Hi Everyone!

Here is my situation. My family is really into digital photos. My mother has a hard drive packed full of photos, and as our family grows and spreads accross the country, we are looking for a way to better share and compile our photos.

I assumed that in order to accomplish this i would have to create a database of photos, setup a webserver for the database, and create a webpage where people can access, the database, upload and download photos from it.

I could be completely wrong here.

So here are some of my questions:

I took a class on MS Access, can that be used or would i be better off teaching myself MySQL?

Can i use apache (which i know nothing about) to host my own database? What options do i have here

I am a quick learner and i know some html already, i am willing to learn about whatever i need to know, if someone could just point me in the right direction.

Thanks for your time.

You can set up nice albums of your photos at PhotoBucket.com, WebShots.com or use JAlbum.net and upload the customized albums JAlbum makes to their server. All free.

I like WebShots and JAlbum. JAlbum has a lot of free skins to customize your albums. Some have options to make slideshows. WebShots allows you to email the link to family albums in case you decide to set them to Private. Haven't checked, but the others may have similar setups.

No need to get your own hosting service unless you just want one. Then you need to install Gallery or some similar database for your albums.

Ron

Thanks.

I thought about just creating a family website, and providing a link to an online album like the ones you suggest.

My next question would then be:

Can those albums be password protected?

Is there a storage limit? We are talking about at least a few gigs, probably way more.


Thanks

On those sites I mentioned, you have a login for uploading your images/albums. If you set an album to private, then no one can see those online except you and those of your family that you send the album link to. For instance, WebShots, you have a private family album (which I do), if you send the link in an email to the album to someone, they will be able to view the album without knowing your PW as you sent the private link. As for JAlbum, not sure as I haven't used them much yet. They probably operate the same so as not to have you give out your PW for private albums/images.

Since they are all free, unless you want Pro versions, I would sign up and try it. The account can always be deleted.

Ron