Will Coppermine be for me?

[tjpeople]

Apologies if this is posted in the wrong place.

Im completly new to coppermine and php webdesign, i only do a little html.

I currently have a personal website where i display pictures in galleries made in dreamweaver (the webgallery command) and links to download short videos.

I would like to take this a step further, so thats i can have people comment of photo's +videos and upload there own, as im aware this is all possible in Coppermine.

However i upload large numbers of images, about 100 in an album and i have 20 albums atm and they will grow rapidly. Is it possible and pratcial to upload say a folder of 100 pics to coppermine? or is it tedious and time consuming?

My other problem is that i am curently hosting on 1and1 home package which give me 800mb which is more than enought but no MySQL, therfore im going to go with the £50 /yr package from 4uhosting.com, if you would recoment any others that are better in that price range please say.

finally i was told by a firedn that coppermine stores images in the MySQL database its self rather than the server? im not sure exactly wat this mean, but i dont want to be limited in any way, i want to be able to upload 1gb worth of images (as my package allows) to be used in coppermine, is this possible? My friedns says 4Iamges is better becuse it save the  images to the server rather than the MySQL.

Thanks in advance for you help

tj

[Tranz]

Whoa, your friend is wrong about the image storage. The images are stored like any other file on your account, and not in mysql. So there goes that "reason" that 4Images is better.

You can use "batch add" to quickly add multiple files to albums.

We have a thread somewhere that recommends webhosts.

[kegobeer]

Click the documentation link at the top of this page to read all about Coppermine.

[Gizmo]

Hi TJ,

I found and started using Coppermine this past spring after taking lots of pictures at my sons lacrosse games and having parents asking to buy them. I then started taking pictures at all the different age group (boys and girls - 6 in total) and needed a way to show them off. While I'm not a novice at web design, I didn't want to spend a lot of time managing a system. Coppermine is very easy to use and maintain and looks great even with the included layouts. Because there is such a large user base, you can find nearly all the answers you need and this forum is a great source of answers. You won't be without help nor friends!

Coppermine does not store the photos in a SQL database. The photos are stored as the uploaded picture file in folders and the database contains the information about each photo such as comments, votes, pointers and such. You don't need to know anything about SQL but as you get more proficient with Coppermine, it will help to learn a little. You can find some great info in the forums.

Coppermine has a lot of cool features including email cards from any photo, voting and comments. This is very easily set up within Coppermine from the configuration screens. I was able to add a PayPal shopping basket (allowing me to accept credit cards) using one of the mods from this forum in less than an afternoon. If you follow the directions when installing and upgrading Coppermine, you will not have any issues. I read the forums a lot and most of the issues that people have is because they don't read the manual and that's a fact. Nearly every issue that can happen is documented somewhere in the manual or the forums.

As for a hosting site, choose one that has SQL databases and lots of storage and bandwidth (also called data transfer) included in the package. I use GoDaddy (www.godaddy.com) and have the Deluxe Plan. Check it out and you'll see what's included and maybe you can find something comparable in the UK and I use the Linux server setup for PHP. At present I have 31 albums and over 2400 pictures so uploading is not a problem (I'm assume you have better than dialup) and I would also recommend IrfanView and FastStone Photo Resizer as programs to help you format your photos before uploading.

Good Luck and I hope your experience is as good as mine.

Billy
www.BullsEyePhotos.com