I played around with Gallery2 and several Wordpress-specific photo album packages … but in the end, I decided to use Smugmug to handle our family’s photos. You can check out the beginnings of the Wyatts smugmug site at http://wyatts.smugmug.com.
I choose Smugmug for several reasons, including:
- Photos are stored securely with trustworthy Amazon S3 storage.
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth for one price.
- APIs to access photos, so I can add them into wyatts.org easily.
- I like their UI.
- Great features:
- Uploads worked well.
- AJAX-y features are simple but effective.
- Album categories and sub-categories are great.
- Tagging works for identifying individuals and events.
- Geo-tagging is a nifty little feature I’ll have fun with.
- Viewer comments with captcha spam protection.
- Per-album privacy features.
- The site is customizable. I haven’t done much yet, but I can change the logos and CSS.
All of the above for $40/year (or $60 with the customization) seems like a bargain to me. Some of the open-source software (Gallery2) has comparable features … but I’m happy paying to avoid the hassle of dealing with maintaining the software and hardware. (Sidenote: If S3 integration with Gallery2 doesn’t already exist, it should.)
My next task is scanning in 12+ physical photo albums and 5+ shoeboxes of photos and negatives. I’ve done some preliminary research and outsourcing this task sounds like the only feasible solution to hundreds of hours of manual scanning. There are several companies vying for the opportunity to scan my photographs … will report back how they turn out.
If you’ve got any suggestions for scanning services, please comment.