I run a site for professional photographers and I've been searching desparately for a solution that will let me provide member portfolios that are integrated with the vBulletin profile. None of the current gallery options like Photopost will work because they don't provide the search features I need. I need something that will let potential clients search for a photographer based on things like name, location, nearest major city and photographic speciality. The search results must then display the members contact info, a thumbnail image and a link to their portfolio page with more images. Alll the current gallery options only allow you to search images, not members.

I've been looking everywhere and even written to some coders, and I had begun to think it was not possible. Then today I was searching these forums and found some references to this site for the Society of Digital Artists. They have figured out how to do exactly what I'm looking for.

I registered to see how things work and after registration I was given the opportunity to create a free portfolio with 5 images. Some of my vBulletin profile info was already in the Portfolio contact details, so there must be some integration. There also links to the member's gallery in the postbit and lots of other very cool features. The whole site is pretty amazing.

I don't need anything quite this sophisticated, but does anyone have any idea how they did this? I'm also willing to discuss a custom solution.

Cheers,

Andrew

Well, you could start with asking the owners of that forum whether they can provide you with the info you need. If that doesn't work, post back and I'll do some research for you if you want .

Thanks for the reply. I decided to email them last night and the CEO was nice enough to respond saying the portfolio system was developed inhouse by a team of 2 programmers and 2 designers who built it from the ground up and integrated it into vBulletin where necessary.

He's not sure if he can provide any more assistance, but he said he's always happy to support fellow artists. I don't know if anything will come up from this, but his response is encouraging.

That's good news .

You could possibly ask them whether or not they were using a public (or commercial) script before they got that one coded. I guess if you want something as complicated as that you'll indeed need to hire a team of coders, like they did.

He said they built it from the ground up, so I don't think they were using anything else before that. I really don't need anything that complicated. I just want my paying members to be able to upload a few images to a portfolio that includes their contact info, and is searchable by things like name, location and photographic speciality. I'm no coder, but I didn't think that would be too difficult.

I never heard back from them, so if you have any other suggestions I would really appreciate it. I'd love to get something like this implemented on my site.

Cheers,

Andrew

Well, you could hire a coder who could modify one of the existing gallery hacks into what you want. I guess that wouldn't be too hard to do.

Where's the best place to find a coder? I've asked about this a few times over at vb.org and also said I was desparate and willing to pay, but no one has responded. I also asked another coder who developed a classifieds system that I purchased, but he doesn't seem interested in doing this either.

I didn't think I was asking for anything too complicated, but it seems no one wants to work on this. It's very frustrating. I'm not sure how much I can afford to spend on this, but it would be nice if I could get someone to give me some kind of estimate.

Thanks,

Andrew

Well, if you want I can have a look at it for you and give you an estimate. I might also be able to complete the request myself, depending on how much time it would take me, providing you're interested ofcourse.

I'll let you know tomorrow .

Thanks very much. Here's a wish list of things that are important to me:

- As I mentioned in my first post this will be used by clients who are searching for professional photographers so it has to be searchable by things like name, location, nearest major city, photographic speciality, etc. Each photographer will have multiple specialities and ideally this info would be maintained in their vB profile, but this is not essential.

- The search and results pages must be clean and professional looking and I don't want it to look like a forum like most of the gallery options I've seen. It should be separate from the forum pages just like the cgsociety.com portfolios.

- Each paying member should be able maintain their own portfolio and upload about 10 pictures. It should be linked to the vB subscriptions and usergroups so different groups have more permissions, more uploads, etc. Also, if they don't renew their subscription their gallery should not be displayed anymore. It should be as automated a possible so I don't have to get involved too much.

- a comment system is not important to me, but image captions would be nice.

Thanks again,

Andrew