Tfnet’s gallery is around the corner! For a long time now I have been saying that “soon” I will have a gallery on the site with all kinds of pictures. Well, I finally got around installing a gallery on the web site last night. I have used Gallery in the past and I am still using it on the Clan MP web site, but i have also come across many web sites which use Coppermine Gallery. So, instead of going the old fashioned way, I decided to give Coppermine a test. I did that only because it uses an SQL database as part of the gallery’s structure. This is an upcoming feature with version 2 of the Galley. At the moment Galley 2 is in its beta status and from reading on its web site i understand that the beta does not even have all the features, which already existing in Gallery 1, active/working. The above is another reason why I decided to test Coppermine. I wanted to see what it can provide me with, while I am waiting for the final or close to final release of Gallery.
After installing Coppermine last night and looking through its features and playign with its UI, I can say, I will continue using Gallery as a bridge between Tfnet’s visitors and my collection of images and photos. I still do not know how Gallery 2 would organize the albums, but for sure I did not like how Coppermine did it. I also did not like the user interface nor how multiple images were uploaded. Although I did like how I could add additional information to a newly added or already uploaded file. Not that i cannot do that with Gallery, but this one was a bit more rich on options.
One of the main differences I saw between Gallery and Coppermine is Gallery only works with images while a Coppermien album can contain any type of file in it. This makes Coppermien more of a files organizing and delivery system than a simple gallery collection of albums and pictures. I s’pose that would be a wonderful and extremely useful interface for a web site, which delivers a fair amount of various types of files to its visitors. In my case, though, I simply do not have use for it. Any files other than images, I have and want to share with you, TFnet visitors, I would organize in a fashion of my liking.
For now I am going to install the Gallery 2 beta version and keep it up to date with any new releases. I will update TFnet and the site map page with a link to the gallery ones I have it installed, configured and with some albums created. Keep checking back for the official news announcement of the opening of the TFnet Gallery! In it you will find not only photos of my family and I, but also my collections of avatars, sigs, funny pictures and drawings and many others.