A way to present

[IGraham]

Hello people
I'm hoping that your all fonts of knowledge regarding all things photographic and that you can give me good advice with a wee problem

I'm a member of a walking club and look after the club website, at the moment I'm looking at implementing a history page, which isn't a problem its going to be concise(ish) with a few photos.

But it got me thinking about doing a fuller version, that would be capable of showing a large number of photos and relevant text, it would be more photos than text but would definitely need to have a strong text support element. I'm looking towards presenting the content first of as a page with text with links and thumbnails, but would like the photos to be searchable by Tag's such as year, location, user, season etc. I do need more than just a slide show.
I could do it in html with all the files & structure stored on a DVD for distribution, I quite like this idea but know that at the least searching by tag is going to be a pain to implement. I'd probably need to use a database - which would push me into a hole new can of worms. Would be nice if a template or a generator was available.
Or I was wondering if an application exists that would do what I want, it would have to be free and be distributable on DVD and hopefully run on any OS

I'm guessing/hoping that someone here will be able to help me - please