Graham King

Solvitas perambulum

Migrate from Gallery 2 to Flickr

misc
Summary
I migrated my photos from a self-hosted Gallery 2 instance to Flickr to streamline updates, free server space, and enhance sharing ease. Using the Gallery2Flickr plugin, which maintains titles, descriptions, and tags during the transfer, I followed a specific procedure: install the plugin, export each gallery to Flickr, manually correct photo orientations, organize sets in Flickr, tag and rename appropriately, and confirm the upload before proceeding to the next gallery. This systematic approach, despite a minor issue of not including all photos initially, efficiently facilitated the transition and ensured organization consistency.

I have recently moved all my photos from a Gallery 2 instance I ran myself, to Flickr. This means I don’t need to keep my Gallery2 install up to date, it frees up lots of disk space on my server, and allows me to more easily share pictures with friends and family. Here’s how I did it:

This plugin sends a Gallery2 gallery to Flickr, preserving all the titles and descriptions, setting the permissions your specify, creating a set with the same title and description as your Gallery2 set, and tagging all the photos with your Gallery2 tags plus ‘gallery2flickr’. The only problem is that it only includes your first photo in the set. That’s easy to fix.

For each gallery in Gallery2 you want to export:

  • Select ‘Export to Flickr’ in the menu on the left. If it doesn’t appear you haven’t setup the plugin correctly.

  • Whilst it uploads, go to your Flickr stream and rotate any portrait mode photos that don’t come in the right orientation.

  • Once the upload has completed, go to Flickr, in the Organize menu select ‘Your sets and collections’.

  • Enter the set in Flickr by double-clicking it.

  • At the bottom, expand ‘More options’, select ‘Tags only’, and search for ‘gallery2flickr’. The number of results should match the number of items in your Gallery2 gallery. If not wait 30 seconds for Flickr to process your pictures and search again.

  • Select all those pictures and drag them into your set. It should say that they were all added except the one that was already there.

  • In the Arrange menu, select ‘By date uploaded (oldest first)’. Save.

  • In your main Flickr page select ‘tags’, then the ‘gallery2flickr’ tag. Rename that tag to something meaningful for your set.

  • Wait until that job has processed. When a search of your pictures turns up no more pictures with the tag ‘gallery2flickr’, you are ready to uploaded the next gallery.

    Note that I used gallery2flickr-0.9.0 dated June 27, 2007. Other versions may vary. Always test your export on a gallery you don’t care too much about just in case.

    Thanks Gunnar Wrobel for the great plugin.