Gallery3 vs Piwigo 14

[Adrian London]

I have both php apps running on my hosted platform.  I don't have a :"virtual server" it's just a PHP and MySQL hosting service, so I can't host anything which requires more than this.

Gallery3 advantages

It's much smaller.  Ignoring the photos (and thumbs, resizes etc.), my G3 install is 22MB whereas Piwigo (with the Bootstrap theme) is 190MB.  That's a huge difference.

It's easier to customise - Piwigo has so many templates and defaults and over-rides that the same style could be defined in more than five places, and trial and error is needed to work out where to make the change, only to discover that the recommended way (in a local config file) breaks every other theme you may want to use in future.

The photos are uploaded to a nice directory structure which mimics your album hierarchy.

I have a module (iptcedit) which writes photo title, description, captured date, GPS info (latitude, longitude, altitude) to the photo.  Many of my old photos had no EXIF/IPTC info so I entered it into G3 directly.  Now, they're written to the photos so I can easily migrate if necessary.

I have a nostalgic attachment to G3.

Piwigo advantages

It's still current.  It's being developed, although it's almost as "old fashioned" as G3 and many modules/forum posts are 10 years old. 

It's fast. Noticeable faster than G3, although I'm not sure why.  I need to investigate.

It's customisable once you get to grips with tpl, css, scss and more files.

It has more users and hence a more active support forum.  Just.

Summary

I don't mind Piwigo.  I've done some minor customisations and got it looking ok.

I still prefer G3 but that's mainly because I'm used to it.  I like the fact I can write out IPTC tags, and I really like the fact I can upload photos in the app itself.  With Piwigo, if I use the in-build upload feature the photos aren't organised on disk, but are in "virtual" albums within Piwigo.  I have to FTP them to the server and do a "sync" if I want a proper hierarchy.

G3 is much smaller in size, hence much easier to find out what to edit when I want to make customisations.  It runs under PHP 8.3 so has life left in it.

Piwigo is faster.  I'm not sure why, as it's so large, but I assume it uses more modern libraries (or whatever). 

I feel like G3 is "mine" (as I know it so well after many, many years) whereas Piwigo doesn't feel like that.

I'm sticking with G3, but if I had a website open to the public I'd probably go Piwigo for the speed and support.

[Adrian London]

I found some sample photos online, with geotags, and create a test album in both G3 and Piwigo 14.

Screenshots attached.  My G3 install has a heavily customised "wide wind: theme; Piwigo has minor changes to the Bootstrap theme.  I've not played with the latter for more than a few hours.

[Adrian London]

I take it back about Piwigo being faster.

My G3 installation is now pretty much as fast.  I think that testing both out at the same time caused an issue (as they're both hosted in the same place).  Piwigo creates resizes, cashed files etc after uploading photos and it was busy doing that when I clicked through with G3.

Running both side by side - going into the album, selecting photos, going back and forth through the album's photos etc. is just as fast on both.

Also, despite it being proprietary, I prefer Google Maps to OpenStreetMap, and Piwigo doesn't have a plug-in for the former.

[J.R.]

Adrian,

You left out the most important difference between Gallery and Piwigo (and similar services like Flickr):

With Gallery you have total control and ownership and access to all of your pictures. With all the other services, they have control over your pictures. They can alter the way you "photo gallery" looks and behaves anytime they want. If they close up shop, there goes your online photo gallery. For my own  peace of mind, running as I do the " BoxArtDen.com " Gallery for a large group of modeling enthusiasts, I would not feel comfortable handing control of it over to Piwigo or any other service.

-- J.R.

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[Adrian London]

I’m not using Piwigo’s hosted service.

I downloaded Piwigo exactly the same as I downloaded Gallery3 - the PHP code is now on my hosted website and I can do with it as I wish.  Piwigo has no access to it, or any of my photos.  Same as whoever originally wrote G3 has no access to my Gallery3 installation.

[J.R.]

Adrian,

Oh... OK... got it. It's been so long since I even looked at Piwigo that I didn't realize there *was* any alternative to using their hosted service. Thought is was basically a Flickr setup. Self-hosting it is a much better plan, particularly for someone who likes to tinker with the code as you do.

-- J.R.

On 3/3/24 14:56, Adrian London wrote:

I’m not using Piwigo’s hosted service.

I downloaded Piwigo exactly the same as I downloaded Gallery3 - the PHP code is now on my hosted website and I can do with it as I wish.  Piwigo has no access to it, or any of my photos.  Same as whoever originally wrote G3 has no access to my Gallery3 installation.

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[Adrian London]

Totally agree.

Plus, as you rightly highlight, our photos are (usually!) very important and I’d be hesitant to have them hosted somewhere I didn’t have full access.  I take backups of course, too.

My main issue is that I never go back and prune my photo collection.  I should - I have too many.