Create Your Own Online Photo Gallery Albums Using Plogger

Plogger is an open source PHP based online photo gallery system for creating, editing and managing photo album galleries online. It offers various photo gallery functions such as  custom gallery organization, keyboard shortcuts for accessibility, remote image uploads, RSS feeds and much more.

Plogger is very easy to use, simple and more attractive interface with simple configuration settings. The applications is very light-weight, meant to be easy to use with no experience of any technical knowledge or skills you can install the application very easily or you can also integrate this application into your existing website.

What Plogger Require?

1. Web Server – Apache or Nginx
2. Operating System – Linux or Windows
3. PHP Version 5+
4. MySQL Version 5+
5. PHP GD extension

Full Features

1. Easy to Configure: Plogger is a light weight application and can be installed in just Single step. There are no bloated features nor any complicated configuration files. Plogger contains attractive and secure administrative system.
2. Easy Administrator interface: Through a user friendly admin panel you can insert or edit an image. The thumbnails are created automatically, and through admin panel you can setup the size and the format of thumbnails.
3. Easy Photo Gallery Creation: With the help of web administrative tool you can upload photos in bulk or use FTP for importing photos in groups. Organize your photos easily and efficiently. The application also allows you to edit their descriptions as well. It will automatically unzip and import the images from the uploaded zip files and add it to you gallery.
4. Build your own custom Themes: By default, it comes with simple theme system, but you can customize the theme by creating your own custom theme to give attractive look and feel.
5. Plogger XML Service: The application has an inbuilt XML generator, means you can create your own widgets in any language.
6. Remote update your gallery: Ability to update your gallery remotely from a software that supports gallery protocol.
7. Integrated JavaScript Slideshow: Albums can be quickly viewed as a hands-free JavaScript slideshow.

Installation of Plogger

As stated above Plogger requires Apache, MySQL and PHP packages installed on your system. If not, install them using the following commands. You must be root user to perform all the following steps in the article.

Install on Debian Based Systems

tecmint ~ # apt-get install apache2 mysql-server php5 php5-mysql php5-gd
tecmint ~ # service apache2 start
tecmint ~ # service mysql start

Install on Red Hat Based Systems

tecmint ~ # yum install httpd mysql-server php php-mysql php-gd 
tecmint ~ # service httpd start
tecmint ~ # service mysqld start

Get the latest version of Plogger script from the official website.

1. http://www.plogger.org/

You may also use following “wget” command to download archive file into the website root directory (i.e. /var/www/html or /var/www/).

tecmint ~ # cd /var/www	
tecmint www # wget http://www.plogger.org/source/plogger-1.0RC1.zip

Sample Output

--2013-10-06 13:07:28--  http://www.plogger.org/source/plogger-1.0RC1.zip
Resolving www.plogger.org (www.plogger.org)... 72.47.218.137
Connecting to www.plogger.org (www.plogger.org)|72.47.218.137|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 716441 (700K) [application/zip]
Saving to: ‘plogger-1.0RC1.zip’

100%[===========================================================================================================================================================>] 7,16,441    44.4KB/s   in 18s    

2013-10-06 13:07:49 (37.9 KB/s) - ‘plogger-1.0RC1.zip’ saved [716441/716441]

Now unpack the downloaded archive file using following command.

tecmint www # unzip plogger-1.0RC1.zip

Connect to your MySQL server and create Database and User.

## Connect to MySQL Server & Enter Password (if any or leave blank)## 
mysql -u root -p
Enter password:

## Creating New User for Plogger Database ##
CREATE USER plogger@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "your_password_here";

## Create New Database ##
create database plogger;

## Grant Privileges to Database ##
GRANT ALL ON plogger.* TO plogger@localhost;

## FLUSH privileges ##
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

## Exit ##
exit

Please temporarily set 777 permission to the “plog-content” directory to create initial directories. You can revert back to 755, after installation is complete.

tecmint www # chmod -R 777 plog-content/

Open your web browser and run the installation script located at.

http://localhost/plog-admin/_install.php

Enter Database details and Set Admin password.

Before you can proceed, please to download “plog-config.php” configuration file and place inside the Plogger directory itself and click on Proceed button.

You have successfully installed Plogger!. Your username is plogger and your password is tecmint.

Make sure to CHMOD the “plog-content” directory back to 0755.

tecmint www # chmod 0755 plog-content/

Now login into your panel using username and password.

Next, choose an Image or ZIP Archive to upload images and create galleries.

Once you’ve uploaded images, you can click on “View” tab to see the front look of Plogger. Check out the screenshot of Plogger, which we’ve created for one of our client.

Troubleshoot

If you have received an error during installation similar to this:

"string(184) "You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'Type=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARACTER SET UTF8' at line 6" string(184) "You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'Type=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARACTER SET UTF8' at line 8" string(226)

open install-functions.php file located at plog-admin/include directory with a decent editor. Replace all occurrence of  “Type=MyISAM” with “Engine=MyISAM” and “timestamp(14)” with “timestamp” and save the file. Now re-try the installation, it will work correctly.

There is no any proper online documentation on plogger installation and users might face difficulties in installing script. In such situation, users can hire us to install the script on their servers at fair minimum rates with one month free support.

If you’re looking to host Plogger script, then following are list of recommended hosting providers who are compatible with script and its requirements.

1. HostGator Hosting
2. Dreamhost Hosting
3. BlueHost Hosting

Do let me know if you’re using any photo gallery scripts via comments and don’t forget to share this article with your friends.