Christmas 2008 test gallery
(For best results click photos to see at full resolution – the slide show over-crops photos)
Gallery Notes:
Been keeping notes on the my gallery decision and process privately, but thought my notes might help someone else.
This was an area I know basically nothing about, so it requires some active testing and learning – I had a test site, but gave up and just started trying things here live.
Plus, to state the obvious, I am not much of a photographer 
but I am trying.
I installed a couple of fancy full featured gallery and photo management software on a test site. I used Gallery2, which proved complicated and overkill for me – then I tried the much simpler, but still powerful, Zenphoto.
Zenphoto was better suited for my purposes, but it was proving difficult to integrate my existing Zenphoto installation into this blog because 1) they were on separate servers, and 2) getting it into the same theme as the blog would mean more work than just a simple plug in approach.
I saw some nice integrations if I chose a theme or template specifically for Zenphoto. I tried editing the files to integrate the theme on the test site, that worked – but here … In any case, I just couldn’t make Zenphoto look like I wanted here quickly and easily. My Zenphoto test gallery is still online though, so click here for more galleries starring Claire.
I also considered Plogger, and Coppermine, both of which I thought would work, but just postponed working through this and looked for an immediate solution.
The Picasa Image Express plugin would allow me to continue to use Picasa’s website, where I already have photos stored, use the very good Picasa3 editor, and simply place these photos or galleries into my existing theme and posts.
My photos on the old blog were often actually hosted at Picasa, and because we couldn’t see them or the old blog, were primary reasons we opted to build a new site. (they appear to be blocked from appearing in this country apparently because of their “blogspot” address) and yet I was able to see them just fine here, but by linking directly to the Picasa site.
I didn’t test other WordPress/Picasa plugins,- this one works nicely I think, but experience suggests that continuing to link to photos there might leave them vulnerable to further blocking, and there are bandwidth issues. I briefly considered using Flickr and a plugin combo. So far so good here.
I haven’t explored the built-in media handling on WordPress throughly, but the nextGEN plugin seems to take full advantage and adds major features. I am still figuring out the quirks, but this seems to be the best solution for my needs.
I may be missing something very obvious. I have been limited by the lack of an Internet connection and low bandwidth in trying to finalize this bit.
I am very open to suggestions, or any help anyone can provide, but I thought I’d detail my process to explain why this has been a bit slow, and perhaps someone else can benefit from my struggles.
Links and details about the programs I mentioned are coming, and I will likely move this info to a more appropriate place or subpage.
