18 June 05
Photo Management in TCT
As I write this, The Colloquial Tongue (TCT) is still in lockdown because I need to finish up some things before launching the new design, effectively version 2.0. (If you are reading this, the site is no longer in lockdown, but live to the world.)
The biggest thing I’m tackling at the moment is how to manage photos, which I think will be a very important component of the site from here on out. I’ve narrowed my choice down to 2 options: Flickr and PhotoStack. Each has pros and cons for my purposes.
Flickr
Flickr Pros
Flickr servers are taken care of by another company, which means I don’t use up bandwidth and storage resources on my own site. Flickr provides an incredible set of options and capabilities for managing photo albums online, including the ability to declare who is allowed to view them (down to the picture level.) Addtionally, visitors can add their own comments to the photos when viewing them, indicating such things as “what did she see in that guy” or “look at that clown.” Furthermore, I can easily integrate Flickr into my Weblog so there’s a relatively smooth transition from one to the other. And last but not least, a base account with Flickr is free.
Flickr Cons
There’s really only one con; the free account provides limited bandwidth and visitors can only see the latest 200 images added to the account; hence, for it to be useful to me in the long run, I would need to use the Flickr-Pro account, which costs money (though at $24.95 per year, it’s not that much to cry about).
PhotoStack
PhotoStack Pros
PhotoStack is a 100% free open-source product that can be customized any way you want it (but only if you know what your doing). The distinction to make here is, though Flickr has a plethora of neat features, you can only do what the designers of Flickr allow you to do; whereas with Photostack the sky is the limit, but again, only if you know what the heck you are doing.
PhotoStack Cons
Utilizing PhotoStack to any respectable degree, especially with my Textpattern machinery (the publishing system that now runs this site) would require a number of customizations, and since I’m more a designer than a developer, this could take a while. You can see where Flickr has a huge advantage here. Also, although PhotoStack gives me the ability to manage photos on my own server (giving me a false sense of photo security), the result means my own bandwidth and storage resources are used up. In the beginning this wouldn’t be a big deal but over time it could have an effect.
