Simple Picture Gallery Manager initially caught my eye when I saw the demo for the first time. I was looking for something simple and attractive and this script certainly fit the bill. I wanted to create a photo gallery for someone with absolutely zero technical skills, but I didn’t want to sacrifice on looks either. The images in the demo had a nice shadowing that looked stunning and the layout was both elementary and elegant. I decided this was the right script for the job and went ahead with the quick install.
I did my typical prep work of creating a new database for a fresh install but I soon learned that no database is used for the Simple Picture Gallery Manager. Oops. Right after the install I began reading the setup documentation and was really bummed to find out that there is no administration area to simplify image uploading and no automatic thumbnail creation. The website says it’s lightweight and they’re certainly not kidding. This gallery software is not for the complete novice webmaster like I thought.
In order to create and fill galleries with photos, you need to create the folder, and upload the photos via ftp to the appropriate folder. Not only that, but you also have to create and upload the small thumbnails that are displayed as well. This is clearly the wrong choice for what I need so I’m starting my search over for a gallery script.
It is a shame to find such a nice looking compact script and not have a use for it. I’d love to have a gallery that looks like this, but I have thousands of photos and I don’t have the time or the patience to create thumbnails for each of these pictures. If you had a need for a small, good looking gallery that you didn’t need to update a heck of a lot, I think this picture gallery is ideal. However, I think most people are looking for a more feature rich gallery with upload buttons and auto resizing and all that fun stuff.
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