[mikemike]

Does anyone know of any OSS to create a quick and dirty image gallery website?

I use Opera Unite's photo share but the site renders messed up in some versions of IE due to IE's proprietary css implementation. I also don't like leaving my computer running 24/7 to have opera on and I don't think the preview pictures it does are very nice, so I was hoping there was something standalone that does something similar and hopefully better.

If you aren't familiar with Opera Unite's photo share app, you start it up and point it at a directory then it gives you a dynamic dns address that you can share with other people. The site it creates is just a password protected image browser that generates thumbnails and preview size images as well as allowing the users to download the full size pictures.

There is also an app for a video streamer.

Basically it is like a flikr or youtube except no actively uploading files and no third party site having control over your content. Its great if you have a ton of photos that you want to share with only a handful of people like pictures of a baby that you want to share with out of town relatives.

So does anyone know a standalone server that does this?

Thanks in advance.

[Yonnie]

Mike, I don't know of any server application, however, I do like Smugmug. No need for your relatives to sign up to view. No advertisement surrounding your images and NO SPAM. LOL You can create private, unpublished galleries that can be password protected individually or you can create a family password that allows the grandparents and select others to view everything you upload of the little angel(s).

Also, there's none of that "your images belong to us {insert name of service} because you've uploaded to our servers" nonsense.

[mikemike]

I do like Smugmug

Running it from home is a really big motivation for me because I am extremely lazy to upload pictures that might or might not get looked at more than once or twice. Video thing is also a necessity.

I just changed computers last night which is why I was thinking about it, I shared 5 GB of pictures in under 2 minutes

I am a bit paranoid even though no one cares about my pictures but once you put your pictures on someone else's cloud, it is out there forever. Smugmug might not have a license to use it but even if you delete it, they might still keep a copy either on their system or on a tape backup. There are groups that crawl sites like flikr and other photosharing sites grabbing everything they can reach and caching it. I am a bit of a privacy freak but I like being able to control hosting of this stuff and keep an eye on my logs for any unauthorized usage.

Home hosting also suits my work flow which is to
-take pictures and download them at the end of the day,
-look through those pictures and delete anything that is OOF or just plain bad and share these pictures,
-wait a few weeks or months (I currently have a 3 month backlog on this step) until I have a few hours of free time and go through hundreds of pictures to archive (unsharing) any duplicate shots of the same look,
-wait a few more months until I have a HUGE chunk of free time to PP anything that is really nice and get it printed.

For videos I just handbrake a copy w/o audio and share it until I have a time to look through and see if it needs any editing

This allows me to share from day 1 so I don't have people hounding me to email new pictures and videos. It also lets them download an original if they want to print it without me needing to do any work.

In sum- I am busy, lazy, and paranoid

[Yonnie]

I understand. I, too, am a privacy nut and a control freak. You also have the option to ensure that your images aren't searched, tagged or crawled. Mine aren't. You can upload video clips there, too.

Good luck on the hunt and let us know if you find a satisfactory solution. Cheers!

[Lowell Goudge]

What about setting up an FTP site?