reply]

Jeff
July 20th, 2006
9:00 pm

I have used Gallery (http://gallery.menalto.com/) and it works pretty good. Haven’t used Pixelpost, but it looks very similar to Gallery.
I have used JAlbum, and both Gallery and pixelpost look like significantly more effort to set up.

Jeff

[Reply]

Travis
July 20th, 2006
10:43 pm

Expression Engine has a decent photo gallery module. It does all those things: comments, RSS, templating, categorizing, etc.

It’s by PMachine.

[Reply]

Boris Mann
July 23rd, 2006
9:36 pm

Gallery is the grand-daddy. Newest versions have RSS for notification…which isn’t really a blog. Has comments, etc.

There are lots of pieces of software that COULD be used to meet the requirements you mention. In fact, most of the blogg-y software out there has plugins/modules/album integration that will let you do what you want.

Do you want it to become more social — i.e. have you as the curator, and allow other people to submit images? Might be something else to add to the list of requirements as the flow for that will vary significantly.

[Reply]

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