Ok, I need some advice about a website application. I work in a Photography house and we currently deliver photos to clients on a CD or through email. My boss wants to move everything online, to promote online delivery. We have T1, our own servers, networks etc. so that’s not a problem.
What kind of web application should we be using to create pages with dynamic content such as popular stock photography sites like:
How much would it cost for a template that we could use? Can dreamweaver achieve this dynamic thumbnail tables, etc. We want to incorporate Cumulus in the future also.
Any advice is geratly appreciated. For I am just a humble designer and intermediate Dreamweaver user.
Cumulus 5.5, The whole purpose of the online delivery is to make it as simple as possible. So someone’s 86 year old grandma can log on and quickly download images.
you need a database of some kind. Cumulus is a database, but unless you buy the top of the line, it won’t tie in with anything else (unless they have recently changed that).
as for the databases avail, I’ll let the experts here speak on that.
I’ve a client who is a photographer, which we have built a custom application for him in .asp (so he can upload daily shoots for review on the web), and he absolutely raves about it every time I speak to him (every other day).
php will do the same, sometimes more efficiently.
however, if you know nothing of programming, I suggest you hire this portion out, as the learning curve is steep as a SF parking lot…
The biggest pain, is entering the necessary info into the database. The info (cross ref, keywords, searchable info) has to be input by hand, one entry at a time. That is where the investment in time comes in…
It sounds easy to the person who knows the technology, but not how to impliment it. Unfortunately there is no substitute for manually inputing all of the info related to each image, which is needed to dynamically build the web pages in an organized fashion.
I have time to input all the key words etc. that’s not a problem. I am the company web guy/designer with plenty of down time. Tell me about this custom ASP job you made for your friend. Is there a link I can check it out?
"the learning curve is steep as a SF parking lot… " LOL!
not to jump in here but, here is an admin console demo, i made for a client. it allows them to update their entire site, including file uploads. it’s a beta version of the one i actualy did so there arent as many options, but the idea behind it is the sme.
it runs off ASp and MS Access database. works fine and great for something like what you and rev are talking about.
the site is http://www.russeddy.com, and is currently under modification, so the keywords, etc. have not been input at this time, and the size of the db is quite small compared to the intended end result, so we can work out the bugs in a more manageable size.
also check out http://www.abzoid.com/storefront then click on the admin button, and play around with the upload, etc. should you wish.
This was the basic site, then we have modified it quite heavily to fit the client’s needs.
Like I said, it has a huge learning curve, over a few different areas, so it would be hard to do as a first project.
Let me know should your boss want something similar, we may be able to work out a deal on a template kinda thang… you can always contact me through my site (aulman.com), or my brother’s (abzoid) .
We are still fine tuning it. I wish I could show you the back end of his new site… that admin is pretty fool proof.
We also have a batch upload application that he uses to show his clients today’s shoot (he shoots out in the field digitally, then d/l to laptop in car, then batch processes the images via Fireworks on the drive back to the office, then ftp’s optimized images up, fillls out a form, which gets an email sent to his client with a link to their personalized gallery, often within hours of the shoot.
*Originally posted by reverendflash * Unfortunately, that I can’t show…
:heavy sigh: 'tis the story of my life. All my best work is behind locked doors where only those with keys can look.
Our company is making an attempt to make our photography accessible online. In order to do this we will need some kind of database shopping cart system, but instead of buying the items they click “download” We are looking for a model similar to this: http://www.boardtactics.com/ the way you can choose categories and then it sorts thumbnailed results accordingly. But the scale of the site will be about 1/10th the size as Boardtactics.
Where do I go to find someone to do this kind of work in LA area?
How much are we lookin at to contract out just a working template etc?
