What features do you look for in a image/media gallery

Here’s a few features I’ve been looking for in a media/image gallery, a wordpress plugin that addressed them would be amazing , I’ve tried to catogarise them a little and I’ve given each feature a rating out of 5 of how important they are to me, 5 being very important, 1 being not so important.

Uploading
  mass upload (via ftp or otherwise) [5]
  web interface upload for users [3]
  ability to add any file type (configurable) to the gallery with changable icon sets for non-picture formats[2]
  optional automatic thumb generation on/after upload[5]

Security
  password protected categories[4]
  access controlled categories (via user role/level)[5]
  user role/level determined upload options[5]
  moderation of user uploads (depending on above user role/determined upload options) [5 – if users can upload]
  a configuarble list of ileagal file types that can’t be uploaded (ie php exe) [5 – if any file type can be added to the gallery]
  custom user groups [3]

Other features
  description of each item in the gallery [3]
  optional info about each item displaid in gallery or each item page (eg size, creation date, views/downloads) [3]
  comments/discussion for each item in the gallery [2]
  user rating for each item in the gallery [1]
  an optional “most visited” category [1]
  an optional “*new” category [1]
  a way of viewing recent comments [1]

I know theres quite a few there, it would be top if you could address each one, but realistically I realise that some may not be all that do-able. Hope it gives you some inspiration and idea of priority anyhow.

Don’t forget to let us know when your plugin is finished ??

Hi. This is what I’m looking for in a image gallery plugin:

– Integration in the write post page (insert picture, album etc.)

– Published album: Click on a thumb leads to a post with that image. Or a fullsize popup etc. if you want that.

– Insert a fullsize, midsize or thumb in post.

Maybe all this is possible in wordpress 2 already?

Hotlinking protection

Hi Chris

I’m actually looking for something quite simple…

Inside WP I would love the feature to write a page which I call “Pictures”, when I open this page I want a list of all the maps on my server. When I click on a map I get a nice and simple thumbnails-view of all the pictures inside that particularly map, when clicking on one of those thumbnails just very simple… the image (and maybe, just maybe the possibility for users to leave a reply)!

So, all this should be completely dynamicly, I mean… I should only add a map on my ftp, upload some pics, and WP does the rest!

Do you think something like this is possible?

Grtz
Pieter

Budoink’s list is great!

I’ve tested I think just about every photo plugin out there and none of them offer bulk/mass file uploads. Maybe that’s a harder feature to add, but I would say it’s my NUMBER ONE request. Right now i’m using WPG2 with Gallery 2, but I find G2 to be overkill.

Other super important features for me would be…

-optional automatic thumb generation on/after upload
-password protected categories
-description/title fields for each item
-integrate single image or album set into WP posts
-integrate with WP templates
-options to choose full page or custom popup pages for single images within an album
-options to choose slideshow or static views for albums

If you can come up with something that offers all of this I would be ecstatic…and of course more than happy to rally for donations.

These are exactly the kind of replies I was looking for .. keep em coming.

Thank you,
Chris.

podcasting, and photocasting built in, just like currently you can simply link to an audio and get a podcast going.

I with each media entry, be it a gallery, a single photo, a movie, or an podcast, it should be nested within a standard post. Meaning that if you want to single out all the photos, it’s a matter of making all the photo posts a particular category. I essence by nesting within posts, you can take advantage of all the built in WordPress sorting options.

Please! I’m interested in seeing what you do with these ideas! keep it up!

I’m going to throw a wrench in and say that when I looked for my gallery software, I looked for something without the majority of features you already have listed. There are already a bazillion big, bloated galleries available—I just wanted something that would hold my pics with a minimum of hassles, and wouldn’t require me to shut off dozens of features.

(So my galleries are running using twin copies of ZenPhoto: https://www.lisavollrath.com/galleries/ )

Unfortunately, trimmed down programs such as Zenphoto and Plogger don’t have the ability to allow the users of your blog to create and manage their own galleries.

Gallery and coppermine are both overkill for this task imho. If there was a simple gallery that could be integrated with the wordpress user database, that’d be great.

If a gallery did have the feature for members to upload, I’d have to shut it off—and so would all the other artists I know. We’re using galleries to display our own work (in my case, well over 1000 images of my mixed-media work), and don’t want other people’s images mixed in.

I think that’s the difference between a true gallery, and a picture post.

lisavollrath

If a gallery did have the feature for members to upload, I’d have to shut it off—and so would all the other artists I know.

Artists were always the primary target for this project. If I wanted a multi-user system I probably would have just used an existing package. What kind of management features would you see yourself using?

I would see this as an opportunity to include galleries and other media as a part of a post, not simply a plogger/zenphoto/gallery-like integration. Really WP is lacking a concise, clean, scalable, and well integrated way to organize and present audio, video, and photos within the context of a blog.

I think the best example of what is needed is the Apple iWeb sites, where photos, and audio are an integral part of the blog experience. Posts could be coupled with galleries, or media and all of it could be RSS compatible.

My advice is to keep focused on the integration with the blog side of things, and keep the generic blog that can plug in for the Gallery2, plogger, coppermine, and zenphoto.

Chris, these are the features I really wanted when I started testing galleries:

* The ability to have unlimited folders and sub-folders.

* The ability to sort each folder differently. Some of my work needs to be sorted by date, some by file name, and some by reverse date.

* Something that would generate thumbnails for me. For three years, I’ve been making my own, and I’m over it.

* An admin area that will let me write text for the contents of an entire folder at once. My old package made me click each photo to write—too many clicks!

* Title and description written as text, not sucked from the photo info.

* Something that either plugged in to WP, or was easily themed to match it. I was tired of having my gallery look one way, and the rest of the site another.

* An easy way to move images from one folder to another via the admin. Also, to delete via the admin.

* The ability to easily password protect certain folders. I do some paid subscription stuff on my site, and it would be nice to be able to let folks see the folder, but not be able to get into it unless I’ve given them access to it. I liked kineda’s idea of integrating the gallery with the user database—asking folks to subscribe to the site, and then restricting certain folders to a specific user level would be a good thing.

Stuff I don’t need, or will shut off:

* Uploading via the admin area. I FTP the week’s additions all at once into various folders.

* Comments—although I’ll bet the artists I know are split evenly on this. I shut all commenting off, because I have problems with people commenting simply to get their name on my site, or to flaunt their mental illness. I can’t waste time moderating all that mess.

* User uploading. My site is strictly for displaying my own work.

* Counters, trackers and ratings. All those numbers displaying on the site just looks cluttered to me.

* Most popular and highest rated. However, random photo or recently uploaded options might be fun—oh, probably not, because my old package had them, and I never used them.

* Believe it or not, integration into the blog posts themselves. If I want to dump an image into a post, I can just put it in using an IMG tag.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Hope this helps.

In regards to linking to items from a blog post… Aside from static linking, would there be any need for dynamic linking. What I mean here is that if a change was made in the gallery record, it would show up in the post. If a new thumbnail replaced an older one, the post would show the new image. This would be accomplished via links such as

<img src="./gallery/image.php?id=xxxx">
or w /rewrites
<img src=".gallery/image/xxxxxxx/thumb">
<img src=".gallery/image/imagename/thumb">


It’s rather low on my list right now as I’d rather keep things simple and focus elsewhere.

Can’t wait to see what you come up with. I’m especially looking forward to the bulk upload feature.