• An easy understandable, flexible PHP script with optional MySQL support
• Easy administration and posting of new pictures
• Integrated resizing of pictures in various sizes (including original size)
• EXIF information extracting
• Organizing of the photos in categories and/or by tagging
• Commenting system with Antispam Support
• Easy customable template system with some templates to start with
• Basic statistics of visits, photos, photo views, etc.
• Possibility to integrate with Google Maps.

This are the things that I really want for my photoblog, and after googling around I found three softwares which whom I consider I can achieve it:

1. WordPress: Well, you probably say: WordPress as a photoblog system? You must be crazy! No, I’m not, apart from the hundreds of plugins, the clean code, the easy templating system there are a few valid solutions on the net and good examples for the use of this great blog system. Just have a look at this beautiful photoblog: http://jowra.com/photos/ .
   Fivebyfive (http://www.fivebyfive.com.ar/wp-themes/) has created some great photoblog templates. With the installation of a few additional plugins and changes to some options you’re virtually done. Another great theme is the “Cookies and Cream Theme” from http://www.kineda.com/?page_id=1078
   Though, there are some disadvantages as well: you’ve to integrate the EXIF extraction by yourself, there is no automatic resizing of the images and no integration of google maps (although that’s not a must have for me).
2. Cheesecake Photoblog: Based on the cakephp framework, this is a fairly difficult software to install. But once you’re done, this photoblog is pretty straight forward to use, has a clean look and feel and a good administration interface. The downsite is, you’ve to learn nearly all of the quite complicated structure of cakephp to get started and modify code. But once you’ve achivied this (which, if you’re familiar with php shouldn’t take that long), it’s easy to create new templates and even to create plugins and addons by yourself. Another disadvantage is that the community is not that big (not to say that there is no-community).
3. Pixelpost is one of the most popular photoblog softwares out there. The administration is clean and simple, the blog layout easily adaptable to your own needs, and there are a lot of addons and templates out there. One of the disadvantages is that the developer community is rather small, close and you can not mess around on the beta releases (the developers don’t grant access to the code in subversion). But there is a great community forum, a lot of ressources on the web.

Well, for the moment I think I tend to use WordPress, because I’m fairly familiar with the structure. But on the other site, I really want a more photoblog-like script, and that’s why I’m still thinking of using pixelpost or cheesecake. I was messing around with cheesecake over the last few days, and have to say, the more I use it, the more I start to like it. I might contact the developers to see what’s there plan for what cheesecake photoblog woulf become in the near future. Stay tuned for updates!