An update is posted, fixing the problem with fresh installs (b109 would not boot properly if there were no templates installed). This is fixed. Download.

WebExport 1.0b109 has been posted. Questions comments, etc. can be put here.

Let's Say you have a standard WordPress PHP WebLog running on your server. It looks a little like mine, but you've got a different template and a few other details.

You are happy with this setup, but you want to share more than just text, and have a ton of pictures in your iPhoto library, and want to get them out, and onto your webpage. There are two ways to do this, by hand, or with some software. Clearly, you don't want to do it by hand.

Enter WebExport 1.0, specially designed to do just this, on my machine (you can check out my photo galleries at mountainmandan.net). Here's how to do it yourself:

First, download WebExport and the WordPress template, which is designed to work with the default WordPress theme and comes in the same tarball. It is easy to modify the WebExport templates to work with other themes. Install the theme by double-clicking it, or moving it to ~/Library/Application Support/WebExport (which you may have to create).

Boot up iPhoto and select the photos you want to export. Select "WebExport" from the choices at the top of the window, and you will be greeted by a potentially scary looking window. Don't panic! Select the wordpress template from the drop-down, and see the "pathToRoot=../../" pop up. This string tells the template how to get to your main wordpress directory from the directory it lives in. You can edit the titles/authors of the images in the "Metadata" tab (you can save it back to iPhoto for easier editing).

Now you're ready to export. Click "Export" at the bottom of the page, and navigate either to the location you have WordPress installed in (it should have all kinds of wp-stuff.php files in it), you can also export to a temporary directory, and upload it to your website. Create a folder inside the wordpress directory called "galleries", and another one inside that one with a UNIX-ized version of your gallery name (My Favorite Photos -> my_favorite_photos). Select this directory and click "OK". Wait while WebExport does it's thing, and when it's done, open up that page on your webserver (local viewing won't let the PHP work).

Great, now you have a website, but nothing links to it. You can either manually add a link to your sidebar.php theme file, or you can make some PHP code that automatically does that, like in my sidebar.

The final product:

WebExport is a universal exporter for iPhoto 5 and 6. It is geared for the production of low to high end photo galleries on any kind of website. I developed it to produce the galleries on my website, and in all likelihood, it will work on your site.

This is beta software, don't expect it to work right off the bat, I'll get it working…

The amazing Summer Jaunt photos are posted.

The photos from a recent geology trip to mammoth are posted: Afield In Mammoth. Great trip, some solid photos, too.

The new version of CustomHTMLExport is up, running, universal, and open-source. Good times all around.

Update: I have replaced CustomHTMLExport with WebExport. Differences include a slightly changed template format, (not backwards-compatable, but easily updated/changed) which offers vastly more power.

I just moved over to WordPress, which is a fantastic chunk of code that manages blogs such as this one. Please be patient while I transition. All of the old data is still available (namely CustomHTMLExport), and I am slowly moving it all over to the new format.