Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of design a photography site, would like to hear your opinions and advice on which approach is most efficient.

Requirements for the site are as follows:
1. Database driven - all photos uploaded via FTP will be automatically sorted into database, database will retrieve exif data from each image, such as date, time of the shot, title, resolution, camera settings, captions, copyright information etc.
2. Lightbox/shopping cart - visitors will be able to purchase images and prints online after registration, while clients will be able to log in and see previous activities and place new orders.
3. Automatic watermark/copyright images for public viewing - applys transparent watermark on top of images when viewers click on them, however, it won't show up if clients view it after login.

There are couple of more things, i'll update as i go along.

Thanks in advance!

Hey there,

ok, you have a real big task here and i'll go through them in the order you have stated above. Here goes...


1. I have never heard of a way to get files automatically in a database when uploaded through FTP. What you would have to do is write a script that automatically searches a folder and adds each image.

2. This is a simple database driven backend, which should not be to hard to accomplish.

3. Ok first off you need a translucent watermark, because if it was transparent there's not point having it... And i think you would have to have two copy's of each image, or use asp.net built in drawing function, which you could use to re-draw the image but that is just complicated.

Let me know if i have helped,

and if you need anyhelp accomplishing these tasks my services are readily available, we have done things like this before...

Check my SIG

Regards,

SEAN

Thanks for your reply, Sean!

I understand it's not a simple task but I'd like to know if i'm on the right track.

I thought exactly the same about detecting new images from a certain folder, everytime new items added, it'll search it and extract info from image then add to database and generate a thumbnail to display on the page.

About watermark, my mistake, I didn't mean by complete transparent, but see-through watermark.

Basically I'm looking at sites like www.gettyimages.co.uk and www.corbis.com but at a much small scale, I'm specialising in university level sports, at the moment I'm only covering 2 university's events, hopefully soon in the future we'll expand to the rest of country.

What do you think on scripts? ASP, PHP, Javascript etc?

I would ask web designers like you to do it, but at the moment, I can't afford it, being a student, you know ... maybe in the future if this business takes off.

Thank you for your time!

Hi there,

At the moment, i'm trying to launch my business, so maybe we could work something out where i can code for you in return for something like adverts etc. I appreciate your a student! I'm one to! I am sure we can work something out that accomodates us both.

Let me know what you think,

Regards,

Sean

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