It would be so great if it could simple serve files from a directory (without in-app upload). Then I could simply sync the photos using btsync (or anything else).
That's what I do for my own photos. http://chir.ag/gallery/ just shows everything from a folder on the server. The thumbnails shown in the gallery view are random and auto-generated. I use subfolders to caption/group the photo in large albums: http://chir.ag/gallery/alaska-cruise-2013
The folder names are underscore delimited column data. E.g. "alaska-cruise-2013_2013-07-27_5th Anniversary Alaska Cruise_critters,cruise,hiking,juliet,travel" => "alaska-cruise-2013" is the permalink, 2013-07-27 is the start date, "5th Anniversary Alaska Cruise" is the gallery title, and the rest of the comma-separated words are tags for filtering, e.g. http://chir.ag/gallery/tag/cruise. I have a few local scripts to resize the raw photos and rsync everything with the server.
It's really not complicated code. Pretty simple stuff that anyone with half a year of coding experience can build. I have been taking and sharing photos on my 'blog since late 2001. I have tried many, many things over time and finally settled on the current method. While my gallery looks/works very simply, it has taken years to refine this exact strategy. I LOVE the Boston Big Picture view and always wanted that. But I also like the thumbnails to jump. I love clicking on the left/right of a pic to advance but I also like to scroll up/down if needed. Sorting gallery by name vs. date, filtering similar albums by tags, and of course captioning without using a text file or DB were things I always wanted but didn't want to deal with a complicated system. I re-did my gallery after our Alaska trip and have been very happy ever since.
Yes. I was actually hoping that this would be working without a database. I think this is a good example: http://sye.dk/sfpg/
Perhaps not UI wise, but it the idea works well for me.
