Advice for a website numpty please
Discussion
Advice for a website numpty please!
I'm thinking of starting a site for aspiring photographers (no not those sorts of photographers) whereby people can register, get there own username, password and gallery and then upload their images into these galleries. It's just something me and a couple of mates are thinking of doing on the cheap - we have access to dreamweaver and fireworks - what is going to be the biggest problem/expense that we will come up against?
And what should our next step be?
Cheers
I'm thinking of starting a site for aspiring photographers (no not those sorts of photographers) whereby people can register, get there own username, password and gallery and then upload their images into these galleries. It's just something me and a couple of mates are thinking of doing on the cheap - we have access to dreamweaver and fireworks - what is going to be the biggest problem/expense that we will come up against?
And what should our next step be?
Cheers
the two biggest problems are going to be:
i) having software on the webserver that will crop/resize, process and store the images that are uploaded.
ii) having a database that will cope with the images and all related details.
I looked at doing this earlier in the year buy had to abandon the project as I couldn't find a web hosting provider that would allow me to run the necessary COM objects on the web server for the image processing part.
i) having software on the webserver that will crop/resize, process and store the images that are uploaded.
ii) having a database that will cope with the images and all related details.
I looked at doing this earlier in the year buy had to abandon the project as I couldn't find a web hosting provider that would allow me to run the necessary COM objects on the web server for the image processing part.
I'm guessing that this thread will get moved to Computers and stuff, but hopefully this reply won't get lost.
I've been toying with a similar idea myself - but with an added twist (no, I'm not going to tell you what
).
Firstly, you're going to need to use some form of scripting and probably a database. Dreamweaver Ultradev or MX should be able to help you out with the code, but you'd probably be better off learning something like PHP or ASP.Net properly.
Main expense will be bandwidth. If you shop around you'll be able to get loads of disk space to store the pictures no problem, but bandwidth in this country tends to be expensive. So if/when the site gets big, lot's of pictures are being downloaded, you might need to look to moving it to a host in the states where b/w is much cheaper.
Let me know if you've got any specific qs.
I've been toying with a similar idea myself - but with an added twist (no, I'm not going to tell you what
). Firstly, you're going to need to use some form of scripting and probably a database. Dreamweaver Ultradev or MX should be able to help you out with the code, but you'd probably be better off learning something like PHP or ASP.Net properly.
Main expense will be bandwidth. If you shop around you'll be able to get loads of disk space to store the pictures no problem, but bandwidth in this country tends to be expensive. So if/when the site gets big, lot's of pictures are being downloaded, you might need to look to moving it to a host in the states where b/w is much cheaper.
Let me know if you've got any specific qs.
This should be on the Computers forum 
Anyhow... How much experience do you have in web design/development? It's pretty easy to put together a simple site in Dreamweaver, even one with basic dynamic capability - but you will need the site hosting somewhere that supports your chosen back-end language and database. If you don't have any back-end coding experience the biggest problem you will come up against is the multiple user login system and upload capabilities. But if I've managed to do that anyone can
There is a very good extension you can buy for Dreamweaver called ASP Upload, which will do all the stuff for the photo uploads without you needing to know much ASP. You can get it from DMXZone - I think it's $69 to buy. There is also a PHP version if you decide to go down that route.
Anyhow... How much experience do you have in web design/development? It's pretty easy to put together a simple site in Dreamweaver, even one with basic dynamic capability - but you will need the site hosting somewhere that supports your chosen back-end language and database. If you don't have any back-end coding experience the biggest problem you will come up against is the multiple user login system and upload capabilities. But if I've managed to do that anyone can
There is a very good extension you can buy for Dreamweaver called ASP Upload, which will do all the stuff for the photo uploads without you needing to know much ASP. You can get it from DMXZone - I think it's $69 to buy. There is also a PHP version if you decide to go down that route.
CarZee said:
i) having software on the webserver that will crop/resize, process and store the images that are uploaded.
With PHP hosting, most servers will have imagemagick or similar installed to do this. Or ASP.Net / Java has it built into the API. If it has to be ASP / COM then getting a dedicated server from somewhere like 1&1 that do £30 ish quid a month would allow you full control over installed software.
CarZee said:
ii) having a database that will cope with the images and all related details.
Most databases will store blobs, but if you're going real low cost then Access or MDSE might struggle. The easiest way to handle that is to store all the info in the DB, then save the image to the filesystem.
CarZee said:
the two biggest problems are going to be:
i) having software on the webserver that will crop/resize, process and store the images that are uploaded.
ii) having a database that will cope with the images and all related details.
I looked at doing this earlier in the year buy had to abandon the project as I couldn't find a web hosting provider that would allow me to run the necessary COM objects on the web server for the image processing part.
A lot of hosts run ASP JPEG or ASP Image, which can be used for this kind of stuff. There is another Dreamweaver plugin to go with ASP Upload that interfaces with a range of common COM object for this kind of stuff and does all the resizing etc automatically.
Bit late on this one.
Would strongly advise against storing images in the db as blobs unless the server is fairly hefty.
I played around with this at home a while back hosting the site from home (2meg leased line). The best results were using the db to store the image related date (ie photographer, date taken, notes etc), and to store the images as flat files (thus storing a filesystem reference to the file in the db).
I used Oracle9i as the db and Apache / Tomcat as the webserver / app server. There are loads of Java API's for image manipulation. I ended up sizing the image and creating the thumbnail when the image was initially uploaded.
Most ISP's that are using w2k server will be able to run the .NOT cack which includes the ASPImage API that Judas is talking about.
As I said, the ultimate would be using blobs but the power required was out of my range (was using an old Sun Ultra 30), however, may give it another go since I've recently aquired a pair of fully loaded Sun E450!!!
Drop me a mail if you want some pointers.
Steve
Would strongly advise against storing images in the db as blobs unless the server is fairly hefty.
I played around with this at home a while back hosting the site from home (2meg leased line). The best results were using the db to store the image related date (ie photographer, date taken, notes etc), and to store the images as flat files (thus storing a filesystem reference to the file in the db).
I used Oracle9i as the db and Apache / Tomcat as the webserver / app server. There are loads of Java API's for image manipulation. I ended up sizing the image and creating the thumbnail when the image was initially uploaded.
Most ISP's that are using w2k server will be able to run the .NOT cack which includes the ASPImage API that Judas is talking about.
As I said, the ultimate would be using blobs but the power required was out of my range (was using an old Sun Ultra 30), however, may give it another go since I've recently aquired a pair of fully loaded Sun E450!!!
Drop me a mail if you want some pointers.
Steve
Similar to whats been done here?
www.EasyPicHost.com ?
If so, why not contact the Designer and ask for quotes?
www.EasyPicHost.com ?
If so, why not contact the Designer and ask for quotes?
judas said:
A lot of hosts run ASP JPEG or ASP Image, which can be used for this kind of stuff. There is another Dreamweaver plugin to go with ASP Upload that interfaces with a range of common COM object for this kind of stuff and does all the resizing etc automatically.
Or use ASP.NET, which has very rich class libraries that support all sorts of funky image processing techniques.
PetrolTed said:
Interesting comment regarding the hosting in the US. I'm not about to move PH to the US but I do have another high bandwidth project that may cost too much to launch here. Can anyone recommend any US hosts?
www.theplanet.com are a good bunch, family owned and run firm who are expanding, they host [H]ardOCP amongst others
those guys are offering 750GB of bandwidth a month for only $99!Cynic in me says yes Ted. For small bandwidth users, probably a good option. The mighty leviathon of PH enters the fray and starts banging away like an armed policeman and who knows?
If its fixed price contract (sorry, I've no idea of this sort of thing), then worth a further look?
hmmmm.....
If its fixed price contract (sorry, I've no idea of this sort of thing), then worth a further look?
hmmmm.....PetrolTed said:
Price in the UK is typically £3 a Gig.
Typically, but it can be had for alot less than that, depending on amount, anything upto 25% of that (thats of, not off).
Americans have lots and lots of bandwidth, as the whole country is one big phat fibre ring, means they have tons of capacity in between themselves (like the JANET network over here) its when you want to transfer OUT of the US that things start to go pear shaped. then they are limited by capacity, availability AND COST.
They massivly oversell, as noone REALLY goes near the figures they offer... and for the most part they can afford to accomodate those who do... BUT like any business, if your paying cheap and becoming too much of a thorn in their wallet. they arent exactly going to lose much by dropping one $79 pcm client are they.
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