Topic: Self hosted photoblog replacement for Pixelpost.

[Mike (happyforest)]

I have for sometime self hosted a photoblog, using Pixelpost. Unfortunately, it has not been maintained for sometime and a recent upgrade to php7.0 on my home server has now finally broken Pixelpost.

I generally use this to share photo's with family & friends as I don't like the idea of letting Flickr/Facebook etc getting their hands on them. Call me paranoid or what.

Yes, I could revert back to php5.x and get this working again but thought I might as well try and use some updated package.

Pixelpost was easy to install, simple to use and didn't go over the top with unnecessary features. Addins/plugins were available that could extend the features if so desired, and I am looking to see if there is something like this out there.

I have tried Wordpress, but it seems to have lots of functionality, that I at this stage don't require. Lots of themes but I can't quite get my head round how these work to be able to get the look I want.  Simple/clean/bright/uncluttered.

I came across a package called, koken, which I have managed to get a look I like and is simple to customise. Yes again lots of functionality which I don't require at this stage, but I could live with. However, when you install it seems to phone home and log the installation, so as I was trying to set it up, I have multiple installations logged with them, as it was easier to wipe/reinstall when things went wrong.  Part of the reason for this was that I am unable to remove an image, once it has been added to the system.  It does appear that others have the same issue with the inability to delete, but there doesn't appear to be a fix for this.  One suggested fix is to use chrome browser, but I do not want to install this on my system, just to be able to manage this package, and it doesn't seem to consistently fix the issue.

This is a bit of a nit pick, but Pixelpost stored all the images in a single directory, koken seems to store each image in it's own directory which seems a bit overkill to me.

So, has anybody got any suggestions on something that might meet my needs?

Thanks in advance.

Mike

[jojonas~]

sorry, no tips but thanks for the koken review. I started playing with that and saved the package for a rainy day in case I wanted to build some kind of website for my photos.

[Late Developer]

Mike,

I'm not sure this will help but I punt this out there anyway.

I've used Flickr and Tumblr and, if I'm honest, I'm not a big fan of either - partly because your stuff is just flung into a huge pool of other folk's stuff and I've felt it's a bit of a grind to update, add to groups, comment on other stuff and, unless I'm mistaken, there seems to be an increasing amount of weird / unsavoury characters trolling on Tumblr, of late.

Anyway, I was looking to build my own website.  I know so little about programming that self-hosting wasn't even on my radar and, if it had been, I wouldn't have had a scoobie-doo where to start.  After a bit of research, I stumbled across Squarespace.  I eventually went for a middling package which allowed me pretty-well unlimited capacity and I bought my own domain name.  It's so easy to upload and manage, even I can do it.  there are also loads of free / customisable templates.

If you're interested enough to have a look, it's at:

www.pauljenkin.com

You can use as a website or just a blog, etc and (from what I remember) the basic package is free.

Like I said, I'm not sure if that might be of any interest (and I can definitely confirm I have no reason to push Squarespace other than I really like it).

[Francois]

Have you taken a look at the OpenCMS site
http://www.opensourcecms.com/scripts/show.php?catid=7&category=Image%20Galleries

They have a list of all the open source projects with ratings. But best of all is you get to try them out before you commit to an install.

[Mike (happyforest)]

Jonas,  Glad you found the rant useful.  Maybe I'm being too pedantic about koken.

Paul, Thank you, I'll consider anything if it works\gives me what I want.  I'll look into it.

Francois, I've not come across this particular site, but I have seen some of the systems it has listed. More work to assess what they can do.

Since posting yesterday, I have been assessing Processwire. It list a nuumber of active photography web sites built using it, which look really good.  It is fairly easy to create something with this, however, the modifications required to achieve what I want are outside my capabilities for now.

For now the hunt continues.

Thank you

Mike