A Family Collaboration Server?

esobofh asks: "I'm interested in putting together a server for my family that would allow everyone to share & store pictures, movies and music. Whenever we have a family gathering, there are always a ton of digital cameras out and clicking away, so I'd like to have everyone share and submit the pictures and movies they've captured for everyone in the family. I am sure I could roll my own collaboration server, but I'm hoping there is something already put together and pretty. I'd like it to use standard files and directories for storing photos (as opposed to a database), that way the files can easily be moved and manipulated. Is there an application that can handle user accounts, picture submissions (file upload via browser), and other such content?"

Comments

Gallery2?

[Davus]

Gallery2 is nice, albeit a bit resource intensive when scaling down pictures to thumbnails using the 'convert' app.

Re:Gallery2?

[porkThreeWays]

I can't believe this was never modded up and didn't get more mention. Gallery2 is freakin awesome! It does _exactly_ what he needs. It'll do pics and video extremely well. The author has put A LOT of work into it. There are few web based open source projects I've seen with this level of quality. I know 4 people with home servers using it and they love it. Never had a complaint. Install it. It takes like 5 minutes and you'll see. Our local West Palm Beach radio station uses it on their site and I've spotted it on a few other commercial sites.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

So far we've gotten a recommendation for a Wiki and Gallery2. Both are poor solutions. Wikis are far too complicated to explain to most regular people who are not very technically savvy. Gallery2 is much easier to use but wouldn't qualify as a collboration server in the way the poster describes. Plus, Gallery2 has artifical upload limits preventing large home-made movies from being shared. I think the poster wants something analogous to SharePoint Services but most family oriented, cheaper, and easier to use. I, too, am interested in this.

Re:Wiki

[Pfhreakaz0id]

I tried a wiki.. and what you and I consider easy to use and the masses who aren't really into tech consider easy to use still has a big gap. They said it was too confusing.

Gallery

[forkazoo]

I use a gallery2 on my server. Check it out here : http://gallery.menalto.com/

I've been pretty pleased with it. Add in a wiki for letting other family members post miscellaneous stories and whatnot. I found it easy to setup, and it does everything I need.

phpWebsite

[linuxkrn]

I use phpWebsite on a few sites, it's got several things, nothing is "top of the line" but it all works well.

http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/

Features from website

1. Easy, web-based administration - minimal computer experience is needed to maintain site content.
2. Flexible layout control - site page layout can be changed at anytime.
3. Topic-based announcements - organize site announcements by category with automatic history rollover.
4. Interactive content - visitors can post comments, submit announcements and web links.
5. Full featured event calendar - post events by category and subcategory in a flexible cross-referenced calendar.
6. Customized user experience - themes allow each vistor to customize the web site for his or her preferences or special needs.
7. XHTML and WAI compliance - we are committed to meeting XHTML 1.0 specifications by our 1.0 release. Current errors are minimal.

Grab an old PC...

[Anonymous Coward]

Take an old PC. Stick some fair-sized hard drives in. Install FreeBSD, lighttpd, and proftpd.

Give each of your family members an account on the machine, so they can FTP in and upload pictures to their directory. They can even create their own directory hierarchies, so as to organize their photos as they wish.

Set up lighttpd to allow directory listing, and have it serve up content from the directories your relatives can FTP files to. That way they don't have to create a web page containing their images, or anything like that. Of course, if they want to, they're free to do so.

If they're running Windows, you can easily copy files via FTP using Explorer. It's the same drag-and-drop interface they should be used to using locally.

The best part of setting up a system like that is that it's very simple, of minimal cost, and doesn't involve PHP, MySQL, Perl, Ruby, CGI scripts, or anything else like that. Not only that, but it can take full advantage of the security offered by UNIX-like systems.

Community Server

[theguru]

Allow me to give you a Microsoft based solution (open sourced though!). http://communityserver.org/Default.aspx

Blogs, forums, files, photos, RSS feeds, role based security, etc. I use it to host a site for all my old college friends. The SQL server database is quite happy on both of the free MS SQL offerings, Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) and SQL Express. Only the blog and forum postings and settings are stored in the database. The files and photos are stores in the file system.

Use WebDav for images/video

[ishmalius]

Go ahead and use Wordpress or phpBB or phpWiki or whatever for talking, but...

Since most of the unwashed masses have Windows, you can use its built-in WebDav stuff. Set up an Apache server with a DAV directory. Then point your friends/family to the URL for the folder, which they merely need add to their "Web Folders." They need not know the underlying protocol to be able to use it. They can then just drag their images and videos onto the folder, and Voila! They are published. It's a no-brainer, and anyone who can drag an icon can use it.

On Linux, Nautilus can do DAV, too. I wouldn't be surprised if KDE had desktop support for it, also. DAV makes a nice small file server, when Samba or NFS won't work.

It seems like just the other day...

[unitron]

Perhaps this Ask Slashdot- "Multi-State Family Networking?"-from May 31, 2006 has some replies that will assist you.