# export/gallery/publisher for large collection web use



## cdmackay (May 1, 2015)

First forum posting, apols if this isn't the right category...

At the moment, I'm using LR in a very simple way, for testing, because I  don't want to embark on moving to it properly, until I know it will  enable me to do what I want. 

That is as follows: I want to load a large (and growing) collection of  photos into LR, comprising thousands of photos, for organisation, etc. 

Whilst I am sure that LR itself will be suitable, for me, I also want to  be able to make the collection (and/or subsets thereof) available to  friends & family, so I need to know that I will be able to export it to  a suitable place, e.g web gallery, publisher. 

Here's what I need the web side to do; do you know if there is an  export/gallery/publish tool for LR that meets these criteria, please? 


- username/password login (ideally multiple accounts) [separate accounts  for different subsets of the collection would be nice, but not essential] 

- local hosting, on my own web server(s). Our internet connection will  not support the bandwidth needed to do it to a remote server, even  assuming I am happy with the security aspects. 

- Although I run LR on a Mac, my servers are all Linux, so the webserver  side must not require any Windows/Microsoft features. The web clients  will be a mixture of Mac, Linux & Android. 

- read-only access. i.e. users cannot change anything. Don't even really  need comments. Editing, in particular, is not required. 

- filters/views. I would like to set up within LR ways of grouping the  photos, e.g. naming people in them, places, in metadata, and have that  exported so that web users can click on buttons and restrict their view  to pics with that metadata. 

- I need to be able to add new pics (and/or updated LR metadata) without  having to re-upload the entire collection again, ideally. 


In summary, I would like family/friends to easily be able to view the  collection, and do things like "show me pics from 2012 with this person  in", without having to use LR itself, and without being able to  accidentally change anything. I've assumed that exporting to a webserver  is the obvious way to achieve that... 


If I import everything into LR, is there a suitable webgallery/publisher  module that would give me the features I need, do you know, please? 

[It doesn't have to be a free module; I don't mind paying for something  worthwhile] 


If the "own-hosting" requirement is a problem; are there obvious choices that meet the other requirements?

thanks very much indeed for any ideas. 

===

since writing the above, I've stumbled across Piwigo, which looks interesting, and I see there's an LR plugin for it, too. Does anyone know/use it?


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## theWeissGuy (May 2, 2015)

I highly recommend Piwigo. I use it (gallery.theweissguy.com) and the LR plugin works well.


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## cdmackay (May 2, 2015)

theWeissGuy said:


> I highly recommend Piwigo. I use it (gallery.theweissguy.com) and the LR plugin works well.



thanks much indeed.


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## rodbarbee (May 15, 2015)

Also look at The Turning Gate's set of plug-ins. CE4 Gallery along with their Publisher plug-in will do nearly everything you're looking for. Not the filtering by buttons though. That seems to be more of a full stock photography solution.


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