webserver woes...

[Paddy]

I want to set up a web server to host some pics for my family to download. I have a static IP.

I have played with IIS but found it terribly confusing!

Can anyone recommend a monkey proof webserver for XP?


TIA!

Paddy.

[KeiFront]

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html should be easy to setup never tried it myself though. But still no webserver is monkey proof imho.

[Paddy]

Cheers! That looks ideal!

I will look into it now

[Jammrock]

Apache
MySQL
PHP
e107

Apache does the web serving. MySQL does the databasing. PHP does the fun dynamic stuff. e107 does the content stuff (the best CMS in PHP I've seen thus far).

I have a test setup at work that uses this and it's easy to setup. I would recommend using PHP 4 and MySQL 4.0.22, as the newest versions make some minor changes that can cause some issues. You can also get phpMyAdmin to help with DB stuff.

Jammrock

[Duty]

Originally posted by Jammrock
Apache
MySQL
PHP
e107

He found IIS Confusing and you are recommending Apache? Come on have a heart....

Paddy what version of XP are you using?

Jeff

[Paddy]

SP2 Pro.

I've managed to configure Apache with PHP and My SQL. I've also installed a FTP server.

Cheers for the help guys!

Now for plan two:
I need to rename several thousand photos, resize and create thumbs. I then need to make some sort of web page that will display them.

As there are so many, I'm interesed in automating this process as much as possible... any thoughts?

[schmosef]

http://www.ngallery.org/

but you'd have to go back to IIS! Come over to the dark side...

I think Sasq had a recommendation for something in the PHP space. I don't remember what it was. Someone else will.

[schmosef]

As far as manually making thumbnails in batch... I really like Easy Thumbnails: http://www.fookes.com/products.php.

It free. And they have a shareware app for making entire albums.

There's lots of choices for automated gallery management. I mentioned nGallery because most of the people here would recommend something PHP based.

[Mcollector]

No IIS. Too prone to hacker attack.

[schmosef]

Oi vey!

[Jammrock]

Originally posted by Duty
He found IIS Confusing and you are recommending Apache? Come on have a heart....

Yes, but if he couldn't get PHP and Apache working happily, I could always help since I've done it before. Plus, getting a premade CMS working on IIS is a bitch.

If you do decide to go the e107 CMS route, there are several photo gallery modules at www.e107coders.org (need to register with the site before you can get to the downloads page). There are about 10 unique photo gallery modules you can play with.

Jammrock

[spadnos]

Originally posted by Paddy
SP2 Pro.

I've managed to configure Apache with PHP and My SQL. I've also installed a FTP server.

Cheers for the help guys!

Now for plan two:
I need to rename several thousand photos, resize and create thumbs. I then need to make some sort of web page that will display them.

As there are so many, I'm interesed in automating this process as much as possible... any thoughts?

ImageMagick is your friend. It doesn't have a graphical interface, but it's really easy to do batch operations (and multiple operations on a batch, like rotate, resize, add a border, add watermarks, etc).

I have a short batch file that I wrote for my wife that takes images in 3 subdirectories - you sort images manually based on whether they're rotated left, roght, or upright - and makes 3 sizes of output, with the two larger sizes having a beveled edge (dim/bright sides, like 3d buttons in Windows).

If you get ImageMagick, let me know and I can email or paste in the batch file.

- Steve

[Paddy]

cool!

I'd rather stick with apache now that it is working.... I don't mind having the thumbs stored locally, but i would like them to link to a full sized pic via ftp (which I now have working).

The automated batch rename and resize should be easy enough to do, but I am not sure how to create onlie 'albums' without to much effort. Cheers for the links guys, I'll have a play and come back.

I need my IPS to update the 'A' records for my site as for now youcan only browse by IP...

[Paddy]

right... i've been giving this a lot of thought....

I'd like to create something along the lines of the following:
A fairly typical site with a banner at the top which will have the site logo along with major navigational tabs.

A pane/frame/layer on the left which will show thumbnails of the photos in any given section. The main body of the page will show a 640x480ish picture along with the option for people to download the full high res pic (via ftp) and also to leave comments - attached to that specific picture.

If i get the time, it would also be nice to play with My SQL. I should be able to knock up a database with keywords attached to the photos, allowing them to be cross-referenced and therefore searchable...

I am not really sure how to proceed - the database is certainly last on the agenda.

I am really out of touch with web design, but I have fired up Dreamweaver MX and it seems fairly intuitive.

What should I avoid. Frames = bad????

Any advice would be great!

To start with, I am giving the photos a unique file name, creating thumbnails, and resized 'full screen pics'.

[Paddy]

Right... rather than reinvent the wheel, I'm using a program called 'Coppermine' It works with MySQL and it's great.

The only problem is that I have no idea how secure any of this is... I'm not too bothered as I have duplicates of the data, but it is still running on my machine.

Anyone got any tips on securing it?

If anyone feels like "testing" the security, then PM me and i'll give you the IP.

So I have 130images up there at the moment - all cross referenced I'll do a couple of hundred a day

It would be nice to add in a message board feature... nothing as complex as vbb just a single fourum would be nice - especially as coppermine has a log on function...

Any thoughts?