If you have Lightroom 2 and some hosting then LR2 can build you some really nice templates. Not sure about Lightroom 1. Hosting is dirt cheap, LR2 is £209 and that way you don't have to piss about too much with image size settings, catalogue set up etc. I've used a few types of hosting with a fancy image gallery built in, and they've all been problematic. LR2 was a breeze though, the main difference being it sits on your PC so can do all it's mucking about locally and therefore quicky. You just need to give it FTP details to your hosting. It just bypasses so much of the crap you normally get with online image gallery software configurations such as databases and the like.
Of the online stuff that I've used
Gallery is the best I've found so far. You do need hosting of course, personally I use SurfSpeedy. Gallery comes as a built in package that you have the option of installing if you want (the SurfSpeedy CMT does it all for you). It's good, but it does take a LOT of working out to tweak exactly how you want it.
Not sure how/if LR2 handles password protected galleries, but you can always add protection on the gallery folders via the hosting CMT.
No I'm not on commission from Adobe
But I built a gallery with over 1500 (low res) images using LR2 and it took me 5 minutes (literally). Any other piece of software I've used would have taken some hours.
It's also a superb image management and editing program to boot of course.
Hell, even PHPBB has gallery extensions, you might even be able to ask LSM to set up a gallery for you. If you don't like the Lolinternet address you can always buy your own and "web forward the domain in a window" so people only ever see your URL. That'll cost you all of a tenner plus kissing LSMs arse a bit.
If you want a bespoke solution I know a good guy who builds websites for a living, he could certainly knock you up something (
http://www.ifour.co.uk), bespoke CMT included if you want. Tell him I sent you
Of course there's always Flickr and Smugmug. I'm told Flickr has the community and Smugmug has the customisation ability.
by Mongrel on Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:01 pm 
so i'll give it a go 
I've already got the domain name and storage so hopefully even I should be able to cope. Danke!! 
