phpAlbum is a open source PHP script which allows you to create photo galleries on your web hosting space. Besides images, you can also place audio and video files in phpAlbum.

While this might not have the bells and whistles of a full-fledged Gallery script like Menalto’s Gallery, it’s quite useful for the intended purpose of managing photos for display in your web site.

Features:

• Automatic generation of thumbnails and resized
• Commenting of pictures with antispam security code
• IPTC Support, import of keywords and picture description, showing other IPTC-tags
• E-Card - you can now send e-cards to your friends and family
• Screenshots for files to be downloaded, movie, audio, exe or whatever
• Password protection for your private galleries
• Admin section for creating new directories, uploading photos (works even with PHP safe_mode=on),Uploading ZIP Files preserving directory structure
• Short and long description of galleries/directories and photos
• Highly customizable layout, separated layout (HTML) from functional code, this allows easy creation of new themes
• Caching of all generated thumbnails and resized photos
• Transparent logo and icon processing with any background color, including IE6
• Access logging, with exclude strings

Homepage | Official Demo

Current Latest Version: 0.4.1.14.fix03

Below are the step-by-step instructions to install, configure and administer phpAlbum on a typical shared hosting webspace:

1. Download the latest version of phpAlbum from http://www.phpalbum.net/files/phpAlbum_v0.4.1.14.fix03.zip.
2. Extract the zip file on your local computer.
3. Rename config_change_it.php to config.php. Edit this file and set the value of $data_dir to something like data_P6IbpVyv where P6IbpVyv is some random hard-to-guess string.
4. Connect via FTP client to your web space and upload all the content of the script to where you want to install phpAlbum.
5. Create these directories: cache_P6IbpVyv, data_P6IbpVyv and photos_P6IbpVyv. Note that you have to change the random string ‘P6IbpVyv’ to something else for security reason.
6. CHMOD cache_P6IbpVyv and data_P6IbpVyv directories to 777.
7. Visit the URL of your installation. You should see this text in the middle of the page: "You are not allowed view this page or download this image!". Click on Login at the top right. The default Name and Password are admin and admin. Now click on Setup.
8. Enter a new password, your E-Mail address, Homepage and click the Save configuration button.
9. Click on Main setup. Replace photos/ in ‘Album Directory’ field to photos_P6IbpVyv/. Similarly replace cache/ to cache_P6IbpVyv/. You may want to change the Site name, Return Home URL (ensure that this doesn’t contain http://).
10. If you want to be able to upload media via the admin backend, provide your FTP Server and FTP Photo Directory (this is NOT relative to your installation, but should be w.r.t your web server. Typically you can just navigate to this directory and copy the path you see in the FTP client and paste here) values. You may enter Google Analytics code for tracking your visitors in the last text area and finally hit Save configuration.
11. Go to Upload manager section and Login with your FTP username and password. You will now be able to upload a single file or a zipped file containing the media you want to show in your phpAlbum.
12. Once you have uploaded media via the web interface or via FTP, visit Pictures section to setup the descriptions or parameters of photos. The photos will appear when you click ‘Scan directories now!’
13. Rest of the admin options like Galleries, Users, Groups are intuitive and easy to figure out. Clicking on ‘System check’ does nothing for us; just shows a blank page.

That’s it. If you have questions or suggestions, head over to http://www.phpalbum.net/forum. You may want to go through some useful installation notes written by one Mr. Plowman here.

These are some of the alternate PHP photo album scripts in case phpAlbum doesn’t make the cut for you: http://gallery.menalto.com/ (The Grand Daddy of them all), http://www.4homepages.de/, http://www.phpalbum.net/, http://coppermine-gallery.net/, http://www.sgal.org/.