Customer wants a photo page that they can upload to

[tombstoneweb]

Hi all,

I have a question. One of my clients wants to have a page on their website that they can upload and change the pictures when they want.

I know there are a few different ways to accomplish this.

I am interested to know how you would go about doing this? Would you just use a facebook type photo site and link to it? What other options are there?

Thanks in advance!

[Dubbya]

Depends if you have the site hosted on a server that'll let you run scripting languages.

Sounds like the same sort of functionality you'd see at any number of buy/sell or auto sales sites these days.

Years back, I was part of a team that built a site for a business in California that sells tow trucks, decks and equipment.

They wanted the ability to take digital photos of new and used equipment, manage photos and web pages and detailed instructions that explained exactly what they needed to do right from square one. The persons responsible for doing this were barely able to start up a PC and had no knowledge of HTML or how to work a digital camera.

We used a file VBScript-based file upload component (COM Object) and a bunch of custom scripting to upload and scale the images, create thumbnails, name and save them to dynamically created folders. In the back end, we employed an Access database to store page data and file locations.

Once they'd uploaded the images, they were able to build, modify or delete pages and also to select, rename or delete the photos (and matching thumbnails).

You should find it relatively simple to find a file upload component that'll allow you to dynamically upload and size the images but it might take some work to find a solution to creating custom content.

I think that most of the CMS (Content Management Systems) sites should provide some level of inspiration and/or support for what you need to do. Maybe start there...

Also, do some searches for File Upload components supported by your computer language of choice.

.02

[Corobori]

Done it so many times....

As Dubbya says it all depends on the server.
I am using IIS running .NET so it's pretty straight forward, much easier than a few years ago (no COM object required any more ).

It also depends on how much process you want to do on the back end.

To start you need to make sure your user won't upload a huge pic. Our days people are taking pics at a zillions mega pixels and you can have a 10Mb pic with a size 5000x3000 pixels. Pretty useless for the web. Of course you can resize the pic using the HTML width tag but this isn't going to change the weight.
What I am using is either .NET drawing features or 3rd party component which will resize the pic and reduce it's weight. I have done this for real estate agencies where I am uploading 10 pics per property, creating 3 different sizes of pics to be used in different parts of the website and also in some opportunities I am even branding the pic with some sort of copyright stuff. Also did it for 2nd hand car dealers, product's catalog, news publishing web site, etc...

[kruser]

I was able to successfully accomplish picture uploading including re-sizing and customer administration on a Linux server using PHP and MYSQL earlier this year ( 2008 ) . Took some effort to grasp the concept, but eventually the script ended up quite short and clean and is still working reliably.

[webmax]

Yes, it depends on the server. Some hosting providers even include the software to upload changes made to a .csv file so that you can change the content of an existing database without any programming knowledge. We have not used this yet.
What we have done a few times for clients with little computer knowledge is this. First, we make a sql database on the remote server and hook it up with the appropriate spaces on the website. Then we create a .csv based on that, which we give the client so they can use to make changes. They can use notepad to work on the file. We also give them a password protected screen where they go and upload this .csv. Then, on the same screen, they also upload the pictures. We do this programming in PHP. Some limitations of our system: the name of the photo has to match the first entry they put in for that product in the .csv; they shouldn't upload anything wider than a certain number of pixels; they cannot add more features than the predefined number of features defined in the .csv, although they can add more products. It is a quick, easy, and very robust solution. People of varying computer abilities can learn to use it in a few minutes.
But if you don't want to do your own programming, you can try Coppermine, which is a PHP photo gallery. I've used it for some clients where you don't need to do a lot of customization.

[holmpage]

Some other quick options that don't require any programming knowledge:

• Smugmug.com is the Cadillac of photo sharing sites. The client can set up as many galleries as they want. If you buy the pro account, you can customize it completely and have it on your own domain. I'm starting to recommend it to artists who can't afford to pay me.
• WordPress is getting better and better, and will resize images and allow you to choose the size you want. You could build a whole website based on WordPress, leaving the blog function out and building pages only, and most people would never know.
• If it's a community based site, with a number of people involved, you could create a Flickr group and have people contribute photos to the group pool. Some of them may already have Flickr accounts. I'm trying this with a group that is trying to encourage participation and photo sharing among mostly older people - I figure it's the best chance I have of getting them to do it themselves.

[tombstoneweb]

Thank you all for your responses. These are all great suggestions. I now have some decision making to do. Thanks again!

[BSmithTTS]

My recommendation: Gallery | Your photos on your website (Gallery 2 from menalto)
• It can be as simple or as complex as you want/need.
• It bridges well with many CMS applications.
• Can be skinned to match most any website.

[noel_x99]

I'll second holmpage's comment on Smugmug.

If you do CSS you can customize the mid level or the pro package so that it seamlessly blends with the original site. We've used it for a handful of our customers. They love it because it's so easy to use.

Their support forums are awesome. Any time I ask a question, I get an answer within hours.

[crowdadmin]

Originally Posted by BSmithTTS

My recommendation: Gallery | Your photos on your website (Gallery 2 from menalto)
• It can be as simple or as complex as you want/need.
• It bridges well with many CMS applications.
• Can be skinned to match most any website.

Agree, the definately most powerfull gallery out there and it is GPL.
Trought it is smarty and very modular inside. If you like a powerfull something you would configure buy turnng on, off and ajusting the options it is nice. But any other change like adding own options, changing the gome page into something else, adding a contact form or even deleting its native ones becomes a tricky task as there are hell of files and deppendancies under the hood.

It mihght be a challange to teach theclient how to manage it (well... even for you it sometimes might be a challange to remember "where was that contorlled by")