How to Create My Own Photo Gallery

For many people, one of the best parts of the Internet is the ability to showcase the digital photos that they have taken. Whether it is digital images of their friends, family or hobbies, taking digital photos and then posting them on a blog, website or social networking site has become commonplace.

While there are many choices for people to showcase their photo galleries, more and more people are opting to create their own photo gallery website for just this purpose. There are many advantages to creating a photo gallery website. Here are just a few:

1. Creating your own photo gallery website gives you total control over which photos you can exhibit
2. People who have their own photo gallery website can monetize it and make extra money for showcasing photos.
3. Anyone on the web can view your photo gallery website. You don't have to be a member of a specific site.
4. Creating a photo gallery website is extremely affordable and can range in cost from free to only a few dollars per month.

How to Create a Photo Gallery Website

Generally speaking, there are two main ways to create a photo gallery website. The first is to use simple photo gallery software and the second is to use one of many available photo gallery website templates.

Use Simple Software to Create a Photo Gallery Website

Perhaps the simplest way to create a photo gallery website is to use special software that makes the entire process turnkey. There are three aspects to a basic photo gallery website. They are: The site that you will be posting your pictures to, the software used to set up your website, design and manage it and the digital images that you will be place on the website.

There are a variety of sites that you can develop for a photo gallery website. However, most individuals choose to purchase their own domain name (e.g. www.mydomain.com). You can purchase your own domain from a domain registry service and then purchase web hosting as well to host the domain service. This option is fairly inexpensive and only costs a few dollars per month.

Blogs are another option for photo galleries. Blogs usually give you ease of use and control that most people find on a domain. Blogs can be free as in Google's Blogger.com or they can require a hosting fee such as Typepad (about $5 per month). The last option is to develop a site on a free hosting service. The one drawback here, however, is that you may not have the control that you would like, especially when it comes to storage and bandwidth limits.

The second consideration in creating your photo gallery is the software you use. There are many software products available that make it incredibly easy to develop a photo gallery website. Some of the top rated products include Jalbum, CoffeeCup and SiteCube.

With many of these products, you simply visit the website, download the software and immediately start using it to create your own photo gallery website.

Using Simple Photo Gallery Website Templates

If you would like maximum control over your photo gallery website, you will probably want to develop your own domain and then use a photo gallery template to design your site. There are many paid & free photo gallery website templates available. Since these templates offer developers the most personal control, you will need to code it to your specifications. This option is not particularly good for newcomers to web development.

Some of the places to find photo gallery templates include:

FolioLink
IFP3
Perfectory

It should also be noted that many photo gallery templates are available for free including ones by Macromedia, Google and Yahoo.

Once you have your template set up, you can easily upload your photos and create a photo gallery website.