OddThinking

Welcome to the Online Photo Database Project.

This is an ongoing project to evaluate a number of different web-based photo databases, and select the best one to host my 4000 personal photos, and replace a hand-written solution that was developed from 2002-2005.

This project page attempts to provide an index into the many other pages, and provide information about the project progress. This page will be incrementally updated with progress. (Note: It was created well into the project, as the amount of documentation became unwieldy.)

This investigation initially started early in 2008, and was carried out in an ad hoc fashion. That attempt was abandoned in April 2008. The investigation was restarted, with more formality, in June 2008.

The goal was to have the replacement system operating by January 2009, and the bulk of the 4000 photos being hosted by it in February 2009. That deadline was missed. A new deadline has not been established.

Stage 1

Stage 1 was to produce a problem statement, and a rough list of requirements which I could use to evaluate various solutions.

Stage 2

Stage 2 was to produce a clean set of requirements, based on the Stage 1 document. The requirements were categorised, prioritised and numbered.

Stage 3

Stage 3 was to identify a list of solutions that might meet the requirements. Initially, around 15 solutions were proposed, but more continued to be added as they were identified.

Stage 4

Stage 4 was to evaluate each of the solutions against the list of requirements.

In the special cases of WordPress and Drupal, it was necessary to carry out a mini-evaluation of the possible plugins, to determine which deserved a full evaluation against the criteria.

Stage 4 Mini-Evaluations Complete

• WordPress Mini-Evaluation
• Drupal Mini-Evaluation

Stage 4 Evaluations Completed

1. Julian’s Custom Software
2. Facebook
3. Coppermine
4. Windows Live Photos
5. BeenUp2.com
6. Zoomr
7. SmugMug
8. Phanfare.com
9. ZenPhoto
10. PhotoBucket
11. Jalbum
12. PixelPost
13. My PictureTown
14. Flickr Pro
15. Picasa Web
16. PhpWebGallery
17. WordPress + PhotoQ
18. Gallery2
19. 4Images
20. Acquia Drupal

Stage 5

Stage 5 was to produce a culled list of 3 or 4 of the top solutions for further investigation.

Stage 5 started with a first cut of 5 candidates.

Then it stalled for some months, and the original deadline was passed. When the project was revived, I advanced straight to Stage 6, accepting the first cut of all 5 for further investigation.

Stage 6

Stage 6 is to do further research on the final solutions, double-checking the evaluations, reading other reviews, and perhaps subscribing to some of the paid services.

Stage 6 started with investigations of the two online services. While Flickr beat out SmugMug, it was determined that it wasn’t a great fit for the requirements. Focus was pushed to self-hosted solutions.

Stage 7

Stage 7 will be to declare the winner.