I am looking to share some photos and get a blog online and I can't decide what the best way to do this would be. I appolagize for the long post but I am trying to be thorough in giving you my thinking my thinking. I'll try to be organized to make up for it.
Background:
Next year I am going to be studying abroad in Europe for two semesters and would like to tell people back home in the states how things are going. I have minimal html/webpage experience, limited time to learn stuff and mess around with it and and money is tight. I have also never done any blogging before and am very unlikely to make good use of it.
Usage/what I am looking for:
1)A simple blog to tell family and friends (that includes you guys if you want) how things are going and about any adventures I might have.
2)Host a couple hundred pictures, organized in albums, for people to look at and have them available to download at full resolution, taken with a 5mp camera. My mom is big on pictures so this is mostly for her, she also likes to print them which is why they need to be full rez.
3) Easy to navigate. The audience for this will be several computer illiterite people and some on 56k modems so posted pictures need to be thumbnails with links to the originals.
4) Easy to deploy. I have a full coursload at school, a job and something resembling a social life so I I don't have hours to update it (initial settup can be slow as I don't need it up an running for a month or two).
5) CHEAP, in fact free unless I think there is no possible other way.
My options: These are the possiblities that I have been considering.
1) The ultimate solution would be something like fotki.com as it has photo hosting/printing/linking and a journal all on one website with an easy interface. However it costs $50 a year and that is more than I can afford.
2)Get things from separate places. Get a blog like blogger and find someplace to host pictures, maybe one of those online printing places like Snapfish so that I get unlimited free storage.
3) Make my own website. Here I have two sub options.
a) I have 100Mb of non scriptable webspace on a webdav server through my university that I could use. Picture storage would be limited but that might be ok.
b) I have a Digital Audio G4 tower running Panther that I currently use as a printserver. I could easily demilitarize it on our router and use something like no-ip to access it. Pros being unlimited completely customizeable space, cons being it is more work and I will not have physical access to it when over seas so if something goes wrong it will be vary hard to fix because I would have to talk one of my family trough fixing it.
The ability to download in full rez is probably the least important as I can find other ways of getting those to my mom.
So, what would you do in my situation, remember time and money are the deciding factors here, don't have much of either. Any feedback is greatly appriciated.
Background:
Next year I am going to be studying abroad in Europe for two semesters and would like to tell people back home in the states how things are going. I have minimal html/webpage experience, limited time to learn stuff and mess around with it and and money is tight. I have also never done any blogging before and am very unlikely to make good use of it.
Usage/what I am looking for:
1)A simple blog to tell family and friends (that includes you guys if you want) how things are going and about any adventures I might have.
2)Host a couple hundred pictures, organized in albums, for people to look at and have them available to download at full resolution, taken with a 5mp camera. My mom is big on pictures so this is mostly for her, she also likes to print them which is why they need to be full rez.
3) Easy to navigate. The audience for this will be several computer illiterite people and some on 56k modems so posted pictures need to be thumbnails with links to the originals.
4) Easy to deploy. I have a full coursload at school, a job and something resembling a social life so I I don't have hours to update it (initial settup can be slow as I don't need it up an running for a month or two).
5) CHEAP, in fact free unless I think there is no possible other way.
My options: These are the possiblities that I have been considering.
1) The ultimate solution would be something like fotki.com as it has photo hosting/printing/linking and a journal all on one website with an easy interface. However it costs $50 a year and that is more than I can afford.
2)Get things from separate places. Get a blog like blogger and find someplace to host pictures, maybe one of those online printing places like Snapfish so that I get unlimited free storage.
3) Make my own website. Here I have two sub options.
a) I have 100Mb of non scriptable webspace on a webdav server through my university that I could use. Picture storage would be limited but that might be ok.
b) I have a Digital Audio G4 tower running Panther that I currently use as a printserver. I could easily demilitarize it on our router and use something like no-ip to access it. Pros being unlimited completely customizeable space, cons being it is more work and I will not have physical access to it when over seas so if something goes wrong it will be vary hard to fix because I would have to talk one of my family trough fixing it.
The ability to download in full rez is probably the least important as I can find other ways of getting those to my mom.
So, what would you do in my situation, remember time and money are the deciding factors here, don't have much of either. Any feedback is greatly appriciated.
