I'm new to Coppermine, having quit the hosted blog world to start my own site. I picked Coppermine after some shopping around, and feel I've made a good choice. Only trouble is, it seems nobody else looks at it!
My
mission in life is, I design desktop-wallpaper sized images using only free/open source software design tools; everything from Gimp and Inkscape to POVray and Blender, everything from abstracts patterns to full photo-realistic scenes. I want to offer these free to the public for download under the Creative Commons attribution license (which terms are basically: "use how you want, but credit me with a link back to my site"). So my needs are very different from a personal photo-sharing site. Generally, any time a Linux user or developer wants free wallpaper graphics and Googles for them, they should be able to find my site.
When I hosted these on a blog, they were getting from 300-500 hits per day! Now, I see about 50/month. It seems that Coppermine doesn't seem to be very spider-friendly. Also, a blog pings trackback services to notify people of freshly-posted content. Here, I put up new pictures and then listen to the crickets chirp.
So, four areas of inquiry: (1) Much as I *like* Coppermine and as cool as it looks, is it really the ideal tool for this job? Can anybody point/link me at other artists who use coppermine to display their work online? (2) *How* to give each picture it's own page, as far as a search engine is concerned, so that when people Google for "desktop wallpaper magnetic acrobats" they find
this,
this, and
this ?
And finally (3) RSS/Atom feed capability would be nice. For instance, I'd like to be able to plug a module into my home page so that instead of just the link, visitors could at least see a preview of my #N-latest pictures? Something that automatically updates with each new post, just like the main home page of the gallery does, using an RSS-like method.
And finally, (4) is my design/layout scaring people off? Did I goof something in the controls, so that something is inexcessible? This is more aesthetic advice than the other technical ones.
Any advice or comments or ideas are appreciated.
PS I know I should be promoting via links, etc. I've been doing that.