Online Photo Albums

[jtimmons]

I am looking for a place (or html program since I have my own site now) that I can add pictures to, and users can add comments to my pictures. I want it to blend into my site though, so nothing like flickr.

Any ideas?

 

[MICKEY88]

I',m looking for the same info, right now I just have my page set up to do a re-direct to my fotki site where all my pics already reside.., most p[eople don't realize they've been redirected since my site still shows in the address window..

 

[Groucho]

If you have your own site, why not host the pictures there? A web script like Gallery makes it fairly easy, and many web hosts even have automated installs for things like that.

 

[MICKEY88]

I just bought my 2 domains in the past few weeks, I haven't even chosen a place to host them yet, in order to put them to use quickly and have a place to direct people, I did the redirect, once I have time I will choose a host, then set up my site and migrate my pictures...

 

[Alacrity]

I've been just jalbum (available at jalbum.net). It's free but requires java. It also offers a number of filters built in and bunches of skins available.
The jalbum site links to some example if you are intrested in taking a look!

 

[Groucho]

I just bought another domain name myself and have yet to settle on a host. I'm probably going to go with webhostingbuzz - they seem competent, have good reviews, and are incredibly cheap. My current site runs through my cable modem connection and the server's in my basement, which is fun but I have very limited upstream speed so I don't generally direct many people to the site, just to keep it from maxing out the bandwidth.

But picture hosting is one of the big reasons I'm going to a second site. I have about 1,000 pictures online and need somewhere that'll give me the space and bandwidth to store a lot more, plus some videos and such. I've run Gallery (after playing with countless similar scripts) on my site for a while now - it's an old version but I'm looking forward to putting the new one up on the new site.

 

[MICKEY88]

I already have 15,524 pictures...26.03 GB on my fotki site..

so far I haven't found a host that I can afford with that volume of pictures...LOL

I might just choose a host and continue to redirect to my fotki site I have unlimited storage there, the albums are decent and I can set it up to sell my pics if I want..

 

[Groucho]

Mickey88, have you lookat at bluehost? I was going to go with webhostingbuzz but started to find some crummy reviews. Bluehost seems to be pretty highly rated and has very high limits - 50 gigs of storage and 999 gigs of bandwidth for $7/month (24-month) or $8/month (12-month). I just signed up for the 12-month plan. (Anything shorter incurs a $30 setup fee, and the 12/24 ones include a free domain for life - so I got another one for the wife. )

I was pretty suspicious based on the massive amount of storage and bandwidth but most people seem quite happy. Hopefully I will be....! After several years of running my own server for free (well, nothing past the cost of my cable ISP), it seems weird to pay someone else to host a site for me.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

You might try smugmug.com.

 

[AZ JazzyJ]

I have been using JAlbum to create my photo albums. It allows you to "skin" it to match whatever look you want. I started by creating a basic look (example here) so it kind of blends with my personal site. When I get more time (after the World Series) I may go back and create a skin that matches my site better. As for hosting, I have been using IX Web Hosting. The plan I got gives me unlimited storage (I think they should look into that since I am using a ton of space but so far they have not said anything). Their uptime has been very good and their technical support has been helpful as I added things like Movable Type for my photo blog and Joomla! for content management. They didn't support either but were willing to help as I got things working. Their prices seemed reasonable at the time but I haven't looked for a while to see if they are still competitive.

Jeff

 

[barrie]

I just signed on with bluehost too. I especially like that you can host many sites under the same account. So far, no problems and they were very helpful with questions that I had.

For online albums I use phanfare and am pretty happy with it. I like that it doesn't have ads and it looks nice - and has unlimited storage. It doesn't have the ability to let people leave comments though. I wish it did. Barrie

 

[tiger95]

I use a piece of freeware called Coppermine it is very similar to the Gallery program mentioned above. I use 1and1 as my webhost, and Coppermine seemed to perform a little better than Gallery on 1and1. It is very flexible, allows people to rate a picture or leave comments.

 

[donaldduck1967]

I use coppermine for my photo albums and powweb as my host. Coppermine runs fine on powweb. I was going to use bluehost but then found their forum and there are way to many people complaining about too many issues so i went to powweb instead.

 

[Groucho]

I was looking at the different gallery programs the other day (I'm not married to Gallery, and while I think it was the best at the time, I'm still using the 1.x branch and there's some things I don't like that are PROBABLY fixed in the 2.x branch), but Coppermine's site was down at the time. It looks like it's back up now, so I'll take a look at that one.

Fantastico does make it ridiculously easy to install scripts... I put Wordpress and Gallery 2 on my wife's site in seconds. Very slick. But I don't mind getting in there and doing the work myself, so I'll have to check out more than just the three that Fantastico supports.

 

[Groucho]

I just bought my 2 domains in the past few weeks, I haven't even chosen a place to host them yet, in order to put them to use quickly and have a place to direct people, I did the redirect, once I have time I will choose a host, then set up my site and migrate my pictures...

Just a warning... I didn't realize this, but ICANN puts a 60-day restriction on the moving of new domains from one host to another. I registered my site through one place and when I went to transfer it to BlueHost, I found out that I have to wait almost two months before I can do that!

Fortunately, I can set the DNS with the current registrar to point to the Bluehost DNS servers and set it as an "add-on" domain, which works but it's not quite ideal. So I'm doing that temporarily then will do a proper move once the 60 days have passed.

FWIW, so far BlueHost has been good in the support department, although the servers seem a tad pokey - but it's hard to complain too loudly with the amount of storage and bandwidth they give you for not much money.

 

[AZ JazzyJ]

I've never heard of ICANN putting a hold on a domain transfer. I've bought 6 in the past 3 weeks and moved them to different registars without any problems.

Jeff

 

[Groucho]

Both BlueHost and the current registratar (MyDomain AKA NamesDirect) state that it's an ICANN restriction and that there's nothing they can do about it. Doing a Google search for domain 60 days gets a ton of similar statements from all sorts of web hosts.

Here is the official ICANN page. Specifically "The Registrar of Record may deny a transfer request only in the following specific instances: ...8. A domain name is in the first 60 days of an initial registration period."

 

[AZ JazzyJ]

Thanks for the information. I guess the key word from ICANN was "may" and I just happened to find a combination that didn't. I'll have to watch this more closely in the future though.

Jeff

 

[Groucho]

Yup - and unfortunately I didn't.

The server they put me on seemed really slow today - but it does sound like they're actively trying to fix their issues and long-term users seem confident that they're serious... but I don't think that switching hosts would help me in the domain name move. I do have it working OK as an add-on, but have run into a couple other oddball snags, which I don't think are the host's fault. (Trying to integrate two scripts.)