Photo Blog Software

[bobatkins]

<p>I'm looking for suggestions for simple (free) photo blogging software. Not gallery software, but something where a picture can be posted and viewers can comment.</p>

<p>I know there are templates for Wordpress and programs like PixelPost but I wonder if there's something great and simple that I'm missing. </p>

<p>I'm looking for something that can be installed and run locally, not a web based service like Flickr or Blogger etc.</p>

[geoffs1]

<p>Unless it's a hard requirement that it run locally on your server, I'd look at the customization features of Blogger. For example, other than the favicon (which I haven't bothered to change yet), this blog is pretty much seamless with the rest of my site: http://blog.moving-target-photos.com/</p>

[unangelino]

<p>Just curious: What is the attraction to installing and running on site?</p>

<p>When someone asks me for a really simple bloggish device for images and videos I usually recommend Posterous. Check it out: <a href="https://posterous.com/">https://posterous.com/</a></p>

<p>Otherwise, I agree with George; Blogger is very good.</p>

[starvy]

Geoff, his is off topic but I liked your moving target photography blog!

[Brad_]

You can run Wordpress locally. That's what I would do. For Windows: <a

href="http://www.jdavidmacor.com/2007/07/24/how-to-install-wordpress-locally/">Link</a>

[bobatkins]

<p>Why on site? Simple. I want total control over it, the images and what is done with the images. I'm not a fan of cloud computing, social networks or other "community' websites. I also want direct access to the database it runs on. I'm happy customizing code in HTML, PHP and MySQL so I've no reason to depend on someone else.</p>

<p>I'm leaning towards PixelPost, but like I said, I wonder if I'm missing something else that's out there that an alternative.</p>

<p>In the past I've written my own PHP/MySQL applications to do stuff like this, but it's easier and quicker (and less work) to use an already developed open source application.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Bob: you sound like a Drupal kind of guy. Everything you described above, and lots of room for an under-the-hood guy like you to tweek it into doing just what you want. Very powerful platform, but also pretty quick to use right out of the can.</p>

[howardstanbury]

<p>I'll be interested to hear if there are standalone packages. PixelPost was highly regarded but I get the impression that it is no longer (much) of an active project. The current version has been unchanged for a number of years.</p>

<p>Of the web-hosted sites, Tumblr has some photo-friendly templates and again might be worth looking into, if this is an acceptable option.</p>

[Spearhead]

<p>Tumblr doesn't run locally and Bob was pretty clear about wanting to do that.<br>

<br />I like Wordpress. You can run it locally or on your own host. There are a lot of templates, and even within a template it's pretty easy to customize.</p>

[phule]

<p>Pixelpost or Wordpress are both excellent choices. I use both for different needs. </p>

[Mary Doo]

<p>Checkout <a href="http://bitnami.org/stacks">Bitnami</a>. Download the Windows version if you use Windows. It's available for other platforms as well.</p>

<p>I just installed <a href="http://bitnami.org/stack/wordpress">Bitnami for Wordpress</a> (Windows) last night. My computer is the localhost. If I wish to upload the site to an external webhost sometime in the future, it can be done very easily too.</p>

<p>More directions: http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-wordpress-with-bitnami</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>I think I've settled on PixelPost. It's easy to install and easy to modify. The templates are written in XHTML and the source code is written in PHP and pretty easily modified. If functions well as a photo blog, which is what it was designed for. It's not a gallery and it's not a text blog. </p>

<p>The one drawback is that development is pretty much frozen as the original team have stopped working on it. However there are still people writing addons and templates and the last version of PixelPost seems very stable. It is open source, so if you really want to play with it, you can.</p>

<p>Here's how my version looks right now <a href="http://www.bobatkins.com/pixel/">http://www.bobatkins.com/pixel/</a></p>

 

[phule]

<p>Bob,<br /> I would highly recommend adding the Akismet anti-spam plugin if you're going to be enabling comments.</p>