I run a small gallery and want my artists to be able to log in to the site and upload their work.
I have been looking around at some details about loging and such but as each artist would have deferent details on their page I wondered what software would be best to use?
There is no ideal solution. Your best bet is a simple CMS coupled with something like slideshowpro( see slideshowpro.net ). If you’re actually in Tokyo, as your name implies, you can find freelancers around willing to do it for around 40,000 - 80,000 yen depending on the extent of customization you want. Wordpress is a nice CMS, but like any pre-built CMS it’s going to do so many other things that are unnecessary. A quick search turns up results like combining slideshowpro with joomla and even the overly complex drupal.
Anyhow, check out slideshowpro, I recommend it for handling the gallery chores, and then look for something to pair with it to handle the database and user chores.
As for a CMS have you looked at drupal? It’s pretty awesome. Not sure what capabilities it has for shopping carts/payments, but for multiple users having control over their pages and being able to upload images/info it’s very good. It’s also very well documented and supported with a wide community of people to help out if you get stuck.