Web apps that generate nice photo/video galleries by recursively searching directories

Question

Hi,

I am going to upload all of my photos to an Apache web server - they're all in folders & sub-folders. Filenames are not descriptive and I don't care about the meta data.

I've worked with PHP Gallery before, but find the process of creating albums, etc. a little laborious. I just want to rsync my local photo folders with my web site.

Is there some PHP/Perl/RoR script/app that I can configure by pointing to a folder and telling it to generate a decent looking photo gallery automatically? If it has to talk to MySQL - that'd be fine too. As long as it's a one-time config on installation. I could live with having to automatically reindex or something with a daily cron.

I'm just looking for a bunch of suggestions. I don't need anything fancy i.e. no tagging, slideshows, etc. (although that'd be nice). It's primarily for my parents to see photos of their grandson - some thumbnails and a navbar would work!

Thanks in advance, Michelle MB!♦

Answer 1

I recommend Zen Photo. It can read directories and generates albums based on the directory names.

Although it brings some of the more "web-two-zeroy" functions, it still performs the first things you mention brilliantly. It also brings customisable themes, etc.

Answer 2

down vote

Have a look at www.phtagr.org, it's an open source social web gallery to organize, enrich, and share your photos with your friends or community - a combination of Flickr and Gallery2.

It requires a LAMP stack and photos and videos are organized through tags, categories and even geo location. These meta data are embedded using EXIF or IPTC inside the JPG. So you can tag your photos at home and copy them to the server and all keywords are kept.

You can upload your media using HTML upload, WebDAV or import them via the local file system while user might have an upload quota. Comments with Captcha and Google Maps are also supported. A build-in Flash slideshow makes the viewing easy and convenient.

Xemle