I need your help finding a self-hosted alternative to iCloud photo sharing

Henrik Carlsson posted this note on 21 sep 19 and tagged it with Photo sharing

I’m looking for a self-hosted alternative to iCloud photo sharing for private photo sharing with the family, and I need your help finding it.

Here’s what’s great about iCloud sharing:

It’s really simple to share one or more photos using the built in Share Sheet.
Subscribers to a shared album gets notified (if they chose to) of new photos.
I as the poster get notified (if I chose to) when comments or likes happen.

The main problem is that it is exclusive to the Apple ecosystem. That excludes part of the family. If I’m going to change things up it would also be nice if the new solution was hosted on a server controlled by me.

So, a self-hosted alternative to iCloud photo sharing, with apps for viewing on both iOS and Android. Any recommendations are much appreciated.

∞

Replies and comments

ronguest
21 september, 2019 13:53

@MrHenko I don’t know if it has everything on your list, but the Synology NAS software has two different tools for storing and sharing photos and albums. One is called Photostation and the other is Moments. I use my NAS for storing/backing up photos from iDevices but I don’t use it for sharing so I’m not sure how close a match it is.
Henrik Carlsson
21 september, 2019 15:05

@ronguest That sounds interesting, but am I right in assuming it’s for the Synology NAS only? I currently don’t use a NAS (I have an old Drobo gathering dust on a shelf) and I was hoping to solve this with either my Linode or an always on MacMini.
ronguest
21 september, 2019 15:08

@MrHenko Yes, that is for their NAS.
Henrik Carlsson
21 september, 2019 15:11

@ronguest Then that’s not exactly the right solution now, but your post gave me an idea. I seem to recall FreeNAS being a software based NAS, and there are probably other similar products as well. Maybe one of those has a photo sharing feature.

Henrik Carlsson posted this on 18 sep 19

Writer 1: ”This movie is a bit dull. Maybe we can spice it up.”
Writer 2: ”Oh, oh, oh, I know. Let’s get the dial tone villain from Guardians in it as well!

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Henrik Carlsson posted this on 12 sep 19

Amsterdam, here I come!

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Henrik Carlsson posted this on 31 aug 19 and tagged it with MCU

The mid credit scene in *Ant-Man and the Wasp* was __amazing__!

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Henrik Carlsson posted this note on 19 aug 19 and tagged it with iPad

Gboard and swiping takes some getting used to but I do think that it’ll be the most efficient way of writing on the iPad mini with the Apple Pencil.

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Henrik Carlsson posted this note on 19 aug 19

Now playing: David Bowie – Station to Station

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Henrik Carlsson posted this note on 19 aug 19

I’m testing out a darker theme on my blog. The plan is to use it to eventually have a dark and a light mode.

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Henrik Carlsson posted this note on 18 aug 19

@johnjohnston No, I’m just manually marking it up as such. Maybe it has something to do with the blog-subdomain not being what I had previously put into my micro.blog account as my webpage. I’ve changed that now, so let’s see if this reply works better.

∞

Replies and comments

johnjohnston
18 augusti, 2019 23:32

@MrHenko that fixed it, but I see 2 messages in the main timeline? Only one in conversation view (mac app).

Henrik Carlsson posted this note on 18 aug 19

@johnjohnston Thanks John! If this works as intended this should show up as a reply at micro.blog, even though it was posted on my blog with “u-in-reply-to”. Does it work?

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Replies and comments

johnjohnston
18 augusti, 2019 23:27

@blog @MrHenko it does! I see the re comes from @blog but it has your avatar. Are you using the post_kinds WordPress plugin for replies?
johnjohnston
18 augusti, 2019 23:32

@MrHenko that fixed it, but I see 2 messages in the main timeline? Only one in conversation view (mac app).

Henrik Carlsson posted this note on 18 aug 19

I’m testing some things with my blog and micro.blog. If you’re willing to possibly receive some test responses, reply to this post on micro.blog.

∞

Replies and comments

johnjohnston
18 augusti, 2019 21:36

@MrHenko here you go.
ronguest
18 augusti, 2019 22:24

@MrHenko YOLO
Henrik
19 augusti, 2019 17:28

Does this show up in micro.blog as well?
Henrik
19 augusti, 2019 18:31

@ronguest I wonder if this will show up in micro.blog?
johnjohnston
18 augusti, 2019 23:27

@blog @MrHenko it does! I see the re comes from @blog but it has your avatar. Are you using the post_kinds WordPress plugin for replies?
johnjohnston
18 augusti, 2019 23:32

@MrHenko that fixed it, but I see 2 messages in the main timeline? Only one in conversation view (mac app).
smokey
19 augusti, 2019 09:28

@MrHenko Are you planning on doing a write-up about this process when you’re done? It looks like you and @johnjohnston found at least two areas where extra care was needed (m.b webpage URL has to match blog url, webmention replies “doubled” if not also excluded from feed sent to m.b), and it would be good to have a detailed-ish document about WordPress webmention replies and Micro.blog out there on the web (and in the wiki)….
smokey
19 augusti, 2019 09:32

@johnjohnston Hrm, you’re @johnjohnston in that reply, even though your M.b profile URL matches your blog URL…. (And there’s that strange “Like this:Like Loading…” at the end.)
smokey
19 augusti, 2019 09:36

@smokey @johnjohnston Oh, weird; something’s busted in @-mentions for “domain usernames”; it’s truncating at the period (which explains John’s mentioning of “blog” in this reply)…
manton
19 augusti, 2019 15:10

@MrHenko @smokey Thanks! If you write this up, feel free to include bug reports in the blog post too. 🙂 The double posts might be a bug, but I noticed that the URL is different for those 2 posts: one uses the format p=10756 in WordPress, so Micro.blog can’t know that it’s the same as the other permalink.
manton
19 augusti, 2019 15:24

@MrHenko Did you remove one of the duplicates? It’s no longer showing up in the conversation, but it was a little while ago.
blair
19 augusti, 2019 15:39

@MrHenko I’m interested in knowing more about what you did. I’m sending my blog here, and using webmentions on my blog to track convos, but hadn’t seen how to link stuff here back there. I generate different rss entries for short and long blog posts (I created “microposts” on my blog which come through as simple messages, while normal ones do the ”title, link” thing).
johnjohnston
19 augusti, 2019 19:06

@smokey @MrHenko @manton the “Like this:Like Loading…” comes from my use of the Jetpack like button. I probably need to give that up or understand a bit better how a mention is grabbed from a post…

My micro.blog account has johnjohnston.info/blog/ verified. I guess the incoming mention is reduced to the domain and not the folder my blog is in. Would it help for me to add a rel link to micro.blog on the home page? Will that confuse things? I’ve got the link on /blog/
manton
19 augusti, 2019 20:25

@johnjohnston Ah, I see. Yes, Micro.blog assumes for incoming Webmentions that the verified site is just a domain name without a path. I don’t think you need to add anything else, because you do have a rel=me on the reply pages already (but Micro.blog doesn’t check that currently).
johnjohnston
19 augusti, 2019 20:28

@manton if I added rel=me on my domain page and verified that, would that break anything or help anything?
manton
19 augusti, 2019 20:31

@johnjohnston You’d also need to update the URL on your profile to just be the domain name. That may be a good short-term change while I consider if there’s more Micro.blog could do here. Thanks!
Henrik Carlsson
20 augusti, 2019 01:16

Henrik Carlsson mentioned this note on blog.henrikcarlsson.se.

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