Looking for a PHP photo gallery package that’s super easy to use? Look no further than WebAssist’s PowerGallery. It has a slick interface that far surpasses any I’ve seen in similar scripts. It looks good, it’s clean and simple, and it feels polished, which is more than I can say for the ever-popular Coppermine Photo Gallery.
Installation is quick and painless, a simple matter of uploading the files and running the 5-step installation wizard. It checks to make sure the prerequisites (PHP 5.2, GD, SimpleXML) are met and then prompts for your MySQL credentials. Once that’s taken care of, it asks you for a username and password for the admin account, then lets you optionally set up a watermark that will be added to your images. The final step lets you batch-add a folder full of images, though you can put that off until later.
Managing your images with PowerGallery is a breeze. You can simply drag and drop the thumbnails to reorder them, and it only takes a couple of clicks to rotate them if need be. Editing metadata is intuitive: a simple matter of selecting a thumbnail and tweaking the text fields to the right.
You have two options when it comes to uploading images: either do one at a time, or FTP several to a server directory and import them all at once.
There are several layout options for your galleries. You can have a grid of thumbnails that open the full-size image in a Lightbox overlay when clicked, a thumbnail grid with the full-size image displayed above, or you can have either configuration, but with a “ribbon” of thumbnails instead of a grid. The options are available in both light and dark color schemes.
Galleries can be linked to directly, or you can get snippets of PHP code to embed them directly into an existing page.
The finished product looks good, and functions like you would expect any image gallery to. It would work well for a portfolio, product photos, or whatever your needs are.
PowerGallery is a great software package, and its only real drawback is the price. It costs $99.99 for an unlimited-site license, though it’s discounted to $69.99 until the end of December. I think the normal asking price is a little steep for many individuals, though businesses should have no issue, but PowerGallery is a great option for those who can afford it.
