replacement for photobucket?

greengiant · 27 Oct 2007 at 19:36

Hi guys, I could do with some help regarding a replacement for my photobucket photography page as I feel I could do with something a bit more professional looking.

Could someone talk me through the ins and outs of making a photo website? Which host to go for and what's needed to register a domain name etc.

I don't know much about HTML programming so I'll probably end up using something like bluefish web editor on my ubuntu box. Running linux means I'd need a host which used plain simple ftp to upload rather than windows software.

I understand this has probably been asked a fair few times, but all help and information will be appreciated!

Wasn't sure whether to post this in html forum or the photography forum, mods please move if in wrong place!

Thanks in advance

--
Brian

Shoseki · 28 Oct 2007 at 22:24

Step one : register a domain. You'll have to find a good place, I use ukreg, I'm sure there are cheaper out there, I am just lazy and like to keep them all together.

Step two : get hosting. You'll want to check this carefully, as the type of hosting that you go for will massively change how your website will operate : linux or windows server, scripting capability, database capability, all determined by hosting. How much bandwidth do you get per month? That sort of thing.

Step 3: Install or setup software. Whatever it is, you'll be using software to put images onto some kind of database for access. You may be able to ftp to your host to put the images there in the first place, and use gd or your own software to produce thumbnails. I would google for image databasing on apache.

4) FTP all your images to the ftp server. I'd highly recommend you at least put an .htaccess into the directory to stop people randomly linking to your images.

5) Point your domain to your hosting.

Voila! The main 2 steps, the hosting and software, will require further thought. As I have no experience of setting up an image database, I can't really advise you, but my personal preferences are towards apache / php / mysql, and maybe joomla with a photo plugin or something.

Disclaimer : I cannot be held accountable for anything said above. Please do further reading and make your own decisions accordingly.

RobH · 29 Oct 2007 at 13:20

UKreg is a good registrar, never had any problems with them and it's very easy to update the nameservers (for free) unlike some UK registrar's which it an absolute nightmare and some don't even let you do it or they charge you or they just provide a silly redirect.

greengiant · 29 Oct 2007 at 15:50

I assume I'd need a linux server as I use linux?

Thanks for the info, I think I need to do some more reading to understand what is meant by php / mysql / databases and how they relate to making a photo gallery website.

Shoseki · 29 Oct 2007 at 16:07

greengiant said:
I assume I'd need a linux server as I use linux?

Thanks for the info, I think I need to do some more reading to understand what is meant by php / mysql / databases and how they relate to making a photo gallery website.

Well, php is a server side scripting language that you can use to produce a website, a mysql database is somewhere to store data so that you can perform queries later. Although you could just store everything in files, a more efficient technique is to store the images on your server, and then put links to them into a database along with any tags/metadata and then use php/SQL to do a lookup into the database and pull out which image you want, and potentially run it through gd first.

I have a small private project I am working on at the moment that uses an image database, and that is how I am intending on setting it up, but then I am programming it all by hand, you might want to offload some of it if you want to simplify the process.

greengiant · 31 Oct 2007 at 20:43

Thanks for all the replies. However I really do not understand php / mysql at all. I'd really need some sort of program where I can load up my images, then tell it to go make a gallery, just like what photobucket does :confused:

-- edit -- Got a host organised with tsohost, domain name registered, and managed to get gallery2 installed on the webhost.

Now to go through my photos giving them a consistent look, then start getting my website together!

Thanks again for all the replies.