Personal web gallery

Hello, I am thinking of creating a private web gallery for my family pictures (I don’t like uploading personal info to the web) but I am not sure which solution would be easy to setup and use for anyone with no Web programming skills or experience. So far I came across the following platforms (see the list at the end of the post). Ideally I would like to be able to view pictures and videos, read (search) and write metadata. But if that’s too complicated to setup I would be happy with just viewing jpg, avi, mov and mp4.

Please let me know if you have ever done anything like this and what would be the best starting point for me.

*fgallery
https://www.thregr.org/~wavexx/software/fgallery/

*Resource Space
http://www.resourcespace.com/features?section=admin

*Zen photo

*Media goblin
http://www.mediagoblin.org/

This might also depend on what resources you’ll have and how you want to manage them (server side scripting, webserver, etc). These are the ones listed on the software page:

fgallery
coppermine gallery
Gallery no longer supported
ResourceSpace
Pannellum

I should totally add mediagoblin to the list, though. It looked like a good option for private media hosting.

fgallery has the nice approach of generating a static site for you (but no metadata search? I haven’t played with it enough to know for sure).

Mediagoblin has a few dependencies:

  • Python 2.7 or Python 3.4+
  • python-lxml
  • git
  • SQLite/PostgreSQL
  • Python Imaging Library (PIL)
  • virtualenv
  • nodejs
1 Like

I’ve used ZenPhoto in the past and enjoyed it.

I would like to run it of Raspberry Pi 3 if that is possible but I could do that on my desktop too if more powerful hardware required. Fgallery looks great but I don’t think it allows users to do any search. Dependencies should be no problem as long as they are available for my hardware and don’t cost too much.

Ideally I would like to sync my Pictures folder to a webpage. Search function is pretty essential. Ability to write metadata is a “nice to have”.

You’re likely looking at a script to make an api call to upload the photos.

I’m pretty sure there are a few modules that can turn a Raspberry Pi into a media server. There are also modules that can turn a small WiFi router into a streaming media server.

Google is your friend.

Robert

@rht you probably talking about DLNA. Well, it might be an option. I forgot about it. However, it won’t allow any writing only reading.Thanks for the tip anyways!

Since you were referring to the Pi I assumed that you would be uploading to the removable drive that contains your gallery images. There are plenty of ways that you can write to a Pi thumb drive.

Robert

If you just want to serve images on your LAN, dlna will work fine, but it isn’t good security to run it on the internet.

I’m working on an rsync script that’ll sync my pictures to all my kodi boxes, then use them as screensavers.

1 Like

Not sure if you are still looking or if you have found a solution. I have been searching for something very similar - at the end of the year (2016/12/30), a relative asked me about setting up a web space where family members from across the globe could upload family photos and videos to a private gallery/file sharing system. The site would need to be private and easy to use for all family members.

I have looked at a variety of solutions mentioned and an have an existing photo gallery, based on coppermine, that I began in 2006. My first thoughts were to utilize coppermine but it is somewhat dated and I wanted to search out other options. I tried Zenphoto. It is a nice program but, after spending a few days with it, I couldn’t get it to do what I want - user error or inability! :disappointed:

I found a gallery program called Piwigo that was often compared with Zenphoto and others during my Google searches. Piwigo (piwigo.org) can be run locally, on a self-hosted server, or you can join their “fully hosted, hassle free, ready to use, backed up and scalable photo website. Based on Piwigo, open source software created in 2002” (at piwigo.com).

I have opted for the self-hosted option as my current webhost has it as one of the options in their gallery software installations. I have been able to set up the software, make the site private by requiring registration and restricting albums and comments to those registrants. It is also setup to require administrator authorization of the registrants, after which a user album is automatically created for the user to upload images. There are a variety of plugins that are used to expand the flexibility and capabilities of the program, including the ability to “play videos, read (search) and write metadata”. While I have not used any web programming skills, the options available through the plugins can be confusing and it has taken time to get to this point. However, I am still working on integrating everything and understanding the program’s capabilities.

1 Like

@dazedandconfused thanks for the heads up.
Could be just what I’ve been looking for :grinning:
Will report back.

Thanks.

I would go for mediagoblin or a wordpress installation with some gallery plugins.

1 Like

I have used Piwigo for some years now … quite satisfactory in most respects. Recommended.

I’d definitely second Piwigo. It’s very easy to setup and the permission settings make it easy to share images, only with the user groups you wish to. My company uses it as a lightbox for our clients. It boasts an amazing collection of extensions that users have developed over the years.

Hi Everybody, I’m searching for the ideal self hosted photo gallery software, what do You suggest in 2018?
It would be a private photo gallery for my family so the layout is not so important, but I need user management. Very important is to be easily handable for my elderly parents, who will tag the old family photos, digital and scanned too. We have many, my great-grandfather and more relatives were photographer, more thousand picture. We want search bye place, person names, nothing special. I have a new HP microserver with Clearos, it is a Centos/Rhel based stuff, I’m searching for a long term supported upgradeable solution for this task. What do You think?

Piwigo looks very nice, as does GNU Media Goblin. GNU Media Goblin has been around forever, so I wouldn’t worry about it going away.

I’m using Piwigo for family images. It has usermanagement features with groups. (Upload is done via nextcloud and I’ve symlinked the image folder.)

Metadata are not written to the images by default. If you want a future prove solution you should have an eye on this. I made a mistake in my setup on the transion from owncloud to nextcloud and lost image ratings, which were only saved in the database.

Here I have some doubts. I just tried to tag online, but it doesn’t feel bulled proof.