About the developer

First things first, let's get the introductions out of the way. My name is Jamie Longstaff, I'm a part time software developer living in central London and the author of Pixaria Gallery, a new PHP and MySQL driven script for publishing images on the Web.

I do all my work on Pixaria on a part time basis (i.e. in my free time) but I'm committed to the script because I use it myself on my personal website and because of the great feedback I get from people already using it!

This page is a potted history of Pixaria and explains how the script came to be where it is now and where I intend to take it in the future...

History of Pixaria Gallery

1998 - A script is born

Long, long ago in a millennium far far away, I was asked to build a script for a client to automatically generate an HTML gallery from a directory of images. After looking all over the web (Google didn't exist then) I couldn't find anything to do exactly what was needed so I wrote a simple script myself using PHP.

Before the script ever came to be used in a commercial setting the client decided not to use it and the script was left sad, alone and unwanted.

2002 - A shaky start

Fast forward a few years and I decided that I could use the script I'd previously written on my own website and so I set to work finishing it off and uploading my personal photos. After finding that the new script made publishing images much easier than writing loads of HTML, the I thought that other people might be interested in it so I packaged it up and distributed it for free on HotScripts under the name Louvre (after the famous art gallery in Paris).

Intrest in Louvre was not very impressive - in fact no one downloaded it - and so, once again, the script was shelved.

2003 - Second time lucky..?

As time moved on, bits and pieces were added to what had previously been Louvre and eventually I decided to have another go at marketing the script, this time as a commercial product. The addition of a MySQL powered back-end among other features meant that this time the script was more successful and so PopPhoto 1.0 was born.

2005 - There may be trouble ahead

A year and a half down the line and PopPhoto was going strong but there were problems looming. The code base which had first been Louvre and then PopPhoto was getting a bit frayed around the edges. The database design was inefficient and slow and the PHP code was confusing to work with even for me.

More and more users were trying out PopPhoto and I was getting flooded with support requests that mounted up faster than e-mails could be answered. Something had to give and unfortunately, it was me.

2005 - The end..?

In mid 2005, I was faced with an increasing burden of support requests that were getting in the way of upgrading to a much promised version 4.0. I sought advice from other developers and users of the script and after much soul searching, decided not to develop PopPhoto Studio any more. In the face of an outcry from PopPhoto users wanting continued development of their script, I finally relented but heeding the warnings of colleauges and friends decided that changes and sacrifices would have to be made.

2006 - Third time lucky!

I decided to take a bold leap by completely abandoning the PopPhoto code base and building a new script from scratch. On the advice of a professional photographer friend, I decided to increase the fee charged for the script. The thinking behind this was that although fewer people would buy it, those that did would be able to expect better support.

For the rest of 2005, I slaved over my PowerMac G5 to finish the script in time to deliver it to the first paying customer in December 2005. The final result was Pixaria Gallery*, a completely new script similar to PopPhoto but with a more flixible and efficient database and a better user interface that would be easier to customise

Fall 2006

By the end of summer 2006 (and more or less on schedule), Pixaria Gallery finally superseded PopPhoto Studio in terms of features and functions. The e-commerce capabilities of version 1.0 were re-written over the summer based on extensive user feedback to make the store more user friendly and allow photographers to sell prints and other products based on images.

A major part of this process was to begin transitioning Pixaria from procedural to object oriented PHP code which would make it easier to upgrade and extend in the future. It's not easy to take legacy code and try to bring it up to date without breaking things but Pixaria will get there in the end even if it's a relatively slow process.

The future of Pixaria Gallery

* The name Pixaria Gallery was chosen after it was discovered the previous name 'PhotoStream' was a trademark of Associated Press and was also being used by Flickr.

Future of Pixaria Gallery

Pixaria Gallery is a constantly evolving piece of software which I'm continually striving to improve. As a one man operation working in my spare time, this can make it difficult to say the least but I enjoy the work and get great satisfaction from working with the photographic community.

While working on Pixaria, I maintain a constantly updated task list which contains all the features and bugs that I have still got to look at. The list is grouped into three categories: bugs, enhancements and features and this means I can prioritise what I'm working on as effectively as possible. I also note down all suggestions coming into me by e-mail and through the forums so get a feel for the kinds of tools that users are looking for.

The downside to all the incoming requests is that, inevitably, not all of them can be actioned and some can take a while to appear but I do consider all options carefully, so it's always worth dropping me an e-mail.

Credits

In the design of this website, I've used Mark James' amazing 'Silk' icon set as well as bits of CSS and JavaScript borrowed from Panic, Script.aculo.us, Cody Lindley's Thickbox and Bob Osola's PNG fix for Internet Explorer.

For information about thrid party software libraries and code used in Pixaria Gallery, please see the documentation.

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