Anyone hosting your own stock gallery?

[Jim Poor]

If so, what sort of gallery software are you using?

Ideally, I'd like a system that would allow for:
-- easy search for users on site
-- Discovery by search engines, web crawlers, etc
-- immediate download of images for one time use
-- a selection of three different resolutions
-- contact for licensing for other than one time use

I'd also like pop-up watermarking that leaves the images unblemished until you hover over it with the mouse, but that isn't a show stopper


I'm sure I'm missing something, so I'm all ears for suggestions. I'd prefer to host my own rather than go with a stock service at this point though.

[Roger Clark]

<tt>Hello Jim,

Not exactly a stock photo web site, but my own web site with photo galleries, which I host on my own computer (a linux machine in my basement) is at:
http://www.clarkvision.com

My galleries are build by linux shell scripts which I wrote.

http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries

It is crude but effective, at least for my purposes for the moment. The key word database is a set of simple text files with image name and a list of key words. If I want to add a key word, I simply enter it next to the images and run a command that builds a gallery, like "sunset"
http://www.clarkvision.com/galleries/gallery.sunset

The pages are static html so are found by search engines. For example, go to google images and search for: Hawaiian sunset and (at least for me) I see two of my images on page one, including the first image. (This by the way is a reflection
of how many people have linked to the image.)

My biggest problem now is I am getting so much traffic (more than a million hits per month) I need a faster pipe to my house, but can't get it.

Roger</tt>

[Jim Poor]

Thanks Roger,
Looks like it works out real nice for you.

Too bad I don't have the skills at the moment to build something like that.

[Nathan Lovas]

Here is what I purchased.

http://www.lightboxphoto.com

I haven't put it online yet but I have been pretty happy with it over all. Easy to use and you can customize it to your needs. Frans Lanitng uses it for his in-house stock management. I purchased the top end version that includes a rights-management calculator that allow clients to input the specifics of their usage requirements and then it will kick out a price. It allows clients to purchase directly online. In hindsight I probably wouldn't have purchased it and would have gone with the option just below. In order for the rights-management calculator to work you have to input all the different variables with a price and it just became to difficult to figure it all out (for me anyway :) ) Also, if a client doesn't like the price they may just go and look elsewhere as opposed to talking with me personally. Just my two cents.

[Jim Poor]

Thanks Nathan.

Can you turn off the rights calculator? There are a few other features in th enterprise edition that would be nice to have.

[Nathan Lovas]

I think so, although i haven't tried it myself...they give you free technical support for a year. I would email them and ask before you buy. They have always responded to my questions very quickly.

Nate