I recently built my photogallery using an open source php software that's pretty nice (coppermine) and about to start building my main site. I'm looking for a similar open source php, xhtml, mysql, asp software that I can load on my website and tweak it to what I'd like, but still have it easy to maintain and update. I don't want something that looks like a blog, but something a little more professional. I also am looking at doing ecommerce so any help with looking at software to make it secure and easy shopping cart. I'm looking at paypal since you can get a customer to send money without having to register, but the shopping cart isn't on the website, rather it links you back to paypal.

One more thing, I do have a lot of pictures that I want to copyright using a logo (adding a watermark), and I've primarly have been doing it manually in photoshop, but that eats up a lot of my time when I have 100+ pictures with just adding a logo in the sample corner for the same sized picture. Anyone have an easy means of doing it to save me time? I've seen you can do php scripting to get it done, but I'd rather have an easy program that does it so I don't have to upload and offload the pictures everytime. Not only that but the php coding I've seen only adds the watermark on the jpeg after a client requests it and doesn't even save it to the jpeg, so if you look at the coding, you can still get around the watermark coding. The freeware's I've tried generally saves the jpeg at a lower quality setting that I like or doesn't watermark the way I like.

5/25/2007 4:42:41 AM

you can purchase a shopping cart system that will also provide a basic shell for your website.

But, personally, I would probably take the time to learn how to code it on your own, or pay someone to do it as a custom job, if I were you. The more non-standard features you need on the site, the more you will need to pay someone to do it for you.

The watermarking can be done with a php script:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/watermark-images-php

Try google more often. Most anything you will want to do it php has already been done, so just integrate the code to function how you want them to (given you are at a skill level where you know how to change/alter code on your own)

5/25/2007 8:07:51 AM

Paypal works but it costs about $20/month service charge plus 2.9% per transaction using a credit card which isn't bad considering most banks/CC companies charge higher for low volume merchant accounts.

Also when you sign up via paypal they'll give you a link to a few 'free' open source shopping carts. I've used oscommerce through my host, ipowerweb because they too provide some open source freebies. Theyre pretty much all in php. You can tweak it as much as you like, its easy to use once you know how and its very powerful.

5/25/2007 11:10:23 AM

^^ yeah... I've already googled and read that, but I want a program that does it, not have to upload the pictures to a server and have it run through a php script. Also, php script add's server load and usually added once a client requests for the picture.

5/25/2007 12:33:32 PM