Making new photo blog software - need input

andersju

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I'm not satisfied with any of the currently available solutions for running a photo blog on your own server/web host account. In the past I've used Movable Type, Wordpress and Pixelpost, all modified and hacked up to some degree. I want something leaner and cleaner and tailored specifically for pictures; something that fellow photographers also can use without having to know a bit of programming to get good results. (Pixelpost doesn't fit the bill: the code is ugly and I have different ideas about the basic architecture.)

So, being a programmer, I decided to write my own. It will be written in PHP and released under a free license (GPL or BSD). One important concept will be static publishing as the default or only mode (like Movable Type's default mode - i.e., generating complete HTML pages of the whole site), instead of dynamic (like Wordpress or Pixelpost), for a variety of reasons. It will of course support templates (themes) and plugins.

At this stage I'm still just gathering ideas - and I'd love to hear yours! What would you like to see in photo blog software? What do you miss (if anything) in current solutions?

I'm going to spend quite a bit of time thinking about the presentation of photos and offer many styles/ways to do it out of the box. How do you like to see and browse photos on the web? What do you think is the ideal way to show photos (I would love to see links to good examples)? What gives the most impact? Etc. Bring it on! 🙂
 
This is relevant to my interests since I'm in the process of selecting a solution that matches my tastes and needs.
I don't know why so many people try to convince me to use one of the blog apps - anything I've seen so far, even pages hacked to pieces, do not look clean nor give structure/presentation that I need. So I'm opting for a paid solution.
As for feedback, I've got a simple one: here's the site that answers all my needs so far. It's clean, simple, easy, attractive. OK, it's flash, but if you design something similar you've got yourself a customer 🙂

http://www.pixpa.com/designs
 
I don't know why so many people try to convince me to use one of the blog apps - anything I've seen so far, even pages hacked to pieces, do not look clean nor give structure/presentation that I need. So I'm opting for a paid solution.

That's also one of my gripes with what's available. I want to provide something really clean by default. Way too many blogs out there with great photography marred by bad design.

As for feedback, I've got a simple one: here's the site that answers all my needs so far. It's clean, simple, easy, attractive. OK, it's flash, but if you design something similar you've got yourself a customer 🙂

http://www.pixpa.com/designs

Thanks for the link!
 
@anderstu : having hit my head against the wall with Pixelpost before, I know how you feel. 🙂

My reqs:
* ability to upload photo (I'll scale it because I know best 😀)
* thumbnail of archives
* tags for categories
* comment integration with popular commenting systems (Disqus is fine)
* WP and Pixelpost Theme compatible
* optionally - ability to create a thematic set of photos ala flickr

Just saw your site - I say something like that.

I started off wanting to do it, but gave up half way in as other stuff took more importance. I have half-baked code written in Ruby on Rails.
 
Clean minimalistic presentation!

Even a blog is key in displaying your profile as a photographer. I don't want to see any unnecessary things, no buttons for useless rubbish. Ideally a photo blog compliments a proper site, at least it should.
Tumblr's Feather theme for example - love it. It is perfect for photos.

So overall, I think there should be an option for a small banner that can add a bit of colour, title etc (something like 900x200)

A side menu that blends with the background. Perhaps javascripted so it floats with the users scrolling.

A tidy but not to common font set - just gives it a bit of 'class' so to say

Clean and minimal spacers between entries. Have room for make comment buttons however don't have them stand out too much - Small fonts

A variable width! How many more blogs do we need where photos are limited to 500pix wide? 😀

Have all options for photos, text, captions & titles. Keep tags hidden unless the user views an individual entry (this is probably not everyone's cup of tea though).

However, if it is software it should be customizable.
-There should be basic customization of colours, font's, header etc.
-Though more advanced customization if the user wishes - probably directly editing the html. The blog layout should theoretically be able to be rewritten entirely whilst retaining its functionality.

Dare I say things such as 'like' facebook buttons. I would never have them on my blog but I'm sure that there are many people out there who benefit from features such as those. So make those optional.

Promote browser compatibility, and stay away from using flash.

Have the usual like search features, archive, categories, recent entries. It's good to keep to the blogging standard in the way of terminology - always keep it user friendly, though I'm sure that's what you had in mind 🙂

Also though, consider the blog beyond just photos. Features like posts being submitted by different users. While it not common for most people, I'm sure there are those out there who can make use of such features.

Gallery view? aka it takes all the photos from your posts and displays them in thumbnail size and the user can immediately click on any photo of interest.

Just my thoughts though 😀 good luck.
 
This will turn into a lot of work for you mate! For me the ideal software should:
- Have a multi-view management interface (i.e. manage photos based on date, album, keywork, etc.)
- Mass editing of properties, mainly keyword or attributes
- Variable size photo display
- Simple photo storage folder structure
 
Dynamic Image Rescaling.

I like the idea of uploading high resolution images 3000px - 5000px and then dynamically formatting them to the needed size i.e. 800px. Then later in the future when the template is redesigned to say being 1500px wide the images can be regenerated to the new required size without having to manually edit previous posts.

I am currently doing this with wordpress but it is cumbersome & flakey and having a system designed with this feature from the very start would be a very good thing.

www.bureau.is/viktor


In terms of back end interface something simple should be the aim. Have a look at Perch for some inspiration.

http://grabaperch.com/

Oh and before I forget. NO FLASH.
 
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Idiot-readable documentation. IMO, this is also a good indicator of your application's usability: whenever describing some operation starts to take too many words in the docs, you probably should go back to the code and make it simpler.

If your goal is lean and clean, the management end needs to be that way, too.

good luck with your idea, though.
 
I'm a programmer as well and I use Pixelpost mostly because I'm too busy working for others to do one myself.

One thing I'd like is the option for infinite scroll like this blog:
http://www.coolhunting.com/

I think it's a nice way to discover photos rather than constantly clicking through for the previous images.

One trend thought that I hate is the horizontal scroll that seems to be becoming popular probably due to a Cargo Collective theme that allows this.

Cargo Collective is however a good place to look for ideas as they have a very clean CMS not ideal for blogging but very much aimed at visual artists.

http://cargocollective.com

Also I would retain the browse feature of Pixelpost. I think that's done nicely.

Something like a desktop uploader, similiar to the Flicker UPloadr.app would be nice as well.
 
Interesting project, Anders. I look forward to testing it someday!

My two cents:

- Commit to progressive enhancement and responsive design from the start. I.e. large-screen versions that scale, so that more screen real estate allows for more images or larger images
- Consider speed from the start. Could you serve the image stream in low-res and elegantly load the ones we stop to look at?
- A basic set of keyboard shortcuts increases viewing pleasure
- Progressive loading, of course, preferably with URLs that update as you move through the stream
- Offer a viewing/commenting mode as an alternative to a modal slideshow view
- Offer a navigating mode for exploring what's available and slicing it into decent-sized chunks. Personally I've always enjoyed the two-axis approach taken by http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/topics/digest
- Let someone else handle the comments and let this be up to the user. Perhaps you can make yourself compatible with WP so we can use the GetSatisfaction/Disqus/BackType etc plugins we use now
- Create a clean plugin architecture from the start so we have a basic tool that works well, and a way to extend the tool without hacking it to pieces
- Easy filtering with navigators (facets) for tags, dates, formats, etc. As a plugin, of course.
- Stay RESTy
- Offer easy URL configuration, perhaps via a third-party tool such as Redirection for WP
- If presenting images as a stream, make sure that a "next" and "back" command displays the top left of previous/next image at the same X/Y location as the last.
- Start with one view mode that works, add more as plugins later.
- Consider small screens from the start. This goes back to the first point about progressive enhancement and responsive design, but you need to be sending less data over the mobile network too, and support the form factor. - What's the best way to enjoy a stream of images on a small phone? Flickr's app works pretty well but I'm sure you can design an even better, minimal interface
- I'd focus on getting the viewable-by-the-world part to work wonderfully first.
- It's great that you're considering GPL'ing your code. If you want to share it effectively, GitHub is a great option as we could easily fork your code and tweak it if you should grow tired of the project. Less hassle for you,too.
 
naruto: Cheers!

Neare: Thanks for the suggestions. Variable width is very important; viewing 500px photos on a 24" screen is just sad. I'm playing with ways to load different sized versions of a photo automatically depending on the visitor's resolution (doing it with javascript is one way).

This will turn into a lot of work for you mate! For me the ideal software should:
I'm not attempting to build a full-blown gallery software, just something specifically for photo blogging and photo stories. Also, I will pick good parts from other projects (the beauty of free software!).

Dynamic Image Rescaling.

I like the idea of uploading high resolution images 3000px - 5000px and then dynamically formatting them to the needed size i.e. 800px. Then later in the future when the template is redesigned to say being 1500px wide the images can be regenerated to the new required size without having to manually edit previous posts.

I am currently doing this with wordpress but it is cumbersome & flakey and having a system designed with this feature from the very start would be a very good thing.

www.bureau.is/viktor

In terms of back end interface something simple should be the aim. Have a look at Perch for some inspiration.

http://grabaperch.com/

Oh and before I forget. NO FLASH.
Image rescaling the way you envision it is precisely how I intend do to it. Thank you kindly for the links! Viktor Sebastian - is that you(r site)? I LOVE it. Great pictures and awesome presentation.

And don't worry - I loathe flash. (My personal site - not up at the moment - is called antiflash.org, for multiple reasons...)

Idiot-readable documentation. IMO, this is also a good indicator of your application's usability: whenever describing some operation starts to take too many words in the docs, you probably should go back to the code and make it simpler.

If your goal is lean and clean, the management end needs to be that way, too.

I fully agree. Also, the admin backend should be as self-explanatory/intuitive as possible. Time to read Jakob Nielsen again.

it's good to know that there are people out there willing to have a go at re-designing the wheel.
If you can point me to a wheel that fulfills my criteria, I wouldn't have to 😉

But really, that's not a good analogy. Software has evolved this way since the very beginning. You're not happy with what's out there, so you try to do something better.

(Besides, this kind of software development is all about re-use rather than reinventing: there are plenty of PHP frameworks out there, e.g. Zend Framework, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Symfony etc, that can do much of the heavy lifting for you; libraries like the Smarty template engine; jQuery; and so on.)

One thing I'd like is the option for infinite scroll like this blog:
http://www.coolhunting.com/

I think it's a nice way to discover photos rather than constantly clicking through for the previous images.

One trend thought that I hate is the horizontal scroll that seems to be becoming popular probably due to a Cargo Collective theme that allows this.

Cargo Collective is however a good place to look for ideas as they have a very clean CMS not ideal for blogging but very much aimed at visual artists.

http://cargocollective.com
Infinite scroll is an interesting idea, although it might clash with the idea of generating static pages (perhaps an optional dynamic mode would be good).

Cargo - very interesting, hadn't heard of it before. Thanks!
 
Infinite scroll is an interesting idea, although it might clash with the idea of generating static pages (perhaps an optional dynamic mode would be good).

Consider building your web interface in JavaScript (like #newtwitter) and have it pull static data from the server. A hypertext system is not ideal for image consumption.

Oh, and add some webfonts. Typotheque and TypeKit work well, as do others.
 
Image rescaling the way you envision it is precisely how I intend do to it. Thank you kindly for the links! Viktor Sebastian - is that you(r site)? I LOVE it. Great pictures and awesome presentation.

Yes, that’s me. Thanks for the kind compliments. I am a firm believer in minimal interfaces and interaction paradigms.

Some more links that may provide a good starting point.
PHP CMS system
http://staceyapp.com/

CMS
http://www.indexhibit.org/participants/
 
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Interesting project, Anders. I look forward to testing it someday!

My two cents:

Thank you - many brilliant suggestions! I will have to synthesize all these to some kind of realistic core.

I realize that perhaps calling it just photo blogging software would be doing it a disservice. What I'm really interested in is figuring out how to best tell picture-stories/essays on the web, and make it easy for photographers to do so without needing the assistance of others (beyond initial setup).

The old-school way of static pages is certainly not always ideal for photos but the unix geek in me loves the simplicity of it - having a complete, working site independent of the backend. A dynamic site is great while you're actively maintaining it, but then what? Static pages are important not least from a long-term preservation point of view: a working archival copy long after the backend code and the database have crumpled and died.

(Sure, there are ways around it, but if your interest isn't strong enough or your time is not enough, there's a huge difference between spending 30 seconds rsyncing/cp'ing a fully working static site and spending 15-60 minutes slurping a dynamic site with wget/httrack and verifying the results (or even more if the site has to be revived to work at all).)

I do however realize that it might be foolish and hindering to design the system around the use of static pages. Ideally it could be a plugin for those who need it, like Wordpress' Really Static (which I haven't tried myself).

GPL/BSD is a given, wouldn't have it any other way. I will definitely use GitHub or similar once I have some not too embarrassing code to show. 🙂

Some more links that may provide a good starting point.
PHP CMS system
http://staceyapp.com/

CMS
http://www.indexhibit.org/participants/
Excellent, thanks again!
 
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