I'm pleased to announce that the Ultra Fractal Course e-books are ready. Each course is packaged as a separate stand-alone Windows program that will run in a browser-like interface on your computer. No other software or e-book reader is required. You can read more about the courses here and purchase them here.
After two months' work, I've finally beaten this image gallery script into submission, bending and twisting it until it does pretty much whatever I need it to do, but doesn't at all resemble the default design templates with which I started. The site may not look so different from the end-user's perspective, but what's under the hood is a sparkling new system of organization!
One of the deal-breakers for most of the pre-made scripts was the limited search customization. Stock photography sites are all about keywords. They're nice to have, although I think it's necessary to suggest which ones might actually work for my art, but I also wanted folks to be able to search by image shape, color, and custom features -- like zoomable images.
Then I discovered Pixaria. I have to say that I seem to have a knack for finding really those rare developers who put a lot of thought and care into their programs and Jamie Longstaff is one of those programmers. His customer service and willingness to help me figure things out have been beyond my expectations. And yes I paid a bit for this script, as opposed to using one of the free or cheap options, but you don't get quality and customization for nothing. I could never have afforded the kind of custom php scripting I really wanted, but Pixaria's versatility is well worth its price and I've been able to achieve at least 90% of the design aesthetic and functionality I wanted.
Pixaria comes with an image slideshow option (look for the icon on gallery, favorites, and search results pages). It also allows registered users the ability to create collections of favorite images that can be saved here, shared with friends, or downloaded as .pdf files.
If you'd like to see all these features in action, seach for the keyword vielle.
All of this initially took a lot of work to set up — not the least of which was keywording 300+ images! I couldn't have done it without the help of a great friend, who offered her time, opinions, and troubleshooting skills and claimed it was even "fun!" You can't buy friends like that, but I'm not too proud to bribe. May she be well rewarded both in this and parallel universes!
Next on the list of enhancements is e-commerce with which I will offer my Ultra Fractal course e-books online. Once all that is working, I'm considering offering my unsold art show inventory of matted and framed images at reduced rates. I can't start the e-commerce process until after the weekend, but I've still got some informational pages here that need writing or finishing. It would be nice to get as much of that done before the real world and real work kick in again on Monday!
There will likely be some holes in the site for a few days, but if you see pages that look bad or find typographic or grammatic errors, please send me a message.