Introduction

As you know by now Gallery 3 Photo engine is hibernating. I decided to explore alternatives. Please note that unless I comfortable, I will be keeping my main gallery live while building up pieces using my new engine of choice.

As a long time G2/G3 user and seasoned plugin and theme developer for Gallery for past many years, while have a sad feeling, I have wisdom of knowing how things work and what to expect.

In this series, I will be posting my short notes on my experience migrating my photo site to new engine.

Considerations

  • Ideally 1:1 replacement – which means…
  • Keep it private, private … Ability to host locally, i.e. gallery engine is not linked to any particular host or OS. LAMP or WAMP stack.
  • Ability to create custom themes (everyone wants to be unique or at least have variety of choices how gallery looks like)
  • Ability to create plugins. I would expect gallery engine to have number of plugins already available, but I do want to have ability to customize/extend it further nevertheless
  • Ability to move my content with as little effort as possible (local import, self organizing of the files)
  • Light resource requirement. Ability to import large photos.
  • and ability to use shared hosing which
  • Not as important for me, but should allow multilingual support
  • Image and Video upload support
  • User, User groups and permission setup

“Shared” Solutions

there are plenty of “shared” photo storages on the market and “public” storage is ok for you take a look at the following:

  • http://www.shutterfly.com/
  • https://www.flickr.com/
  • http://www.snapfish.com/
  • http://www.smugmug.com/
  • off course, you can always use FB for the whole world to see and for FB to monetize 🙂
  • Or Google flavored – Picasa

“Local” Choices

There are many around, but I would consider

Making personal choice

In the end it all comes to personal choice, so take it with the grain of salt and evaluate if solution works for you…

WordPress

For few years now WP has Photo Gallery support. It is blog integrated and is very simple to use and customize. However if you have large number of photos to post this option may not work for you.
Being familiar with WP and using it as a blog engine but as  I am not planning to merge my blog and my photo gallery, I am going to skip on reviewing it here.

ZenPhoto

I was keeping eye on the project for some time and I do like it. Project is well established and have plenty of plugins and themes.

Install was  easy and I was able to import most of my photos… until large files were to be processed… and it failed… Turns out ImageMagic with my shared hosting just did not have enough juice to be able process images even on basic level to extract metadata.

Please note that it could be a that there are some tweaks required (I did some changes in G3 for it to work in the same scenario, but this is exactly what I am trying to avoid in my review process).

Bummer… so I would still recommend to take a look at ZenPhoto and consider it as a possible solution for you… but for me, I am moving on…

Coppermine

Well established, but too “old-looking”. This project is still going strong and active, but to my taste it is “legacy” solution. While it still have a lot of nice features, way it is organized is just not for me.

Piwigo

If you do not mind French here and there, take a close look at this little beauty. 🙂

Let’s look at my checklist above:

  • It is not 1:1 replacement, but close enough
  • I can host locally on the LAMP stack without changing hosting
  • I can inherit or create custom themes. In fact, it is somewhat easier with Piwigo
  • I can create plugins and there is plenty of existing one.
  • Local import and self organizing of the files is supported
  • Light resource requirement. Ability to import large photos.
  • I can keep my shared hosting
  • Multilingual support
  • Image and Video upload support (additional plugins may be required)
  • User, User groups and permission setup

Now the experience:

  • Deployment was a breeze – you can do full code deployment or use “pull” method and all components would be downloaded for you, you just need to deploy one file and setup your database. Rest will be done during setup.
  • I have uploaded my var folder from G3 and run Sync. All photos (2000+) was imported into gallery tree and appear in the gallery. No hiccups, no resource issues.
  • There is G2 import plugin you can install and try. It may even take G3 photos, but I did not try it. If G3 is the issue, someone may try to adjust G2 version to take G3 content especially if you have a good amount of metadata you need to bring across. I opted out to import images only.
  • Aside from few default themes installed by default, you can pull number of other themes from repository along with various plugins. There might be some things missing which I am used to with G3, but I do not consider it an issue as I can migrate missing parts myself.
  • If you are looking for GreyDragon Theme – I started process of migrating it over Piwigo and will make it available in next month or so. If you’d like to help testing it, please let me know. Just do not expect full port immediately.
  • If you are looking for any of my plugins which do not have equivalent at Piwigo already, please let me know and I will consider the port.

Extras:

  • There is a code repository if you like to have access to raw stuff
  • Along with bug tracking system
  • Looking for ideas for your new gallery look, visit showcase section.

Americans beware, or not 🙂

Piwigo is started by Pierrick Le Gall, French and you would find some number of posts or plugin’s descriptions in French.

Do not be discouraged by this 🙂 people in Europe can speak 2-3 languages fluently and usually English is one of them. So have question or two, visit forum and ask.

PS/Edit: Read above with smile. How Pierrick highlighted in his comment below, Piwigo is international project and anyone will feel right at home regardless what language they speak.

Conclusion

I have moved my gallery to Piwigo.

You can follow visit this blog for more details as I will be posting updates and in some near future will be making GreyDragon available for testing and then official download.

Follow-ups

Subscribe for Twitter feed at @greydragon_th to be informed about Theme development.


96 Comments

plg · Jul 9, 2014 at 04:27

Hi Serge,

I’m Pierrick, founder of Piwigo. Thank you for quoting Piwigo and using it as replacement of Menalto Gallery.

Based on an existing Perl script created by dschwen https://github.com/dschwen/g2piwigo, I’ve implemented the “menato2piwigo” plugin http://piwigo.org/ext/extension_view.php?eid=768 and you’re right, it is only compatible with G2. You obviously know G3 better than me (which is easy since I nearly know nothing about Menalto) so if you want to help to make this plugin compatible, it would be a nice contribution!

You’re right, I’m from France, but Piwigo is an international project. English is the main language (Piwigo is available in 56 languages). Don’t hesitate to tell me where you have found some “posts in French” (outside fr.piwigo.org of course) and we will clean/remove them!

It’s very nice to read you’re planning to create themes and plugins 🙂 We will certainly be in contact. You current Piwigo is already nicely customized!

    Serguei Dosyukov · Jul 10, 2014 at 14:19

    Ha, this was quick, Pierrick 🙂
    French comment was a little 🙂 if you really want to correct it, I found few plugins which had description in French. I know it is user submitted content, so no complains here.
    Thank you for visiting my test gallery location. Still a lot to-do to match my theme in G3 which has some traction in the community 🙂 So I hope to carry it along and made it available for P2 users, if they like it.

plg · Jul 9, 2014 at 04:29

(FYI, we have more subscribers to the English newsletter than to any other newsletter, including the French one 😉

flop25 · Jul 9, 2014 at 11:04

Thanks for your post
If you go on our english forum you will see on lot of fluent english writing by us, the Piwigo team… well fluent… quite understandable ^^
And if you like Piwigo, help us testing the beta, improving the Doc, the translations etc… we always need native English speaker 🙂

ps: I’ve just seen your gallery and that’s impressive! Maybe you could post your theme on our ext. manager? Our SVN repository is open to any Piwigo extensions published, if you want

    Serguei Dosyukov · Jul 10, 2014 at 14:24

    Guys!!! Do not be ticked by my “French” comment. It was a joke… 🙂 I am no English native myself, so I see no problem with any king of language mixes.

    Theme would be available for download when I done migrating content from G3 theme. I still have a lot to learn on how P2 operates, so please bear with me 🙂

Mervyn Groves · Jul 10, 2014 at 06:47

Hi Serge,
Appreciate the information on Piwigo. Just a couple of questions so that I can try and perform the migration in one shot.
1: Which directory in the Piwigo installation should I place the images.
2: Which Sync function should be used. There appears to be a selection of Sync options.

I had just one issue with the installation of Piwigo, I had to add a date.timezone = “America/New_York” setting in the php.ini file.

    Serguei Dosyukov · Jul 10, 2014 at 14:34

    Disclaimer: This applies only if you do not mind to loose your metadata for gallery’s photos
    * Photos goes into /galleries/, simply copy content of your G3’s var folder.
    * Then go Tools->Synchronize. Please note that you would need to select “directories + files” and unselect “only perform a simulation”

      Eivind · Aug 24, 2014 at 04:52

      Hi Serguei. I tried running the menalto2piwigo script, and it works. However, no metadata is copied across. When I run a simulation, the log files says:
      0 photos’ information synchronized with files metadata
      0 photos candidates for metadata synchronization
      Metadata used : filesize, width, height, date_creation, latitude, longitude

      is there any way to fix this?

        Serguei Dosyukov · Aug 24, 2014 at 16:54

        I have no control over this plugin, you would have to follow up with the author on the forum

Jeremy Radwan · Jul 10, 2014 at 17:53

Thanks for the post! I’ve been a long time G1/G2/G3 and GreyDragon user … I’m sticking with G3 for now, but it’s good to know if I decide to move, I can still have GreyDragon if I look at Piwigo!

Greg · Jul 10, 2014 at 23:28

I’ve looked at Piwigo and it looks great.

Serge, I hope you take on as your first project for Piwigo a migrator from G3. I have many albums and also descriptions with some photos and would hate to lose them. A lot of work to recreate them, although maybe I can direct import again.

Many would appreciate such a tool. I don’t know how much work it would be, but obviously you can start with the G2 version.

    Serguei Dosyukov · Jul 11, 2014 at 11:29

    I’ll consider it once finish GD migration… one thing at the time 🙂

    Greg · Jul 11, 2014 at 11:56

    According to the post, the author of the G2 migration tool is going to write one for G3, http://piwigo.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=152810#p152810. The author is plg, so maybe you two are already communicating about it.

      Serguei Dosyukov · Jul 11, 2014 at 12:04

      Then I let story unfold and will concentrate on the theme for now

        Greg · Jul 26, 2014 at 11:51

        plg just posted:” A new version 2.6.c of [extension by plg] Menalto2Piwigo for Gallery3 compatibility.”

        Imports descriptions, but not sort order, tags, and rotation according to one report (and partially confirmed by me.

        And they have a mod that makes better URLs than the meaningless default ones, but still incomplete.

      evadim · Jul 20, 2014 at 09:01

      Looks strange, then compare with plg words above… but would be great if this is true.

MarkRH · Jul 12, 2014 at 00:58

Actually, I’ve been using Zenphoto and have had no problems using Imagick with it processing multiple 2500×2500 images that are around 1.5 – 2 MB each. I’m almost ready to flip my gallery’s sub-domain to point to it. I looked at Piwigo but it’s URLs are a mess and would make creating rewrite rules to new album and image locations almost impossible. Last time I tried Coppermine, didn’t like it. But, they’re all just tools. Use whatever works best for your situation and needs.

    Serguei Dosyukov · Jul 14, 2014 at 09:01

    I’m not saying it would not work in other’s people environments but it is a limitation of my hosting package. I did run into the same issues with G3 before and have to tweak my settings to allocate more memory.
    Between ZenPhoto and Piwigo, the later did not give me problem while ZenPhoto failed.
    As I outlined in my “requirements”, my goal is to get solution with least tweaks required.
    I still think ZenPhoto is a great platform and I do like it, but it just happens to be that PW worked out better for me.

    Greg · Jul 14, 2014 at 09:59

    Thanks for pointing this out. I don’t need rewrite rules, but I prefer comprehensible URLs as it simplifies organization.

    I have to say the default template for Piwigo looks great and the plugins I want seem to be there, but I will give Zenphoto another look. And except for confusion on what extensions, plugins and tools are and how they are organized on the admin page and the Piwigo site, the set up was easy. I haven’t used it much though as I’m waiting for a G3 migrator.

    Agree on Coppermine.

    Jeremy Radwan · Jul 15, 2014 at 08:34

    Ugh, I completely forgot about rewrite rules. I had to deal with that after my G2 to G3 migration and even then still had to manually update links elsewhere. Not looking forward to having to deal with that again.

      Jeremy Radwan · Jan 3, 2015 at 20:33

      Has anyone tackled a big G3-PWG migration (like Serge) and attempted to handle URL rewrites so all existing links to G3 images still work? I can probably work some SQL magic to fix links in my WordPress blog, but having to find and fix all the links I’ve used out on the internet (forums, etc.) would really be hard. I guess I could just “start fresh” and let all the old links just be broken *gasp!*.

        Serguei Dosyukov · Jan 5, 2015 at 09:16

        depend on how your G3 urls were structured, you can create url rewrite/redirects rules in htaccess which would allow redirects from old posts

Rhyull · Jul 14, 2014 at 11:22

As a long time G2/g3/greygragon user it’s very reassuring to have your recommendations about where and how to move from G3 when the time comes. I doubt if any of us wanted to move but I couldn’t blame the Gallery volunteers for having run out of energy. We should thank them for all they did and achieved in the past.

Regarding possible destinations, I wonder if you looked at 4images? It gets overlooked a lot because it’s primarily German but I have used it in the past for picture galleries and it had, at that time, both good international support and a lot of mods etc. I just preferred G2 for its multi-site option. Not that I have anything against PW either by what you say.

4images did have one advantage (I haven’t looked at it in several years). At that time you could FTP pictures into the gallery and run an install script which would read them, create thumbs and inter-images automatically for all new content. No per image upload needed.

OK that was just a suggestion of one you may have missed evaluationg. Whatever happens, I will most likely be ‘following the dragon’ when the time comes 😉

    Serguei Dosyukov · Jul 15, 2014 at 08:36

    I took a quick look at 4images. It reminds me Coppermine. At least on the surface. System is out of Germany. Admin interface looks even more Coppermininsh and text styled.
    Both Piwigo and ZenPhoto support direct file upload and import, multilingual support and lot of mods.

Rhyull · Jul 16, 2014 at 13:36

Fine by me. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t overlooked it during your search 🙂

flop25op25 · Jul 23, 2014 at 04:57

Hello again
the Menalto2Piwigo plugin has been updated for Gallery3
http://fr.piwigo.org/ext/extension_view.php?eid=768 😉

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