Gallery, in my opinion, is the best photo management software out there for web right now; it really does everything you could want such a package to do. However, it’s relatively old, as far as web projects go, and development decisions made long ago are starting to really limit it. With version two of Gallery Bharat, the main developer, is fixing everything he wishes he had done right the first time. I’ve been following the new code on the CVS pretty closely and from what I’ve seen so far it’s really quite nice.

Bharat (page has sound) is doing things right the second time around, but the project isn’t moving terribly fast. One of the biggest hassles in trying to deal with Gallery as it stands now is interfacing with the serialized data files. It’s almost impossible to hack unless you get really knee deep in the code. Also, due to the flat-file nature of the data files, things get slower the bigger they get. I had to disable the random picture on the menu just because it was adding about a second or more to the time taken to generate every page! With the data accessible through SQL, I could write a random photo block in five lines of code that takes almost no time to run, not to mention all the other fun things you could do with the data in a proper relational database. Check out the Zeitgeist for an example of some fun things you can do with SQL and PHP when you’re bored.

Anyway, it looks like a temporary solution may be available soon. I’ve contacted the developer and I’m looking into implementing this her as soon as possible. Cross your fingers :).