I use Zenfolio for my site, seems to have everything that I need.

I use the Pro account since I need to allow digital content download and also the ability to setup different licensees, plus the ability to overlay my domain name over my zenfolio account.

Here is my site.....http://gallery.stockfoodpics.com/?Submit=Enter+Gallery%2FStore


And here is a link to Zenfolio.....http://www.zenfolio.com/

-Don

Coppermine Photo Gallery
Coppermine is an Open Source multi-purpose fully-featured and integrated web picture gallery script written in PHP using GD or ImageMagick as image library with a MySQL back end. It is free but you need your own web hosting, and some web skills.

Gallery
Gallery is an Open Source web based photo album organizer. Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website.

Coppermine is tricky to set up.

Yes definitely. It's not for the faint at heart. I find myself fiddling in the php code all the time to be able to do what I want. Most of their skins hurt the eyes. But the OP wanted to have an install on her own site, not a hoster. Apart from Zenfolio, there is also good old Smugmug that probably has higher exposure.

hmmmm i actually do have coppermine for my private photo gallery. i have no problem with php and mysql and webdesign and so on. i have never tried the shopping cart option of coppermine - does it make sense?

Yes but most cart plugins are not maintained well and have issues. About half of the time of maintaining CMSses now goes to addressing vulnerabilities. Even my Joomla (well maintained) was hacked by a MySQL injection. If money is involved, I wouldn't trust any free plugins. An option is to link your photos to a secure site like Clustershot or Mostphotos. Or sell off a secure site like Smugmug and the like.

no, it is not portraiture. it is more of a landscape and that sort of stuff sale. for example now i hang pictures in a caf� with prices written and direct them to my website, where they can order them for example framed. i also want to put other pictures there and make them available for download sale.

no, it is not portraiture. it is more of a landscape and that sort of stuff sale. for example now i hang pictures in a caf� with prices written and direct them to my website, where they can order them for example framed. i also want to put other pictures there and make them available for download sale.

I'd probably stick with a JAlbum with FotoPlayer then unless you want to invest a bit more and use something like picturespro .. they have been around forever and have a very stable cart with more pro options ... as far as online carts go it would probably be your best attempt at upselling canvas prints and specialty products because you can use product example images in the cart. FotoPlayer has a more trendy slideshow feel but it offers nothing when it comes down to upselling techniques.

that's a really good idea, simsi. i've often seen hanging photographic prints without much info, only sales price. did you approach only one cafe, or will you contact more in the future?

no...i'll approach several caf�s.

If you have enough time, you might want to consider a fully fledged CMS like drupal.org.
There many modules and extensions for drupal, like galleries and shopping cart.
Pros: + highly customizable
         + if properly set up, very search engine friendly
         + free
         + large community behind it
Cons: - it takes a lot of time to learn it, and to set up the first (decent) website

hmm that sounds good, i have time, and i am also good at webdesign things, so it won't be that hard.
i may start with fotoplayer and move to drupal? which gallery extensions and shopping carts are there, anyone has experience with that here?

thanks!
simone

I have just started to learn drupal, because it allows me to set up the site exactly the way I want.
I read that Gallery can be integrated into drupal, but since I don't need things like ratings or comments, I want to do it with other modules.
There is the "Views" module (http://drupal.org/project/views) which creates listings of content, for example images.
Apart from Views there lots of modules that help you do with images what you need to do:
http://drupal.org/search/apachesolr_search/image
http://drupal.org/project/modules?text=image

I don't know anything about fotoplayer.

Basically, you have to learn and configure each module separately, which takes time but the possibilities are endless.
As for the shopping cart, there is Ubercart:
http://drupal.org/project/modules?text=ubercart

but I am not going to implement it, I will link to other sites (I have no time to handle the sales).

Quote from: cascoly on April 07, 2010, 13:38

i've since switched to smugmug pro - you can integrate it wityh your own domain eg http://pix-now.com, add google advertising, and links to your site.  it's quick to set up, easy to use, good support.

not sure any of these sites garner many sales unless you build the traffic yhourself.

so if i use smugmug or the like i'll have more traffic?

sorry, no - whatever they may say, these sites save time you'd spend on programming and design, but they only really end up showing your images among an incestuous group of other photographers, few of whom ever actually buy anything.  if you want to sell from these sites you need to do the hard work yourself.

s

hm....so i have looked through this for a while now......
i miss an important thing: what i want to do (among other things) is having my photos exposed in caf�s and the like, and customers go to my website and order a framed print for example. this means that i print the picture and frame it by myself. but in smugmug and those others you can only use their labs as print services! And I don't know if you can add customized products?

What do you think of that?

hm....so i have looked through this for a while now......
i miss an important thing: what i want to do (among other things) is having my photos exposed in caf�s and the like, and customers go to my website and order a framed print for example. this means that i print the picture and frame it by myself. but in smugmug and those others you can only use their labs as print services! And I don't know if you can add customized products?

What do you think of that?

redbubble and fineartsamerica both offer framing services - main problem with this approach is your margins are small and there's a substantial upfront investment.  but it'd be great for diversification if you can do it

steve

hm....so i have looked through this for a while now......
i miss an important thing: what i want to do (among other things) is having my photos exposed in caf�s and the like, and customers go to my website and order a framed print for example. this means that i print the picture and frame it by myself. but in smugmug and those others you can only use their labs as print services! And I don't know if you can add customized products?

What do you think of that?

I use smugmug for a place to send people, WHCC for printing. (Just an opinion here) hope I understood you correctly? I think you're making a mistake by thinking that buyers will see a print hanging on the wall and then go online to purchase it. I would do whatever I could to get them to leave the establishment with the print while they still have their hands on it. Not saying it wont happen ,but I'm guessing the percentages would be pretty low that they would go online later. I would put them together ready to sell. I have prints in 30 stores, They sell great in the stores, but very little online action. Just my experience. I think it has to do with the fact that: A lot of people buy art spontaneously, once the buzz wears off they might change their mind. "Do I really need this print"?

I guess I'm interested in something like SmugMug or ZenFolio - not for stock, but for people to buy prints directly without the need for me to submit an order to a print shop like WHCC on their behalf.    Which is better/cheaper/easier for a nontechnical person to use?  I want to post a photo, then let them order prints themselves, but some of these people can barely grip a mouse...

What's "self-fulfillment"?  Isn't that what I'm looking for?

i finally went with zenfolio. it is the cheapest....and it seems to offer what i want. it is a bit uncustomizable though...
here is an example
www.eyecatchlight.com (but still under construction)

I thought you wanted to use something with your own web hosting.

La donna � mobile. 

Quote from: FD-amateur on April 14, 2010, 01:12

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on April 13, 2010, 22:48

I thought you wanted to use something with your own web hosting.

La donna � mobile. 

hahaha, vero, molto mobile......

Sometimes I like to tease. You catched the ball well. 

I'm trying to get Gallery2 to work on my site http://www.maigi.com/stockimages/. But I guess you already tested it. I was looking for lazy people solution, where you can make uploading and keywording stuff as easy as possible. They are working on new version Gallery3, but it hasn't shopping cart function implemented yet. It you are a programmer...

Maigi, Gallery has awesome support if you run into any problems. A really knowledgeable guy on staff there helped me integrate it into a photo group site that featured galleries by 70+ members. I had some problems getting it to fit well in my template and they were great. Their forums and tutorials will answer many questions. It's not a simple program but has a lot of cool add-ons, they call them modules http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Modules There is an ecommerce one that integrates with Zencart http://codex.gallery2.org/Gallery2:Modules:zencart

... helped me integrate it into a photo group site that featured galleries by 70+ members.

Could I see the website?

Here's the gallery link http://copamilwaukee.com/New/gallery2/main.php I used the Siriux theme.

It's not keyword-searchable and it has no cart. So what's the point? Coppermine is keyword-searchable. The third party solutions too. This just looks like a flat HTML gallery like done with good old Arles (from DigitalDutch), almost 10 years ago. I had the impression people here wanted to sell, not to show.

hey don't fight 

both selling and showing are important and interesting. coppermine also offers a shopping cart now... it's just kinda unprofessional i find...

Cool your jets. The Gallery is searchable, look at the bottom and there is a search box.

I looked for "man" and "male" there and it returned nothing, nada, wala, nichts, de rien, niks. Don't let that spoil your fun! Just trying to be helpful if you're interested in sales. For now, I just keep looking on DT to buy ;-). Time = money. Gnite.

For those still interested in an image gallery to drive both Google Images and Sales, I came up with a fast and workable solution that fulfills both goals.
Having abandoned Clustershot and the many Open Source PHP/MySql frameworks, I reverted to my old HTML(JS) solution, the Arles generator, that always worked fine.

* Clustershot was very difficult to integrate and asks 50$ per year, while I have my own server (for mulitple sites) for 100$ per year.
* The numerous OS galleries (Coppermine, Gallery2) can be buggy and they are not really stock oriented with their ratings, comments, etc...
- It takes (too much) time and PHP knowledge to modify the sources, and with every next version, you can start all over.
- The free cart plugins can be buggy, they are not supported, and hence they can have security issues.

------------------------------

The major disadvantage of an HTML gallery is that it is static and not searchable for keywords, etc.. You can easily add/change/remove images by regenerating it, but for the user it is static. When you consider that your own gallery will never attract buyers in volume, but just browsers that might get interested, it is a lesser disadvantage. In return, you'll get many other advantages.

* SEO optmized: the images appear along with their textual meta-info in one single DIV, which the Google Image robots love, and the title of the image is repeated in the page title. This is an unbeatable solution in SEO since a robot will never issue a query command on a site: it just tracks the static pages.

* Fast: I made a prototype in a couple of minutes. Fine tuning the design took a bit more, but all info for the generator is stored in a text-only parameters file so the process of adapting design and type of info to show is very transparent.
Once you have the design in place for one gallery, you can just copy the parameter file and change folder names for source images and gallery title.
All image info is taken from the image's IPTC.

* The watermark looks good and is very adaptable. You can also add image overlays to brand your shots.
The resizing is done by superior algorithms, since they are done on your local PC and not on the server which usually has crap fast algorithms: the resized images look better than when resized in one of the OS frameworks.

* How to sell from your gallery? (to the spot-buyer). It seems you can easily add a cart but I didn't explore that solution. I just put in a link to the image on the site with the highest prices, and for me that's the 3DStudio. You can use any link though since the generator is very versatile.
To avoid having to poke in the link or image ID every time I regenerate the gallery, I put it in one of the unused IPTC fields of the image itself.  I put the image ID number in the IPTC-field 'special instructions' and the script of the generator does the rest, like adding "http://t3ds.com/" in front of it.

Quite some work if you have thousands of images, but you can replace the link then by a generic link(s) that point to your port on one or more sites. Even if you have no time to put in all the individual image IDs, you can catch some referrals straight from Google Images.

-------------------------

Demo.

This is the standalone gallery: link,
and this is a version embedded in my site (Joomla) in an IFRAME: link, with the copyright notice and the home button removed since they are on the site already.

-------------------

If there is some interest in this solution, I can write a short tut or just send me a pm.

Ktools Photostore should be considered seeing what has been suggested here.

I'm well aware of Photostore, and I have been considering it too. With this solution, I just wanted to notify some photogs that don't fancy a full sales-ready gallery, but just a net presence. I just get 40-100 unique hits per day, and I'm in front of Google. No volume buyers are interested in sites of modest photogs.

And this came today, which isn't the self hosted answer.

Photoshelter Basic

Monthly Basic Account - $1 Trial for 14 Days
$1.00/first 14 days, then $9.99/month
- 10 GB storage
- 1 website theme
- E-commerce optional
- 10% fee on sales
- Advanced SEO
- Social sharing tools
- Directory listing

Enjoy 14 days of PhotoShelter Basic Account service for only $1. After 14 days, you will be automatically charged the regular subscription fee of $9.99/month. Upgrade, downgrade or cancel anytime.

---------------

I suppose if someone came up with a solution that offered e-commerce, licensing RF and RM and other sales, they would have a hit package. I don't see anything that does that. There are some that preform one segment but not all. I don't self market, don't intend to get into printing or framing, but it's interesting to see the various ideas here.

I'll have to check the FD-amateur HTML solution, which is probably most adjustable for the most people. I can do HTML in Wordpad, but reading and editing php is like reading Greek.

And this came today, which isn't the self hosted answer. Photoshelter Basic

I finally dove in and setup a basic account now that they added all the new functionality.  Pretty slick. Decent SEO configuration, a lot of options, and nicely done for $9.95 p/m plus $50 e-commerce setup.

I already have an html site that's pretty well optimized but it would have taken forever to get images into it and properly SEO'd. Photoshelter makes it a lot easier with stuff like Lightroom integration.

For me this is more of a test to see if buyers really do use search engines to buy direct from photographers like some of the industry analysts claim.