Ever since I started on this project to completely rebuild my website within WordPress, it always triggered nervous twitches and sudden cursing when it came to my online photo gallery. The reason I have put it off for so long is I knew how much work it would be. Quite frankly, it is hard to describe the amount. Let’s just say I could never afford to have someone do it for me. In addition, part of the update would involve reworking a lot of older image files.
Part of it is my own fault, for relying on an outdated platform (Coppermine) for so long, for adding so much customization into the code it prevented me from updating it much, and for being not the most disciplined in keeping older images updated for sizes, watermark updates, and keyword embedding. There was a time when having a 650px wide image was enough. However, it was stable, secure, had a decent placement in search engines for some keywords. Also, the latest version of Coppermine isn’t mobile-friendly and my version wouldn’t work on any site with a PHP version higher than v5.6. (PHP is a programming language where versions of PHP 7.0 and higher offer significant performance and security improvements). Then finally, the whole user interface of Coppermine is beginning to look a bit dated.
Picking an online photo gallery
So there are quite a few positives to gain from making an update. The trick being how to handle all the metadata of 2600+ photos in my old Coppermine database, and what I was going to invest in for a new platform. There are a lot of photo galleries for WordPress, and a lot of 3rd party options like Photoshelter, Zenfolio, etc. My objective was to have all of the same functionality, complete with e-commerce print sales options, I had with my customized Coppermine gallery. It wasn’t an easy decision.
Using NextGen Gallery
After wavering for quite some time (the pluses/minuses of each is well beyond what I wanted in the length of this post) – I am moving forward with NextGen Gallery. To get all of the features I wanted, I needed to go with the Pro Version. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. What I liked about NextGen versus some of the other pay platforms was I could sign up for a lifetime membership. I caught it on a discount day and saved some money there. Other galleries either wanted a yearly fee, monthly subscription, or percentage of sales for e-commerce.
Now I can’t say NextGen is an absolutely perfect solution, but it comes “close enough.” There is a near show-stopper for me on the way it handles (or more appropriately interferes) letting Paypal take care of state sales tax. This is important for anyone who does their own print fulfillment and shipping as I have done for the past 15 years and lives in a state that requires collecting local sales tax. While their social media rep was a bit dismissive about this problem, their tech support team went into a really deep dive on the matter. Unfortunately, it is still classified as a “low priority” bug, but I am still hoping they fix this in the near future, or more complain about it. I still think their “Paypal Integration” feature advertisement should have a disclaimer statement until this is fixed. Until then, I will be playing around with my own workarounds.
UPDATE since this posting: NextGen Gallery now has Sales Tax Integration – a big plus!
While NextGen uses its own separate database from the default WordPress database, I have seen conversion plugins out there for other competing galleries that will translate the data over to the standard WordPress data. So there is an “escape hatch” should I determine I want to use something else. NextGen will import all image title data and keywords IF they are already embedded of course. My problem is that I did a lot of data entry directly into my Coppermine database for older images, not in the image files/Lightroom. My bad, lesson learned, do not pass GO and proceed directly to the copy-paste dungeon.
Current Sitrep
A workaround I had to develop was regarding this PHP compatibility issue. My new site theme, Divi, and use of Divi Builder work much better on PHP 7.0, but my current Coppermine gallery would only work on PHP5.6. In fact, WordPress overall works much better (faster), and I experienced fewer plugin issues on PHP7. So I ended up moving my Coppermine gallery to a sub-domain and have that sub-domain operating on PHP5.6, while my main site is on PHP7. This enables me to keep my Coppermine gallery online and functional (for copy/pasting data/structure to NextGen and business purposes). Crazy stuff eh? Yeah, my eyes are glazed over by now too.
Converting galleries is a long process
While I wish I could do one sweeping announcement that the new galleries are all online and ready, I came to the realization that the conversion is going to take many weeks, if not months. So I am rolling them out in increments, and developing a deeper understanding of NextGen, as well as Divi, along the way. Of the exiting 2600 images and 83 legacy galleries, I have converted 600 images and 13 galleries to NextGen (not all yet public), including redeveloping many of the photographs to my current tastes.
I am liking the cleaner, simpler layout now. While I do like a masonry type layout style, NextGen doesn’t do pagination when you do this format. Instead, it is a continuous load, with your set of how many you want to load at a time. This keeps the initial page load time reasonable. Maybe this is easier than someone having to flip through multiple pages in a single gallery, but consider me undecided at the moment. A multiple page standard thumbnail layout is available.
A feature I do like is within the Pro E-commerce module with multiple price lists. Each gallery, down to each image, can have a custom price list. It can all be changed relatively easily, and I will likely be exploring potentials here. I do have some older images I limit enlargement sizes on, and I can do that with ease now.
I’m looking forward to seeing the new look when it comes live. I have a bit of an understanding of how much work this is as I am building an additional site for a new project I am planning to embark on (the old site will remain intact and continue). But even without much to put on the new one I can see how much work it is to even build a skeleton! “They” make it sound simple but it never is. It was between Divi and Beaver Builder for me and I decided to go with Beaver Builder. We can compare notes lol. Hopefully when WP goes to this new Gutenberg format things stay stable ?!
Oh it’s live at least in part at the links above. You are so right in how they make it look easy, but once you get into the details, it takes on a new life. I heard many good things about B.B. as well.
It’s a shame you have to somewhat pick your builder to really get to know it, then by the time you have done enough with it, you are already committed! I really don’t know what this Gutenberg is going to bring.
I understand you will have the option to turn it on or off. I will probably wait for at least a .1 release. I have had enough conflict and debugging issues of my own. I don’t need more complications.
They are looking great on my phone. I’ll have to check it out on a desktop as well!
I am quite grateful these galleries now have the mobile support built in. I’d hate to have to do this stuff manually.
What a huge project, Mark. The new galleries you shared above are looking great…like it much better than the Coppermine ones. I’m in a somewhat similar process only on a much, much smaller scale using Envira for WordPress. How overwhelming this must have been in the beginning…and perhaps still is! 😉 The results will be worth the effort. I didn’t experience any issues as I looked around…nicely done!
I did look at Envira, very similar feature set, but they seemed to go the subscription route for many of the key features I wanted. Thanks for checking and the feedback Earl.