Photo sharing - which way to go?

2007, October 4 - 03:40 — müzso

I've been thinking now for quite some time about which way to go with my image galleries. I'm a big Drupal-fan, but the currently available image gallery modules are simply not a match for the many Web 2.0 services out there. My other problem with them is stability and upgradability. Therefore I plan to move all my photos to a new site. Here're the options I'm considering at the moment:

Comments

2007, October 4 - 03:52 — müzso

Wikipedia on photo sharing

It's interesting that there's no "List of photo sharing sites" kind of a page in Wikipedia yet.

This category page is the next best thing that I could find.

2007, October 4 - 05:04 — müzso

A Review of Online Photo Services

Check out this blog post. It's obviously a personal review of some of the available photo sharing services, but the conclusions in it make sense. Right now (after having read lots of forum and blog posts) it seems I've too choose among SmugMug, Flickr and Zooomr. SmugMug is the way to go if you want the best "user experience" and don't mind the bucks you've to spend. Flickr is the way to go if you're looking for the best reliability (Yahoo behind the service means your albums are pretty safe online) and "compatibility" (Flickr is the most supported in means of tools, blogger modules/plugins, etc.). Zooomr is the best free alternative, it has dozens of awesome features and offers unlimited storage at the price of some ads ... however it's the "smallest" among the competitors, almost a "newborn" in photo sharing business.

2007, October 4 - 05:42 — müzso

Re A Review ...

Here's another opinion on SmugMug vs. Flickr.

2007, October 4 - 10:32 — csiknor

About Flickr

For me Flickr is the perfect solution. I'm using it for about a year, and I'm very pleased with the service. It's reliable, quite fast. But the most important thing for me it's very expandable. As you've written there are several other services using Flickr's API. That's why I like it. On the other hand it is quite easy to use it. Uploading, managing your photos are very intuitive. Using the organizer you can easily manage all of your photos in terms of sets (albums), tags, permissions or even modifing capture dates (adjust time zone). And 24.95$ for a one year account and unlimited space is quite affordable.

2007, October 4 - 10:46 — müzso

Re: About Flickr

Yep. Flickr is the best choice if I go for best "compatibility". It's the most widespread/popular photo sharing site and thus it's the most supported (by tools, etc.). Eg. there's a flickr integration module for Drupal, but there's no such module for any other photo sharing site. Of course that might change in future, but the current status shows pretty well how it works. Flickr is the most used site and thus most probably it'll have the best support among the many photo sharing sites in future too. And we all know how annoying compatibility issues can be.

Probably I'll go for Flickr now, but I'll keep an eye on the others too. My only concern is this Yahoo problem. Hopefully they'll not take this integration too far. Eg. I do not want see any Yahoo design (ads, logos, whatever) in my photo albums.

2007, October 5 - 21:20 — csiknor

Ads?

It's not a problem. Just use the Flickr API to get your album.

2007, October 8 - 19:36 — airwin

I'm just a viewer, not a

I'm just a viewer, not a user of Flickr. But I have to say that its web GUI is one of the worst designed ones. Despite beeing a photo viewer site, Flickr shows the photos in full 500px width. Wow. Sure I can use the "all sizes" button (which doesn't catch the eye), but if I click it, I have to use the browser's back button to continue in the album (actually photostream, because it is a much cooler word). And Flickr loads slowly. Sorry for beeing so negative but I had to say this.