Today, I started working on integrating an installation of Gallery2 into an existing template. My client wants to add a photography portfolio to her freelance site, and she wants to be able to update and maintain it herself once I’m done. So after doing some research, I decided to go with Gallery2 (with Coppermine a close second) because of its great user interface. Turns out having an easy to use program doesn’t always mean it’s easy to install.
Gallery2 is an image gallery platform that uses PHP, Smarty Tags, and a database backend to let you organize and manipulate your images on your hosting server. Gallery2 is crammed full of features, which actually becomes its main weakness: it has feature-itis. While modifying one of the prepackaged themes, I keep finding myself cutting away whole chunks of extraneous code.
It’s pretty frustrating because at this point, I know enough PHP to realize that Gallery2 is overqualified for this job. But I don’t know enough to build my own application from scratch. So for now, I’m stuck having to cut back an action-packed application like Gallery2.
Another problem I’m having with the Gallery2 guts is that the album pages are laid out with tables. I’ve been a div man for years now, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve worked with tables as layout elements. I know pages of thumbnails can be considered tabular data and thus would warrant using tables. But I’d designed my template using divs before I chose the gallery platform. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.
My final gripe with Gallery2 is the same I’ve had with every content management system I’ve worked with — I’m talking to you Wordpress, Joomla, Blogger, phpbb, Coppemine, etc. How about instead of giving me preloaded templates and themes that have tons of features I have to remove, you make the out-of-the-box template as bare bones as possible? Then, instead of ripping a template apart and removing the features I won’t use, which has been faster than building one from scratch in every platform I’ve used except Wordpress, I can add features to a solid foundation.
Now let me add that, as is always the case when I discuss Open Source applications, I am eternally grateful for all the hard work the developers put in so that I can have access to these awesome products. When I have problems with these platforms, I’m typically as frustrated with my own limitations as I am with the applications. So just because I whine a little, don’t think I’m not appreciative. I’ve just had a hard day, and now I feel better. Thanks for listening, Internet!
