So I've been playing with some new image gallery software, Gallery2. This is good stuff! It has a nice authentication model, fine-grained permission bits to restrict or allow access to photo galleries, and is reasonably fast with a good security track record.
My gallery is here and I've thrown up some random photos and videos I've taken lately, as well as made some customizations to make it easier to browse through photos.
One key factor to consider in web image galleries is browser real-estate. Whenever you view an image, the most essential item on the page (the image) should be as high and to the left on the page as possible. Interface elements (such as previous/next and links to other albums) should be as slim as possible, and information about the photo (such as exif data, links to different sizes and such) should be UNDER and to the RIGHT of the photo when possible.
The reason? If you don't have your browser window sized large enough, you will have to scroll down (annoying) and to the right (ungodly annoying) to see the whole photo. So rather than be able to simply click next and see all the photos as a slide show, you spend half the time scrolling to get the full photo on the screen.
I've already greatly reduced the amount of junk over the photo, and plan to slim down the pane on the left side or possibly move it to the right side so the photo is first and foremost on the page.
Other than that, this is good software, and I will probably keep using it and migrate older photo galleries I have to it as I have time.
flickr!
Get Flickr yo!
from a friend..
Uhh, no.
Flicker is slow as balls. It once took over a minute of loading time to display one image.
No thanks.
As long as I'm able to, I'm going to do my own hosting. My machine is fast, capable, and I fully control and back it up.