Host your photo galleries on your own web site.

This article is the third in the series I have started regarding publishing pictures online. So far, we have talked about two fundamental questions to be asked before publishing any pictures online, and last article dealt with the first and easiest option namely, using an online picture sharing library. In this article I will discuss publishing your picture galleries on your own website.

What does it mean to host your own picture gallery?

The simple definition is that you have paid for your own website name and space and therefore you own your own space on the internet. In addition, you are using the space you have bought for publishing your pictures. There you have it: you’re hosting your own picture galleries. This is different than using Flickr or Photobucket or other online sharing library because these libraries own and control the web space. Ok, this is very simple, I admit it, but once you have your name and space paid for how do you go about adding your own pictures to your website? I am not asking about what HTML code you have to write, or what colors you have to use, but rather what solution are you choosing?

Only TWO solutions

That’s it really. There are only two basic solutions: non-database driven and database driven. However, there are many implementations of these two solutions.

There are major and fundamental differences between the two solutions so a better understanding of each solution is needed before we can pass judgment.

• No database – this solution has to do with creating the HTML code either by hand or by using some automated software that generates each page in the photo gallery. In other words, you pick the pictures, you choose the order of the pictures and you create each page for each picture. Once it’s done you cannot add or delete any pictures from your gallery without rewriting the code for the respective pages. Simply put, the code behind the photo gallery is static, meaning that once it has been created it has to be changed by the same process that created it.
• Database driven – this solution uses a separate repository for information about your pictures (metadata). This information contains data like: physical location of the images, title, subtitle, date and other data that maybe useful for your needs. Then, the user interface is the front that accesses this data present in the database. Essentially, this is a two tier (two layer) solution: one for the user and one for the data (images). Why all this complication you might ask? The key to the database driven solution for a photo gallery, is that if you add or delete an image, you only add or delete the entry for that image in the database, without touching the user interface pages. In other words, the user interface is dynamic which means that the contents shown change automatically as the contents of the database change.

…but MANY implementations:

I believe it is important to make a distinction between solutions and implementations, because many people confuse the two. The solutions as I have said are only two, but they can be implemented using Web Albmum Generator, Extreme Thumbnail Generator, HTML, PHP, AJAX, JAVA, Java Script, ASP for the user interface and MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, MS SQL for the database. Again, only two solutions, but many implementations. So, if you’re thinking I’m going to publish my pictures with PHP, you’re talking about an implementation and not a solution. I plan to write about a few of the different implementations in my future articles, but for now I want to keep the focus on the two solutions presented.

Next Page: The “no database” solution

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