Last week we got a work of making a php based gallery website with admin panel . Now , this is a pretty basic work and has been done over and oevr again. However, two new things are involved in this . One , the design is not something we will be doing as it is already done, so when we finish making the gallery , we will have to dress it up with the layout the client has provided.

The second part is something i liked , which is the main customization. As all gallery based sites have the typical admin panel from where the admin can create , manage , edit and delete Categories or albums and Sub Categories . It will not have the option of users uploading photos , as that will only be done by the admin and users will mostly be viewing images and if interested, adding it to their cart of sorts. With every gallery , it is reuired to auto crop images and create thumbnails , and sometimes also a watermark to put the sitesname , thus involving GD.

A somewhat new twist will be , there will be some categories which will not be viewable at all to general visitors . The client wanted to manually generate some kind of password and assign it to them manually to each so that with the password , they would be able to view certain restricted categories . i didnt feel that was a handy solution, so I have suggested that we create user groups and assign the specific categories to specific user groups , thus minimizing the work of assigning passwords and the problems of password sharing .

4images if a extremely cool image gallery software . I have been a fan of 4images , which btw is available from www.4homepages.de and not 4images.com , as you might mistake it if you dont know. I just noticed that I have been using 4images for the past 6 years now . Being an open source software , like many others 4images has its own advantages and some demerits . As a photo gallery software, it is quite versatile and has several end user as well as admin features and options. In the recent versiion which is 4images 1.7.3 i believe, it has captcha and batch resizing inbuilt , which means any image which is uploaded can get cropped and resized as well and there is also option for batch watermarking.

4images also supports integration of user database with various forum database , out of which vBulletin and phpBB comes by default and is supported if i remember. Personally i have managed to keep it integrated with Invisionboard all versions till date now , in my other television forum ( Discusstv). In discusstv I have also succesfully used a modification to make urls seo oriented , using htaccess . But one thing i had found difficult is to leech protect . Other than that , 4images also supports having a gallery of not only images but also Flash files and WMV and different video formats with preview options too .

But all these are common knowledge and may not be of much inetrest to some of you . The good news is I have now started designing 4images templates . You may view a design which i have done here http://www.discusstv.com/gallery/ and another at Sareez.com ( LINK HERE as site is non existant currently ) . But i did that almost 1-2 years back. I have thought of giving away these two templates for free . If i see it gets good response , I will start making more nicer templates for 4images soo. I have already started on a pink colored design. So if you are interested, stay tuned.

Wordpress themes and templates has always been a target . Till now , was mostly busy with Invisionboard and vBulletin skins and templates , and occassionally some other scripts… like phpld and 4images. When i decide to get on any skinning or templating, I always like to read out the official forums of the software , as they contain a huge resource , tips and FAQ’s . But with wordpress, you dont need to go to its support forum , but rather there is a huge repository of articles , all stored in its Wiki , called Codex. However , when checked codex today, it seemed to me some of the design and layout pages on the wiki is little out of date . Nevertheless, it is definitely the best place to start.

Unlike many other softwares or scripts I have worked on before, I really look forward to making wordpress themes . Unlike commercial softwares,  wordpress has a even larger userbase and hence a good market too . vBulletin is a largely popular script , and there are always forums popping up here and there every day . But forums are made by forum admins and the requirements for a forum theme will be probably once every 6 months or 1 year for say 500 users in a forum . But , almost 500 of those individual forum members can have a Blog and thats counting it less .  I can keep talking about how great Wordpress is and why I believe 425 of those  500 members will decide to have a hosted Wordpress instead of some blog host .  But that is not the main reason i am happy too … the main reason is that a Blog is totally a mood oriented site , I have seen Blog owners wanting to have a new look for their blog or at least order or search for various Blog headers many times a year .

Social Bookmarking is nothing new and this post is going to be just another one amongst hundreds . For the past 2 days I myself have been spending some time tinkering with the idea of adding social bookmarking links and icons to these blog. Now adding / installing social bookmarking links is only the easy part . getting people / visitors to use it would be the difficult part , of course. They have got to find the post useful and worth bookmarking , for that.

How to do that ? Go here and download this nifty plugin by the great Alex King There are other similar plugins which adds the icons in the post , which i feel looks a little messy , where as this plugin only shows a small icon , clicking which brings up a popup where the links to other bookmarking sites comes out. However , the plugin comes default with only few sites . But it can easily be increased by little change in configuration , and doing so , will allow you to add links of unlimited other simmilar bookmarking sites as listed in this nice blog.

On another note, in the past 2 days I have also been somewhat active again on DP , where there are about hundreds of webmasters who are buying, renting , exchanging stumbles, diggs, from each other . I wonder how that is going to work … will that result into ban for the sites ? for the exchangers ? or will it actually help increasing such exchanged websites popularity ?

( Look for this option just below this and every post )

Since yesterday, i have started doing free website reviews . Many people actually charge for it , but i am finding it quite the fun , especially at a place like DP, there are hundreds of new and old members even come down to the reviews section to ask other webmasters and experts about just another opinion.

To be frank, it started with that only …. since we launched our web design website , I wanted as many visitors to start visiting it and also give their feedbacks. With a site like dp, there are always a wide variety of internet users, all on different browsers, resolutions, os. So when i posted our website for feedbacks, I thought immediately – why would others want to give feedback on mine, unless i return the love I dont know how much longer i will be keeping doing it , but i noticed that quite a few people that what i have said or pointed out actually helped them . Also I am hoping , if more people do actually view our website , in whatever minimal way , at least it will bring up our new site’s alexa ranking .

This is the month of search engine optimization. The past one month has been good to us, touch wood. So i now have a small budget to splurge on the goodies i have been waiting buy using PayPal power . Past 1 week i have been busy getting a directory submission process started . As we now have a team of professional staff, we are selecting / using various directory lists , from which we are screening off hundreds of fake directories and choosing some of the creamiest directories to submit our website to.

The first step is collecting the various directory lists from which we initially choose the directories which is worth paying a link for . As of yet , we are NOT using any Reciprocal Directories, as basiclly i think they suck . We are submitting our web design website to numerous screened and collected Seo Friendly FREE directories . I do NOT believe in any directory submission software , as I dont feel it allows any judgement at all . Not only does it submit totally on a pre-calculated algorithm, software / program can have no braind of hindthought of its own . I like going through a list of websites myself , finding the perfect subcategory for my website and submitting in it , instead of some of the higher rank / popular categories on just any directory.

What is wrong with that , you will ask…. the problem is that i like getting contextual links , instead of ANY link from any run off the mill directory . Now there are lots of tools which help you predict which of the free directories have a future .

One tip i can tell you however , is that in SEO there is no ONE GREAT THING you can do , it involves an amalgamation of various multiple tests and dares . Theres no wonder tick you can implement and voila you will have the results . Theres a 100 of search engine optimization ebooks available on the internet available , but i have heard some great reports on the one i bought . I have read it and found it to be quite useful to get the headstart . I feel you can use it too .

Yes, we have already put up the new web design on www.phpcafe.net . The site is yet to be re-launched , but i am still working on it . But i just didn’t want the homepage to continue showing something that is no longer here . But I would rather show something that is going to be here soon ; and that is the PHPCAFE CMS and of course Templates and Designs Customizations for vBulletin , Invisionboard and OsCommerce.

The current phpcafe design should be much more trendier than before , although the pages are yet to be complete , but i just needed to have them up , as it has been long due .

Here’s a screeny for those reading the blog

Today i also submitted this blog to a blog directory called Blog Catalog.