pix - simple web based gallery system

pix is very transparent in that it doesn't bend over backwards to map the file system reality to what you want your image gallery to look like. pix works with what is there, no more, no less.

i wrote pix because i had too much trouble using other gallery systems. they had too many features. some of the simpler open source gallery systems are lacking in aesthetics, my goal was to come up with something simple but attractive and easy enough to use.

features

• easy modification of appearance with a simple template file
• pictures are organized using the file system, you create a directory hierarchy that makes sense for your pictures.
• comments for each picture are placed in a simple text .meta file in each album, here's an example
• descriptions for the album are also placed in the .meta file placed in the given directory.
• thumbnails and web optimized images are created from the original images as needed these files are cached in the file system and re-used. the cache can be cleaned online by appending &admin=clean to an album url.

• you don't know what CGI is; if you're not familiar with what a CGI script is and what it takes to get this stuff running you probably don't want to use this.
• you aren't comfortable working with text files and working with your file system; everything you would do to tweak and use pix involves organizing images in directory structures and editing a text file for the comments.
• you want lots of features; pix doesn't do a lot and there are some good feature-rich gallery systems out there.
  • yapig
  • qdig
  • phpautogallery
  • gallery
  another image gallery system based on pix is quickypix it seems to strike a good balance between simplicity and impressive features.

last points about pix

• most other gallery systems allow you to administer your albums over the web, pix makes you create the directory hierarchy yourself.
• other systems give you web based forms for providing descriptions, pix has you edit a .meta file for each album.

okay, you still think you want to use pix, here is how you get going.

• download the tar from the file release site
• you'll need to have python image library or imagemagick installed on your computer.

  a note about PIL and imagemagick: my python code tries to import PIL libraries, if this fails we just assume imagemagick is present and we use that. this executes imagemagick commands on the command line to do the resizing.
  you can also manually tell pix to use imagemagick, there's a boolean global in the code.

  for PIL
  • if you are root or you know the root install PIL
  • if you are just a user, get PIL but just stick the exploded PIL directory within your pix directory.

    	+ pix
    		|--Album.py
    		|--Pic.py
    		|--README
    		|--help.html
    		|--index.cgi
    		|--style.css
    		|--template.html
    		|--PIL
    		|--album
    			

  for imagemagick
  • imagemagick is pervasive on unix boxes, check to see if it's already there first.
  • the imagemagick home page
  • follow instructions there
• included in the tar is a README that has simple instructions and guidelines for setting up your albums.
• note that the appearance is pretty easy to tweak, i use a template file to create the pages.

• view source online.
• request for enhancement page
• project page

some very simple things you can change in the code

• to change the size of thumbnails and the web friendly image sizes, look in the Pic.getThumb() and Pic.getWeb() methods.
• to change the breadcrumb delimiter, look in the Album.getBreadCrumb() method.
• the powered by pix link at the footer is just in the template, very easy to remove. i won't shoot bad kharma rays at you if you remove it from your own installation of pix.