What it is

Piwigo is an open source photo gallery application for the web, built in PHP and released under the GPL-2.0 license. It lives in the PHP web-application ecosystem and is positioned as a digital asset management tool for organisations, teams, and individuals.

The problem it addresses is managing large photo collections in a self-hosted web gallery. The README says Piwigo manages a photo library, and the tagline refers to organizing thousands of photos. It requires a web server, PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, and ImageMagick or PHP GD. The topic list also frames it as a CMS, image gallery, photo gallery, privacy, and web application.

Key capabilities

• Piwigo manages a photo library through a web application.
• The project supports organizing thousands of photos, as stated in the tagline.
• It runs with PHP 7.4 or newer, MySQL 5 or greater, or MariaDB equivalent.
• The README notes that PHP 7.0+ can run but is end-of-life and may expose sites to security vulnerabilities.
• It uses ImageMagick or PHP GD for image processing.
• The GitHub description says more than 200 plugins and themes are available.
• It provides self-hosting on Apache or nginx web servers.

Who uses it and how

• Organisations, teams, and individuals can run a web-based photo gallery, as stated in the README.
• Self-hosters can install Piwigo on their own web space using FTP and follow the website setup steps.
• Docker users can follow the provided Docker installation guide.
• Photographers can use it for photography-focused collections, since topics include photography and photo-gallery.
• Contributors can fork the repository and submit changes to the master branch.

Getting started

A typical install can be done manually by downloading the latest stable version, unzipping it, transferring files with FTP, and opening the website to follow the steps. Before installing, ensure Apache or nginx, PHP 7.4+, MySQL 5+ or MariaDB, and ImageMagick or PHP GD; Docker installation is documented, and Piwigo Cloud is offered as a ready-to-use hosted option.

When to use it — and when not to

It is suitable when a self-hosted PHP photo gallery is needed and the operator can run a web server, PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, and ImageMagick or PHP GD. It is less suitable when a hosted-only solution with no infrastructure to operate is required, although Piwigo Cloud is listed as a ready-to-use option. The registry facts show 751 open issues and 0 contributors, so a self-hoster should weigh the visible maintenance data against the need to manage database and image-processing dependencies.