I’m looking at the best way to build a downloadable gallery within a members area of my clients site.
Basically, I’d like to collate a large number of images into a central gallery that will display thumbnails (that can be clicked on to enlarge like Showcase/Exhibeo) but have a PRINT button and DOWNLOAD button on somewhere. This can be next to the image, or on the image, either way it needs to be simple and clear as the site’s main users are not technically savvy. It’s basically so users who appear on the site the ability to print or download their own photo.
It will be added to over time (by myself, not the client).
I can think of ways to do it manually but given that I probably have at least 100 to 200 images to do, was looking for a more efficient way.
I dont think that I would bother over thinking this as you could end up with a very unwieldy system.
In its simplest form have your gallery in a password protected/members only folder. Each image could link to a new page with the individual image on it and a Print button (there is an action for that). Simple instructions like: Right Click>Save Image As should be sufficient. If they want the pic they will manage.
You could spend a long time building a database driven system for this but I just dont see it as being worth the hassle.
Thanks for your response. I’ve had a long think about this today, as well as looking at the smugmug option, but had a lightbulb moment when I realised I manage a gmail account linked to the clients email, so used Picassa albums to generate links that could be applied to simple buttons within a secure area of the site. That way members can visit the restricted area of Picassa and view / download / print their photo’s, whilst myself (and the client) can manage the albums and set restrictions ourselves.
Looking at the amount of photo’s we have we may need to look into additional storage soon but think it’s the simplest solution for now.
I know I’ve answered my own question but it’s always useful to get feedback from Freewaytalk.