Topic: photo blogging

[Stu]

Argh! Just as I had some regulars appearing each day, by blog has gone all pants!
It won't let me post anything new, quoting a code error and admin aren't replying, so...

...I'm after a new photoblog, preferably free, totally manageable online (simple upload stuff) in a similar style to my existing one; http://daily35.photoposts.org

Any ideas? Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I would like to be able to redirect the blog to a URL I have bought but that's not a must.

Cheers in advance clever folk.

[Diane Peterson]

I use the free one that is based out of google..this is the link to mine..gets you an idea..seems to be able to do a lot more sophisticated stuff that I do..when you want to take the time..
http://fragmentsofmyreality@blogspot.com

[Francois]

If you have a website, you might want to go the Thingamablog engine route. It's a small piece of software you keep on your computer that generates static HTML pages. So no more database or CGI problems (and no more dealing with admins...  )

Actually it is quite nice... and it's free and open source (even better in my book)

[roryot]

I moved to wordpress from google blogger - works great, and more options than google -

http://corkap.wordpress.com

[Stu]

Thank you all. I am looking into all of these.

[hookstrapped]

tumblr blogs are super easy to set up

http://blackwhiteblur.tumblr.com/

[Brian Scott Peterson]

Wordpress takes some getting used to but once you get the hang of it, it looks better than most of the other stuff, i.e. blogspot, tumbler etc., but unless you really dial it in, its tough to get it to look like what you have/had...but close, more textish oriented. Plus all kinds of add ons/plug-ins. Not BS that clutters your page, but more backendy sorta stuff that gets your site out there or maybe cross posts stuff get comments coming, etc. If you haven't already chosen something, I can maybe walk you through some of it. The control panel is really a cinch once you figure it out. Skype me anytime at "zuberphonic" and check out zokyo.jp just to get a sense of what I am doing with it....

[Diane Peterson]

Hey Brian..just took a look at your website..nice stuff! thanks for sharing!

[gregor]

hmmmm, not really sure what the benefit of a photo blog is in comparison to photo sharing sites such as flickr, my.expressions, fotologue, etc.  Sure, with a blog you have certain, limited, controls over layout, but with much less visits and feedback than the photo sharing sites (although most of the feedback on major photo sharing sites is fairly trivial -- with exceptions depending on followers, friend and contacts).

Ultimately a dedicated website of your work is the best option if your goal is an online portfolio presentation.

If you want to wax philosophical about photography, a blog is definitely the route to go...... If it's posting images only other options seem better.

A technological consideration is many blogs use Flash. Many mobile devices like the ever popular iPhone do not support Flash..... 

(BTW - for my 'web host I have a .mac account and bought domain names to point to different folders on that mac server as I'm running three websites with different domain names off that same .mac account.)

[Hannah]

I use Wordpress

http://www.hannahrichards.net/blog

It's great because you can customize pretty much everything

[Photo_Utopia]

I use the Google Blogger, I find it pretty easy to use not the most stylish looking but I doubt I'll change now as I've over 100 posts and moving it all would be a nightmare.
http://photo-utopia.blogspot.com/

[Ed Wenn]

I'm with Gregor to some extent about the value of a photo blog, but I guess that's just me and where my head is at the moment. I've had a photoblog for 5 years now and it's the one site in my online empire which I increasingly find I lack the time or motivation to update. However, that's a personal thing and if I didn't have 5 years of archives stuck in it I may have moved to somewhere new some time ago and with that move may have come renewed enthusiasm.

For me, at my stage in life (busy job, busy family, max 2 hours per week to dedicate to online photo activities) I honestly don't think you can find a simpler, faster, easier host for your photo (or any other) blog than Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com). I've been using Tumblr for a couple of years now as a personal blog (http://edwenn.tumblr.com) and I post photos to it every so often. I also pull them in from Fickle and from the Filmwasters blog (which also runs on Tumblr, but which is really just a feed aggregator and not strictly speaking a photoblog). There are some pretty decent design template out there to turn your Tumblr page into a photo blog, but last I looked Tumblr weren't allowing comments. For some this is a major drawback. Other people I know for a fact actually enjoy the fact that comments aren't available. It's usually the deciding factor when people choose for or against Tumblr. In every other way it's ideal though, so take a look at that.

Regarding Wordpress; I'm a huge fan of Wordpress and use it for my music website (http://edwenn.com) and also my new, still being built photo gallery site (http://edwenn.com/photos). You can sign up with their hosted solution at http://wordpress.com/ or if you already have a web host you could install the Wordpress blogging software in your site and take it from there. All you need to do is choose a theme and get rolling:

http://www.teknobites.com/2007/08/30/photoblog-themes-for-wordpress/ Some Wordpress photoblog theme examples

http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/7-wordpress-photoblog-themes/ More Wordpress photoblog themes

http://tinyurl.com/npyora Google search result for Wordpress photoblog themes

Wordpress is probably the most complete solution from the perspective that you can customize every aspect of the way it looks and indeed how you as admin want to use it, BUT it can take over your life if you're an obsessive and unless you find a theme that you like 100% of you may need to know some basic CSS/HTML to tweak the bits you want to change (to be fair this last point applies to Tumblr themes as well).

Finally as some people here have suggested you could use Blogger or Blogspot or whatever it's called. Easy to use and set up, but to my mind they all look the same & while some of the photoblogs I visit the most use Blogger, I'd never set one up on that service myself.

[Francois]

Wordpress is pretty awesome I must admit. But I still like the design of the Thingamablog software. The cool thing about it is that you can change providers without any worry about having to rebuild everything (since the original of "everything" is kept on your personal HDD). Very easy to customize using HTML code. Supports custom tags. Creates RSS updates. Supports CSS. Makes static pages which can't be hacked in any way (very secure). Needs only an FTP upload link (has built-in FTP engine). Also has an RSS aggregator so you can read your favorite feeds and instantly write about them. Can also get comments through email and instantly add them to the page (uses a separate comment engine to get the comments).

Very nice.

[Stu]

You lot are helpful. Thanks loads for all suggestions.
I had a real good dig around and it al came back to tumblr. Uber uber simple. It has all I need, no more no less.
I have go 100 of my archive on there, now I just have to set about getting people actually looking at it.

So frustrating that just when i was getting a tastey number of hit, my old one went down!

Here it is so far anyway:
http://daily35.com

I hope to add to it daily again once I have all my old stuff on there.

[Ed Wenn]

Great news, Stu. I noticed from Twitter that you were back to posting daily snaps, so I'm pleased it's worked out for you.

Francois, I like the sound of Thingamablog & will go take a look.

[Francois]

When I tried Thingamablog, I was impressed. I tried it using my home Linux server (OK, you can call me a geek right about now  ) which is used mainly as a print server for now even though it has both an HTTP, FTP, SSH and LPR daemons.

I did find only one "glitch" with it (if we can call it really a glitch): it doesn't put an home.htm or index.htm containing a redirect string inside the media folder by default. This  enables anybody to rip every image in that folder... but it's so easy to fix by adding a file containing:
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://your.web.address/blog.html">

There are a few visual bugs in the interface too. But you have to be really picky for it to really annoy you.

Going slightly off topic, if you're looking for the ultimate distribution for making a small server from scrap parts, I recommend (and use) FreeSCO . It is miniature (fits on a single floppy disk with space to spare), very fast (I run it on an old 486 DX100 with 32mb ram), has a nice package system, can be moved to the hard disk for added reliability, doesn't need a monitor for the install (I do everything using SSH)... it just kicks