Which media gallery

[OldCoals]

I am looking at adding a media gallery to my forum, sonb - XenGallery and Xen Media Gallery seem to be the two most popular.

What are people opinions on the two please?

 

[OldCoals]

I forgot to add, I would also like to be able to embed some of the now free Getty images if possible.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

You might want to check the discussion here

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/xenforo-gallery-options-xen-media-gallery-vrs-xengallery.62751/

and here

https://xenadmins.com/threads/xenmediagallery-vs-xengallery.168/

and here

http://admin-talk.com/threads/gallery.51018/

 

[Chris D]

I would probably urge you to not make any opinions based on what you read on the first two links Rigel posted as they are severely out of date. For example, most of them talk about a lack of albums functionality in Xen Media Gallery, and that is no longer true. Xen Media Gallery has had albums now for some time, they were introduced in Xen Media Gallery 2.0 and Xen Media Gallery 2.1 isn't too far away from release now.

I'm not going to steer you towards either, that's going to be an entirely subjective choice you need to make based on what is right for you and your community.

All I would do is ask you to write down what you feel is important in a gallery software, then either ask direct questions about the functionality or trial the gallery for yourself. I'm sure you've seen the demo sites, but just in case:

http://sonnb.com for sonnb XenGallery

and

http://xenmediagallery.com for Xen Media Gallery.

On the subject of embedding Getty Images... In theory it should be simple. Both galleries support the embedding of media in the same way as XenForo handles it in posts. You just provide a URL and as long as you have a BB Code Media Site configured for it, it will embed the content.

In theory it works:



But each embed URL has a unique string at the end. This makes it very user-unfriendly to use. So it may require some custom development - that is regardless of the Gallery solution you use - then that BB Code Media site would be usable in a gallery or posts or anywhere that accepts bb code in XenForo.

Good people to talk to about the possibility of a GettyImages media site are @JoshyPHP and @EQnoble.

Good luck in finding the right Gallery for you, I'll be more than happy to ask any questions here, by PM or at http://xenmediagallery.com.

 

[OldCoals]

Thanks for your detailed post, I really appreciate it.

 

[optrex]

I would definitely choose Xen Media Gallery, without any hesitation. Product is great and support is excellent.

 

[DRE]

I have both galleries, they're both awesome in their own way. It really depends on how you'll use your gallery.
If it's mostly just photos then get @sonnb XenGallery but if you're doing a mix of video and photos get @Chris D XenMediaGallery because you have more options with video.

 

[DRE]

Oh another thing I'd like to add, is that Chris's gallery lets you see individual pics and videos from the media index whereas sonnb's gallery only shows albums.

 

[woei]

I had this same choice, and just make a list of the things you need for your members.

For me it was important members also could link/embed youtube because people post pictures of events and there will be some video's also of those events/meetings. Also I like the design more (same size images).

So I made the choice for Xen Media Gallery The only downside is that Chris hasn't released his 2.1 version yet

 

[IcEWoLF]

I saw the old thread, glad I found this thread...I was going to lean towards XenGallery, but now I noticed @Chris D added the missing feature I will probably go with his addon because it doesn't have branding and I don't have to pay extra to remove it unlike the other addon.