Online photo albums

[Inky Pete]

I'm after an internet photo sharing site to host my wedding pictures, but having looked at Picassa, Photobucket and Flickr none of them seem to do exactly what I'm wanting to do.

What I'd like is to be able to set up a private album online and send all our wedding guests - and those who weren't able be there - a means of accessing it. No problem so far, but then I want our guests to be able to add to the album by uploading their own photos or video, and possibly even commenting on others.

I can't currently find the ability to do this short of sending everyone the full username and password to a Flickr or Photobucket account, and have everyone pretend that they're really me.

Any ideas?

[Inky Pete]

Not something I have looked for before, but what about this-


http://www.theweddinglens.com/

[thescruff]

Perhaps Chez could make a forum that only you can access.

[Inky Pete]

Not something I have looked for before, but what about this-


http://www.theweddinglens.com/

Something like that would be great - but something free would be better!

I'll have a proper Google over the next few days now we're back from honeymoon and I'm not just on the netbook with an iffy 3G signal.

[wine~o]

Not something I have looked for before, but what about this-


http://www.theweddinglens.com/

Something like that would be great - but something free would be better!

I'll have a proper Google over the next few days now we're back from honeymoon and I'm not just on the netbook with an iffy 3G signal.

If I took a lappy and a dongle (Technical term) on my honeymoon I'd rightly expect a divorce before the weeek was out......

[Inky Pete]

Mrs. Inky can't live without Facebook, so I get away with it.

[thescruff]

how about this Pete.

https://www.google.com/accounts/Service ... ssive=true

[Inky Pete]

I had a look at Picassa Scruff, and could put all the photos we have in one of their albums so everyone could see them. The one thing it won't do, however, is allow other people to add their own photos, videos or comments to our album.

Flickr and Photobucket are the same, they all bang on about photo-sharing - but the sharing only works one way.

[thescruff]

They could if you set it up, so they all had the same user name and password.

Downside of that is, you would need to keep a backup in case someone messed up.

[Geewizz]

You need to look at this from another angle.
1. You need restricted access to view photos.
2. You want restricted access to upload photos to the collection.
3. You want restricted access to comment on photos.

You want a two tier system so that one tier can have unrestricted access to amend the collection and one tier can have restricted access to add photos and comment.

Both tiers will be password protected but with different passwords for each user.
I think your best bet is to set up a forum. This would allow you to restrict who gains access to the photos but will allow each authorised user to access the photos and to upload their own (or hotlink to their previously uploaded photos.)
There are plenty of sites on the net offering free forum hosting. It looks like your cheapest and most comprehensive option.

[Inky Pete]

Think you might be right Geewizz, I'm now toying with having a word with a mate of mine who's written websites before and see what he could knock up.

I'm thinking about a nice website with a password box and an Enter button on the home page which then gives access to a number of Galleries catagorised into "Getting Ready", "Church", "Drinks Reception", "Meal", "Evening" etc. Then I'd like the ability for anyone (and it will only be those with the password who can even get this far) to comment on any photo which is up there, and an uploader so that people could upload their own photos and videos into the relevent Galleries.

May be worth thinking about a couple of levels of access though, so that we also have the ability to give out "viewing only" privileges.

Will let you know what we manage to sort out.

-- Sun Sep 12, 2010 2:42 pm --

Right, I've sorted phase 1 of the website project.

I really want to write my own website to do it, but the more I looked into it the more I realised that I didn't know. I spent quite some time playing with this site - http://www.joomla.org/ - and I'm sure that it could produce exactly what I'm looking for, but I just got lost in the technical jargon.

So what I've done in the end is to set up a paid for account ($20 a year) with these guys - http://www.myphotoalbum.com/ - which gave me the ability to set up ad-free private albums and sub-albums, and to set up individual user ID's with different access levels. It also gave me a unique URL direct to my albums and allows users with the right access level to add their own pictures and comments. Not all of the photos and videos are up there yet, but we're getting there.

I also bought a couple of .co.uk domain names made up of mine and the Mrs. names (£7 each for 2 years) and simply re-directed them both to the URL of my photo albums.

Phase 2 will consist of me doing a night school course or two over the first few months of next year to equip myself with at least the vocabulary necessary to have another bash at writing my own site.

If anyone fancies a look around at what I've done (and a nosey at my wedding pics) then just PM me and I'll set you up a username and give you the URL.

[big-all]

can you let us know how you get on

[Inky Pete]

Will do BA. You can take a look at what I've got together so far if you like, I can PM you the URL, a username and a password - I just didn't want to put them on a public forum for obvious reasons!

[tooltraderdirect]

If you share your Picasa album with others on your list, there is a box you can tick saying allow others to contribute photos. I did this with some photos of a trip to London, and shared it with my girlfriend, then we added her photos from her google account ie pooled both sets.

cheers

Adam

[Inky Pete]

Thanks, I never found that option on Picassa!