* I-Gallery from blue-collar productions
I finally found it! I’ve been looking for a good photo gallery script for a couple of Web sites, notably for my son’s school Web site. After looking for ages, I stumbled on one that is truly excellent: i-Gallery from one of the programmers at blue-collar productions (see link below).
I-Gallery is written in ASP and installation couldn’t be easier: Just unpack the ZIP file you download from blue collar maintaining the directory structure (the top most directory can go wherever you like). Make sure that you download the replacement “viewphoto.asp” file that addresses the problem that Internet Explorer does not allow for a “fullscreen” view for users running Windows XP, Service Pack 2 (just overwrite the old viewphoto file with the new one).
The only thing to do before you first run i-Gallery is to set its database subdirectory to be read-write and set up a subdirectory anywhere in the file system for the photos making sure it has modify rights assigned.
The first time you load to igallery.asp page will be the first time the configuration script will run. You need to make sure that the locations of the various directories are set correctly and choose some cosmetic details such as how many thumbnails per page. You also need to specify which built-in e-mail and image handler support is available – if you don’t know, the configuration page will check for you. Is this cool or what.
You finally set up user accounts (you can assign both managers with complete configuration control and editors with only edit and upload privileges) and then upload images. If you want to bulk upload you can simply FTP files into the image subdirectory and then tell i-Gallery to rebuild the thumbnails.
You can change the look and feel as needed and there’s an upgraded version that supports subfolders of images under folders (the standard version only supports folders).
I-Gallery’s user interface is nicely designed and the product appears to run flawlessly. I think this is one of the best Web applications of its kind I’ve seen. And price. Nothing. The standard version is free. Well, actually it is donate-ware. If you want the version with subfolder support, you’ll have to shell out the big bucks – $9.99 to be exact.
This product was developed by one of blue-collar’s staff but I can’t find his name anywhere. Whoever that guy is, thank-you. That is the way applications should be built. Excellent!
