Sometimes we want something more than a simple Flickr page to exhibit our pictures. Perhaps we would like to create an online gallery with our own personal domain name.
I will try to show you how to create your own personal gallery for under $10.00 a year, including hosting, your own domain and the software you would need to do it.
Firs step: Your own domain
I recommend
Godaddy.com because they are cheap and fast. In a matter of minutes you can get your own domain name registered and functional. They charge about $9.00 a year per domain. If you have your own domain name already, just skip this part.
Second step: Hosting
Here you have several choices. The simplest and faster would be to host your domain with godaddy, but that would cost you about $5.00 a month for a hosting account that includes data bases (needed for the software we are going to use) control panel and ftp access to your files. But since we are looking for even cheaper options, here are other hosting services that won’t cost you anything but offer similar features.
1
Zymic : It gives you 5GB of free space, not much but enough to hold lots of pictures.
2.
XtreemHost: It also gives you 5GB of free space and up to 50GB of traffic a month.
3.
Host-Ed.net: It gives you 150 MB of space and 4GB of traffic per month.
4.
Free Hostia: Gives you 250 MB of space and up to 6GB of traffic. It also gives you the ability of installing WordPress, Joomla and other open source software automatically
There are other similar free hosting services such as
Webhost, and
PhpNet
Third step: Software
Here you have several options. If you want to create a blog type gallery that includes comments, tutorials, etc, I would recommend WordPress (
WordPress › Blog Tool and Publishing Platform) it can be download for free. It is relative easy to install and if you have Godaddy or Free Hostia account, they would do the installation for you. WordPress also have a tons of plug-ins that you can download and add, giving it the look of a dynamic photo gallery. (see this one for example:
WordPress › Page Flip Image Gallery « WordPress Plugins For more plug in to add to WordPress, you can go here:
WordPress › gallery « Tags « WordPress Plugins
Your second choice for software is
PixelPost
PixelPost is an open source (free) software that is also relative easy to install in your hosted domain name. This software is designed specifically to create gallery of photos. You can customize the look by downloading and installing additional templates, and plugins.
If you want to see how PixelPost looks you can visit my site
JorgeGomez.net
There are other choices for software. You can buy a flash template for around $75.00. They are pricey, but some of them are really spectacular.
One final note. Whatever hosting account you select,
make sure it is Linux and NOT Windows, as both PixelPost and WordPress run only under Linux.
If anyone needs help installing any of these programs, feel free to send me a message and I’ll try to help you.
Good luck and have fun!