What is Piwigo?

Quick introduction to Piwigo

Piwigo is an online software for photo library management, available on the web and as a mobile app. It allows you to import pictures, videos as well as other documents (PDFs, for example), organize them, sort them, and share them publicly or privately.

Piwigo was originally designed to manage pictures and is optimized for this use; this is why we mostly talk about pictures in this documentation and in the software. But just know that what applies to pictures also applies to every other image type, and, in most instances, also applies to other file types.

Why use Piwigo?

Many organizations and individuals use Piwigo to save, sort, and share their visual resources: pictures, videos, communication visuals, brochures…

There are many benefits:

• Piwigo is safer and more reliable than traditional solutions (server for shared files, external hard drive, USB sticks…) and way more suitable for remote working.
• Piwigo allows you to sort files in a simple and intuitive way. As such, less time is lost searching for the required files.  
• Piwigo allows for a protected access to data: you can easily set each person’s access to each file using advanced management of permissions.
• Piwigo allows you to share a file or a set of files in a secure and fast manner, through a simple link share. This prevents from sending emails with an attachment, duplicates, risks of mistakes…
• Piwigo allows you to create a real website, public or private, to host and showcase your pictures. This library is customizable to your colors.

To learn more, visit our website.

How Piwigo works

Piwigo is an online software, accessible simply through a web browser.

Piwigo is split into two main parts:

• The administration
• The gallery

These notions are important to understand the following documentation.

The administration

The administration is Piwigo's backoffice: it's the web space for adding files, creating albums, organizing, modifying, moving and deleting elements, accessing the settings options... Only users with administrator or webmaster status can connect to the administration.

The gallery

The gallery is the face of Piwigo: it's a website that allows people to view all the content of your photo library. You can make this content accessible to all visitors of the website, or keep it for authorized users only. Discover our demos to view examples of Piwigo galleries.

Learn more about the gallery

Customize your gallery

The users

When you create your account on piwigo.com, you have all the rights: your default status is “webmaster”.

You can then create new users:

• The administrators: they will have access to Piwigo's administration to create albums, add photos…
• The visitors: they will only have access to your Piwigo gallery to search, visualize, download files.

Learn more about the users

The albums

You first need to create an album in order to add files to your Piwigo.

The files are organized into albums and sub-albums, much like the folders in your computer. It is an infinite tree structure.

The special feature is that a file can be located in multiple albums at the same time without creating duplicates!

You can use your albums to sort your files into coherent folders. It's also a good way to manage the users permissions.

Indeed, you can decide to make specific albums only visible for specific users. If you have many users, you can create user groups to make managing easier: for example, a group for each of your company's departments, or for each subsidiary.

Learn more about the albums

The tags

In addition to the albums, Piwigo allows you to sort your photos using tags.

Tags are keywords that you can link to files. A file can be linked to an unlimited number of tags.

On your gallery, users will be able to search files by tag, or even by combining multiple tags.

You can try out the search by tag in this demo gallery.

Learn more about tags

The themes

Themes allow you to customize the appearance of your Piwigo gallery. However, the administration cannot be customized.

When you create your Piwigo account, the default theme is Modus, in black and white.

But we offer many other themes and color combinations to customize your gallery. Feel free to give them a try!

Finally, you should know that our Enterprise clients can all request assistance to customize their gallery's appearance. In this case, we handle the setup of your gallery to better fit your graphic identity and your needs.

To view some examples of customization, you can:

• Read this article on our blog: 8 examples of customized Piwigo galleries
• Discover some demos on our website

Learn more about themes

The plugins

In order to add options and features to Piwigo, you have access to a library containing over a hundred plugins.

A plugin is an extension that adds code to your Piwigo gallery. This method prevents overloading Piwigo with features that not everyone needs.

By reading this documentation, you will discover many plugins that you could find useful.

If you are a piwigo.com customer, you can also reach out to support to describe your needs: we will explain which plugins fits them best.

Here are some examples of very popular plugins:

• Batch Downloader: this plugin allows users of your gallery to download a selection of photos as one or more .zip files
• Download by size: this plugin allows users of your gallery to choose the download size of a file
• User Collections: this plugin allows users of your gallery to create photo collections / selections, in order to find them easily or share them
• Advanced Menu Manager: this plugin allows you to customize your gallery's menus and their look
• Community: this plugin allows users of your gallery who are not administrators to add files in your Piwigo gallery. They are then called contributors.

But there are dozens and dozens more!

Learn more about plugins

Piwigo subscriptions

To use Piwigo, you can create an account on the piwigo.com website: you will benefit from a 30-day free trial to give the software a try.

After that, in order to continue using Piwigo, you will have to choose a subscription plan.

We offer 4 plans, each being calibrated to best answer the needs of each different type of client:

• A Pro plan for independent and freelance photographers
• A Team plan for small teams
• An Enterprise plan for middle-sized companies and organizations
• A VIP plan for bigger companies and organizations with the most demanding needs

View plans

Each plan has several restrictions:

• number of administrators
• storage space

In addition to that, some features and plugins are for specific plans only. Plugins are extensions that allow you to add features to Piwigo.

View plugins available for each plan

Lastly, it is possible to order additional storage space.

Hosting Piwigo myself

Piwigo is a free and open source software. This means that the software's code is open and available to everyone. Anyone can download Piwigo and roll it out on their own web server. If you have developer skills, you can even learn to develop your own plugins, and adapt Piwigo to your specific needs.

If you have the desire and the skills it takes to install, host and maintain your own Piwigo, you can download the latest version on the piwigo.org website.

In this case, using Piwigo will be completely free.

If you make this choice, you must understand its consequences:

• You will not have access to customer support, only to the documentation and community support;
• You will be solely responsible for updates and backups;
• If you modify the sources files of your Piwigo, in the event of an update, your changes will be "crushed";

If you want to use a self-hosted gallery all while enjoying the support of our team, you can choose to go for our maintenance contract.

To learn more about self-hosting, click here.

Article summary

• What is Piwigo?
• Quick introduction to Piwigo
• Why use Piwigo?
• How Piwigo works
• The administration
• The gallery
• The users
• The albums
• The tags
• The themes
• The plugins
• Piwigo subscriptions
• Hosting Piwigo myself