So I wrote my own software in PHP a while back to publish my pictures on the web, HN-Photo, that runs on my own server. It is quite crude, but does the job. Is has very basic access-control so that I can decide who can see which pictures, etc.

But recently I have been experimenting with Gallery, a free, open source package also written in PHP. It has some very nice features like:

• Tree structure of albums (Like “Work” / “Events” / “2009″ / “Party” – etc.)
• Several “Themes” to choose from, that can afterwards be adapted to your own liking
• Automatic scaling to several sizes – from fast showing 640×480 to the maximum that was uploaded (10Mpixels in my case)
• Several ways to upload pictures, from single pictures to bulk-upload, rsync, etc.
• Functions to move pictures between albums, rename, create tags, etc.
• Impressive permissions structure, with groups and users per album, etc.
• Lots of plugins available, including e-commerce
• Integration with many programs, including WordPress

There are many things I’m still discovering and experimenting with, but it seems I will be migrating my >20GB collection in the near future. I will have to try out that bulk-upload feature…