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Posted by Andy Dingley on 12/04/07 18:31
On 4 Dec, 15:32, "jupri...@gmail.com" <jupri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Each clients password would be different
> obviously, and when they enter the password it takes them to their
> respective gallery.
This depends on the server-side coding platform you're using, which is
related to the hosting you're using. You'll probably use PHP and MySQL
(search for "LAMP"), but you could use M$oft tools instead. You might
even use Ruby, Python, Java or whatever takes your fancy.
This is _not_ a "password protection" system as it's widely thought of
(so .htaccess won't help). Think of it more like a normal ecommerce
"shopping cart".
> The first thing (and probablly the simplist) I would like to do is
> have a page (lets call it 'Proofs') where clients enter a password
> that takes them to a gallery of photos where they can view the photos
> from their session.
You can't afford to write this from scratch, there's no reason why you
should need to, and the skills needed to do it well are significant.
Instead I'd look at taking a standard off-the-shelf (either commercial
or open source) ecommerce package and adapting it for uyour particular
shop. The web is always about selling photos of things: it doesn't
make much difference if these are photos of books or photos of photos.
Search around. There are probably shop engines around geared
specifically to photographs (I know there are, but the ones I worked
on were high-ticket). You can also find photo-shop services that will
host the whole operation for you (This is almost certainly the only
practical option for you overall, in terms of skills, budget,
timescale and quality).
Also ask other photoraphers, or simply search their websites and read
the credits.
> For the time being, I guess I will have the clients manually tell me
> what they would like to order, but eventually I would like to be able
> to automate this as well.
That's pretty easy. If you go the pre-built route, you'll get it
included.
Where you'd run off the edge of standard e-shops is in delivering
photographs electronically. Most assume a physical warehouse and
physical shipping as the fulfillment mechanism, which stops as soon as
they've displayed the necessary orders. You're going to need more,
which might even include things like digitally watermarking the image
files you sell.
There's also a complex ingest process for all this, one that shouldn't
be underestimated. How do you get all these images loaded? How do you
do it at high quality, when there are six different formats and sizes
to keep track of, associated descriptive metadata, and an inward
invisible watermarking process that's too slow to do while-you're-
waiting? Now make it hold a few thousand images at print quality,
integrate it with a film-scanning operation and you've got a serious
piece of work (BTDT).
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