This is an automated photo album. We have a CIFS share reachable by our internal PCs and we simply create directories in that share and drop in the images. For example we create a directory called /images/auto/Charlotte and begin placing images in this directory.

Next a cron job runs on the web server and notices new images. The cron job uses GIMP CLI to resize the images to something reasonable for Web viewing. The original hi-res image is preserved. Once the image is resized the cronjob constructs Web pages appropriately linked together with the images viewable in an inline frame.

Sub directories are handled appropriately with links to navigate up one level or back to the top level. Special files in each directory are used to add textual details for describing the page or an individual image and for adding external links to the page.

Special Files:

links.txt - A list of links to external sites related to the current page. The format is one link per line like this "link_target,link_title"

comments.txt - This is free form text to describe the page. HTML may be embedded in the text if desired. This will be displayed at the top of the page.

image_name.txt - This is also free form text describing a particular image. HTML is allowed and the test is displayed under the image in the iframe.

default.image_name.jpg - If you prefer to designate an image to be the default image for a directory simply prefix the image filename with "default".

This automated photo album is written in Perl. If you would like more detail or a copy of the script, email me.

One final note, this automated photo album has been created to work with jpeg images and quicktime movies. Other image/video formats may not display properly in the album.