Question : How to create Photography Database For Clients ? Software etc...

I own a Wedding Photography business and do a fair amount of business through the internet. Most of our clients come to us using this type marketing. I am trying to learn how to develop a database to upload our scanned proofs so a client can view them using a username and password. What type of software would be easy to use and any simple tips you could share would be appreciated. I have never tried to develop a database before. Thank You

Answer : How to create Photography Database For Clients ? Software etc...

First, you have to know which web server you're using to make it easier to understand how to implement.  For ease of explanation, we have Apache under LINUX and Microsoft Internet Info Server under Windows.  For details, let me know and I can formalize the information based on a solution to suit your needs.

Generally, a couple of ways:

(Without a DB)

1. Under Apache, in general, you can just have the user log in using standard security (easy under Apache) for their own directory.  You place all of their proofs and a simple html template that uses a PERL script to populate the template for display.  Login, access, display.

2. Another method, using standard security under Apache, is to generate a thumbnail gallery using an application I developed for just such a situation.   The way this works is, you generate their gallery and upload it to the server into the client's directory.  Assign a username and password (under Apache).  They login into their own directory to see thumbnails on formatted pages.  When they click the thumbnail, they go to the larger image.

(With a DB)

1. For an Apache system, use a simple database management script in PERL that maintains a user ID, a description, and a filename for the given proof(s).  As for username and password, under Apache, you can create one directory per user and use .htaccess for security.  Or, for both Apache and IIS, you can add login information to the database and have them log into a custom html authentication page.  In either case, using a template html file, the file is populated by the images listed in the database.

2. Under Microsoft IIS, we can create an ASP page that allows the user to login and, once in, is directed to their proofs.  The database would then be accessed from the ASP code of the template page to load the images into the template for display.  

* For both database situations, you would also have a back-end maintenance page to add/edit/delete users and a mechanism to auto-populate the database when you upload the proofs.

* In all cases, the user could see a thumbnail image and, when they click on it, a window pops up to display the full image.