Scripts for Managing Members Area Galleries

[Halfdeck]

I have a friend who's looking for a good script for displaying/managing picture galleries inside a paysite's members area. If anyone has any suggestions, it's greatly appreciated.

Also, does anyone know an effective way to restrict/allow members into a VIP area? In other words, average members paying the regular fee wouldn't be able to access it, but members paying the VIP fee can.

One possibility I guess would be to keep a database of users, use sessions/cookies and prevent/allow access via .htaccess depending on the values in the cookies. Probably not the most secure setup though.

This is for an amateur site, so I prefer an inexpensive solution but any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in advance,
Halfdeck