Can coppermine be customized to this degree?

[shpek]

Hi There,

Goal:
I am looking for a software package that can allow students/users to choose images from a gallery and build/export/save those images (with annotation) and create their own online gallery. Is this software able to provide this functionality? This link is a good example of the functionality:
http://www.portcities.org.uk/onlineGallery/create.cfm

General description:
To offer 3 exitisting themes (different galleries with differnt skinning).
A user then chooses one of those themes.
They can now select x amount of images in that theme, add comments (annotation) to each image, save that image/annotation to their own web-based gallery for others to view.


Requirements:

* ability to create 3 possible themes (themes =  gallerys with it's own custom skining) and to name those themes
* display X amount of images in each of those themes
* ability for users to build their own gallery based upon the 3 themes
* desire to have CSS/custom skinning ability
* muxt be web-based
* ability for annotation - users make comments on selceted images for their own gallery


If this software package is unable to meet these needs does anyone have information on one that does? Any info would be extremely helpful!

Thanks for the time!


:\'(

[donnoman]

Coppermine can do most of what your talking about, but probably not straight out of the box exactly the way you describe them.

I'd like to address terminology and tell you how Coppermine does its business.

Album: Holds Pictures, with thier annotations and user supplied comments.

Category: Holds Albums or other Categories

Theme:
(3 Files: HTML Template,  PHP instructons, CSS sheet) Stored in a central repository, there is a system wide default that can be overriden by user selection or by using a specific url syntax.  (Thus you could point a user to a specific category or album and have it displayed in a specific theme by using some other navigation system outside of coppermine.  Either that or you would have to write some kind of mod to do it natively)

Users can select favorites from existing categories, and download those favorites in one zip file.

Users can create thier own albums, upload thier chosen pics, annotate them, and show them to other users.

The biggest disconnect I see with what you've said is the themeing/skinning. I believe you could accomplish letting students pick which theme they wanted to use then put thier final selection on a web page that included the syntax to select that specific theme.

However if your intention is to have each user creating thier own theme, depending on the level of your students that might not be a wise course.  Coppermine theming is not trivial, you do have to have some basic PHP and solid HTML/CSS skills.  You can't just whip out a new theme using 'insert your favorite wysiawyg editor here'. Only half the theme exists in the html file, the other half is broken up sliced and diced inside the theme.php.  Also there's no option for users to upload thier own themes, that will be something the admin of the gallery will have to do. 

Perhaps if you setup a specific environment where each student could ftp to thier "theme" directory on the Coppermine server it could work. Let them copy and tweak an exsting them.  On the same server in a forum or a page the admin controls you could put links to the students gallery and theme they selected for it. It would work...

Hope that sheds some light on it.  What age and proficiency are your students by the way?