muddlizard ([info]muddlizard) wrote,
@ 2006-02-04 00:46:00
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sharing photos online
OK, everyone: I need suggestions. I want to be prepared to put our wedding photos easily available to friends and family on the internet.

1. I don't want people to have to log in or sign up for something -- just go to a URL and there are all the photos.
2. I would love it if people could then order print copies of these photos (and I totally understand if they have to register at the site for this part).
3. I want to be able to include a relatively simple URL on something everyone gets at the wedding reception, so they will know where to go to get photos.

A. Flickr seems to have no way to say "I want to see muddlizard's pictures."
B. Shutterfly seems to generate weird URLs and I don't know if they're persistent.
C. Creating my own set of pages would not be that hard, and I think work would host it for me, but that doesn't provide for people ordering prints. Also, I'm a little less likely to get around to it promptly, than if I teach a parent how to use the other website and give them the account login info.

Suggestions?

(Oh, yeah, and I've had this on my To Do list for weeks, and sort of had a deadline of a few hours ago for knowing what the URL would be!)

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[info]chris00seven
2006-02-04 04:03 pm UTC (link)
I think with most of the internet photo services, you'll have to login to see pictures. Perhaps one way of mitigating the log-in/sign-up problem would be to give out the Flickr or WinkFlash or Shutterfly login to all your guests. Thus you'd have something like username: wedding_guest and password: garter

You could then point people to the appropriate webpage for whichever service you chose, and have them login using the supplied information. Since you're having them login in directly to the albums you've uploaded, there are no additional links or navigation for them to follow.

It appears the weak point in this plan would be that anyone who logs in could modify the content of the albums :-(

Or perhaps you need a two-prong approach. Host the pictures yourself at work (which I imagine would yield a fairly simple address) and have the pictures displayed as appropriate. But then also include a link or button or separate section about "Ordering Prints" and provide explicit instructions about what people need to do if they're interested in getting physical copies of the photos. The instructions should direct them to log into Flickr or Shutterfly (which would host the same pictures as your own site) and go from there. This might give you the best of both worlds - simple and direct for those who want to view the pictures, plus easy-to-access instructions on how to order prints.

Perhaps to make things even simpler (I'm brainstorming as I write), your work-hosted website could have a sort of "cover page" which has two options "View Photos" and "View Photos and Order Prints" with a bit of a description about the two options, with additional explicit instructions for the order prints option.

Ok, I think that's all the insight I have to give. Good luck!

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Host it yourself
[info]natacado
2006-02-04 10:57 pm UTC (link)
Gallery will let you host all your images yourself, by default doesn't require logins, and lets you purchase photos from Shutterfly or Photoworks.

It runs on pretty much any web host that supports PHP/MySQL. I run it for my own website. If work doesn't provide that, check out Dreamhost - it's a bunch of Mudders who founded the company, and they're cheap + good.

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[info]muddlizard
2006-02-07 04:36 am UTC (link)
Thanks for the advice, both of you. Discussing with BenFrantzDale, I realized that I had overlooked flickr's ability to have a simple URL to send your friends to. Thus, wedding photos shall be posted on flickr by early March.

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