Over the next couple weeks in my spare time I’ll be updating a few of my personal websites, and beginning a hopefully sustained effort to blog more frequently.

First up is a new gallery for my personal photos.  The permanent address of the gallery is http://www.cesutherland.com/gallery2/.  Here I’ll be storing all my travel photos and what-else I don’t know yet.  So far I’ve organized and tagged about a third or more of the photo’s I’ve taken since arriving in Germany last fall.

The software I’ve chosen is the PHP/MySQL powered Gallery2 and is one that I’ve worked with briefly before.  I chose this software because of its long development history, the depth of its photo-managing capabilities, its ease of install, and its extensibility.  My gallery was up, running, and importing photos within a matter of minutes.  Two of the features I have used most successfuly are extensions.  The first is a server-side folder import function, allowing me to upload images to a directory then import them locally.  The second is a replica function allowing me to keep all my originals in one gallery, and make replicas in another gallery, both using the same source image on the disk.  This feature I use to pick and choose a collection of highlights from each gallery.

Gallery2 is very functional and complex software, with a very powerful theme engine.  This engine will allow me to cut it’s current look down to something more minimalist, fitting with my website.  Over the next weeks, I will finish importing my photos from Germany and make these customizations to Gallery2’s look and feel.