Gallery, Open Source Web Based Photo Album Organizer – Review
Sep 2, 2009 by Srikanth AD Photo Galleries
Gallery is an open source web based photo album organizer. It’s an effective way to manage photos and seamlessly integrate it into your own website, whether for personal or large community purpose. You can manage as many galleries as you want on your web server, where-in each gallery contains as many photo albums as you desire.
Gallery works with several different image processing tool kits and is available in over 30 languages.
Gallery Requirements
- Platform – UNIX (BSD, Linux, …) or Windows.
- Webserver – Apache, Microsoft IIS, Zeus etc.,
- PHP – PHP version 4.3.0 or greater (Gallery 1.x requires PHP 4.1.0 or greater), PHP safe_mode must be turned off.
- Image Processing Library – In order to automatically generate thumbnails and re-sized versions of your photos, Gallery requires either ImageMagick or NetPBM.
- Database (Gallery 2 only) – MySQL 3.x, 4.x or 5.x, PostgreSQL 7.x or 8.x, Oracle 9i or 10g, DB2 8.2, MS SQL Server 2005.
Step-by-Step Installation Guide
Here, I’m test installing Gallery on localhost using XAMPP (an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use – just download, extract and start). Before proceeding, you need to create a new MySQL database for Gallery using your preferred database administration tool like phpMyAdmin.
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Tags: gallery, open, open-source, photo album organizer, review, web, web software review
Build the next Youtube! Introducing Clipshare – the low cost video sharing solution
Feb 20, 2008 by Veiko Herne Video sharing
ClipShare www.clip-share.com is online community building software for sharing videos similar to YouTube. It runs on Linux and Apache Web server, demands PHP version 4.3 or higher and MySql 4+. It also needs several additional applications like GD Libary 2+, Mplayer and Mencoder, Flv2tools, Libogg and Libvorbis and LAME MP3 encoder to be installed which can be downloaded from other sites free of charge.
The installation should take some hours as besides unpacking the software modules you should create your MySql database and run script manually, parameters in several files and change directory rights. After that you should be able to access Admin module to setup the site video channels, the site subscription and advertising parameters (integrated support for Google Adsense and Yahoo Publishers Network).
I assume that when starting to install all requested modules, the process could take several days. However, the company can provide you the installation service or you can host your site in their server starting $2 per month. For the quote and ordering the installation service you should submit them a ticket having root access server administration username and password ready. So this product is not suitable to install for shared hosting services where you are unable to get access to the system root so maybe their hosting could be better solution to anyone considering their product.
Within a week I didn’t have any answer to my open ticket so I assume that their technical and marketing support wasn’t much online (live support was showing always Offline) however they have Client Area so maybe answers can be found from there. They have published FAQ section of installation problems and they are running online forum. Based on Hot Scripts portal feedbacks their technical support problems seems to be come across recently (2008) with probable expansion as previous comments has been always positive.
Their End User agreement says that ClipShare Product is registered trademark of ScriptXperts however either the EUL or their website didn’t had any company information and their liability maximum is $5.
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Tags: clipshare, online video solution, video sharing, web software review, youtube
WebNetwork – a white label social networking software
Feb 17, 2008 by Veiko Herne Social Networks
WebNetwork is a social networking software platform developed to communicate between fans, filmmakers and musicians. It is developed by Web Scribble www.webscribble.com
The system contains following areas: Profile, Film, Music, Blog, Groups, Events, Videos and Photos.
It has been developed by Web Scribble Solutions, Inc, a 15 employees company based on US, Upstate New York, Albany. Other products of Web Scribble Solution are: Web Date, Web Jobs, Web Store and Web Classifieds.
It’s written in php 4.12, runs in Linux and Apache servers and needs Zend optimizer 2.62 and MySql database to be installed in the server. Web Scribble promises free installation service when purchasing the license but I assume that the installation could not take more than Uncompressing the files and directories and creating the database.
Usability
Registering and creating the profile is simple but you need to decide, do you want to be a filmmaker, a musician or a just a member. Filmmakers and Musician profiles will appear on separate sections from members.
Personal profile will contain following areas: Basic Info (such as name, gender, birth date and address), About Me, Interest and Lifestyle questions. I didn’t find any customization features for those in Administration module so I assume the need for some Database and programming skills to modify the profile fields.
For profile photo you should upload it to your picture gallery and mark it as profile photo from there which was little bit odd as I had need to classify the description and search tags for it assuming that this photo will be also searchable.
Profiles can be set for Auto Approval or system administrators must approve pending profiles. Others where able to comment your profile which was a feature I wasn’t able to set off in the administration module and I wasn’t able to delete or moderate those comments. Anything once spammed will probably stay there forever.
Tags: social network, software, web 2.0, web software review, webnetwork, webscribble, white label software
Movable Type – Open-source Blog Software Review
Feb 13, 2008 by Mircea Goia Blog Systems
Movable Type blogging software is here (open-source this time). An interesting application for the weblogs and the blogging dummies! Six Apart Ltd., a 6 year old company from San Mateo, California, launched a well rounded package a few years ago for those who wanted to host their own blog. Its 4.01 version is still free for individuals and non-profit organizations. Therefore, this blog software is available with its source code. However, the company prohibits any redistribution or any commercial use of the same.
Its features are largely aimed at the beginners with little or no experience in programming. If you plan to install Movable Type on your website, it would be helpful if you have a little knowledge of Perl Scripts and Linux. (Well, I did not have almost ANY such background and I was able to do it) Basically, Movable Type is server side software made in Perl that can be customized as per user requirements. It can be best associated with MySQL on your server. If you plan to host it yourself, ask your hosting service to give you complete details about cgi folder and where the scripts are located.
Techno Savvy Gigs…
Movable Type is written in Perl and is essentially server side software. You need to install it on your server or the network, in order to test it or view its functionalities. Although once the files are uploaded in the correct folder, the script automatically generates the necessary database files. You can also easily set up number of blogs; however, you would need to access the file system on the server. You may need to access the file systems on the server and adjust the permission settings once again.
MT 4 is a lot easier to install than its predecessors but little bugs still remain that needs to be fixed. On the other hand, it has its own advantages as well. It uses the flat text file database that means it is useful even on systems that do not use SQL as database. It also has support from mail services like Sendmail.
Once the server side is set up, you can now configure the client side with “Blog Config”. The Core Setup allows you to create a new blog. You can set your preferences to allow anonymous comments, email new comments or allow comments by default. After logging in as Admin users you can add more users, set up templates, add blogs or edit the existing ones.
Tags: blog software, Movable Type, open source blog, Perl, Six Apart, web software review
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