Gallery Cart

Gallery Cart is a PHP add-on for Gallery v1.5 enabling users to sell their photography online. Features include:

Gallery Cart is just in it's infancy, so bear with us as these pages mature into a more complete website.

Downloads, Discussion forums, support requests, and much more is available on our SourceForge project pages: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gallerycart/

The Inception of Gallery Cart (or what could possibly spur someone to undertake this project?)

As a web developer, I often need to find products to meet my clients needs. I like to use open-source solutions where I can, as it keeps costs down and the creativity of the community is really something quite grand.

A client wanted me to create a website where he could sell his photographs online. At first I looked at general ecommerce shopping carts as I've had success with them in the past. However the ones I've used didn't quite meet the needs of the client. Then I realized I shouldn't be looking at the development as a shop with a gallery tacked on, but as a gallery with a shop tacked on.

I tried out many galleries and finally found a perfect match in Gallery. It had all the gallery features my client wanted and there was (and is) a bustling forum community that can help with almost any request. There was even a shopping cart add-on: Jenado Cart.

Jenado was developed by Timothy Pomeroy to meet his needs for a cart and he generously offered it to other Gallery users. It had almost everything I needed and I figured I could modify it easily. Unfortunately, Jenado was developed for Gallery v1.4x and a PHP environment with register_globals on. It wouldn't work properly with PHP's recommended security settings. ...so I sighed and went in search of another Gallery cart that would work. I found quite a few, but none had all the features that Jenado offered. I even installed a few other image galleries with carts built in, but again, they didn't match as well as Gallery did.

I returned to Gallery and Jenado. I rolled up my sleeves and dug into the program. While I am not a newbie, I still considered myself somewhat of a novice when it comes to PHP. But I've had years of programming experience and went at it with a hopeful heart. Two weeks of off-hours work developed the cart enough for my client who was quite satisfied. I wasn't....yet.

I have this rather annoying trait. I tweak. If something is broken, I want to fix it. If something is almost perfect, I want to make it completely so, even if it means tearing it down and rebuilding it from the foundations (If you don't think that is annoying, ask my husband). I stripped the cart down again and began anew, optimizing where I could. I read the forum posts to find what users found confusing and tried to simplify it. What worked, I left alone. While I was at it, I made a list of additional features folks desired.

Gallery Cart was born out of sleepless nights and dogged determinism (aka stupid stubbornness). After a consult with the originator I decided to rename my version of the cart so it can mature on its own path and allow Timothy to reserve the Jenado name for his own future adaptations.

Why Gallery Cart and not a more original, spiffy name? Because at 3am after a few weeks of going to bed 'in a minute...just need to fix this one thing....' I was tired. So, I decided to be practical. This is a shopping cart. For Gallery. So: Gallery Cart.

Maybe there'll be a 'Name this Cart' contest at a later date.

I hope you'll find my contribution helpful to you. I have quite a bit more work to do yet, miles to go before I sleep, and all that, and I welcome any suggestions you may have.

Once again: Downloads, Discussion forums, support requests, and much more is available on our SourceForge project pages: http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gallerycart/

And while you are at it, visit SourceForge. They have kindly agreed to host this humble project, and have so many wonderful open-source projects.

SourceForge.net Logo