Photo Album works on Windows Home Server

I was super-excited to learn that Andrew Grant was able to run the Photo Handler unmodified on Windows Home Server. This is actually one more reason for me to put Home Server on my to-buy list. I shoot thousands of pictures a year and only upload the very best on Flickr. But the reason why I enhanced Dmitry's handler to make it my own was that I wanted photo publishing to be as simple and as fast as possible, and a natural part of my workflow. Today I'm using a small web server that I built and that sits in my basement so that I can just dump photos on the server using a simple share but using Home Server for that would just rock. Anyway, if you have a Home Server and want a lightweight way to publish your photos, this is for you:
http://www.andrewgrant.org/2007/06/09/how-to-create-a-windows-home-server-photo-album-in-minutes.html

10 Comments

  • This album works really nice. I got it up and running (on WHS CTP) using Andrew Grants WHS AddIn in a matter of minutes. The only thing I would like to see added is a button to exit the album and return to the previous page. The "back" button from the browser works fine, however this will not be obvious for all users.

    THANKS!!

  • I tried the app and I got an error. Is there a limit to the numbers of pictures that you can have in an album?
    Thanks,
    Ted

    Here is what the error said:
    Request timed out.
    Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

    Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Request timed out.

    Source Error:

    An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

    Stack Trace:


    [HttpException (0x80004005): Request timed out.]


  • Ted: not in principle. How many pictures are we talking about? Did you try with the same settings but just a few images?

  • I was trying it with our holiday pictures , so there was about 1650 pictures. I dropped about half of them out of the folder and it is working now, but I don't know if it was the excessive number of pictures or that fact that there was a few MOV files in that folder that I forgot were there.
    BTW, you mentioned about the settings, where do I go to find out how to change the settings and what the options are?
    Thanks,
    Ted

  • Ted: the mov will not be a problem, they will just get ignored. 1650 is certainly a lot of pictures, and your users would probably thank you for splitting those into several folders ;)
    I've never stress-tested it with that many pictures but in theory the album should only be slow on the first hit as it's generating thumbnails for all your pictures. You can try making the timeout longer in web.config and see if that's the case. Otherwise, just split, and maybe file a bug on the Codeplex site.

  • I would like friends and family to add comments to my pictures that will become part of properties. How is the best way to make this happen? THANKS

  • Copter: the handler does not support comments currently. One thing you could do is use it as a control and embed it into a web site that has comments.
    It's one of the features I'd like to have, but it won't be added anytime soon. Sorry.

  • I am using the photo handler on Whiist and am having a problem loading the "medium" sized images. All of the thumbnails generated fine. When I click on many of the thumbnails though, I do not get a medium size image and the next picture link does not load either. All that is on the screen is the "back to folder view" link and "previous picture" link. I have noticed that the pictures that do not load medium sized images are ones that have been modified and saved in Picasa (but not all images saved from Picasa have this problem). Does this not work with certain compression levels? or is there another problem?

  • NKrick: I don't know of any such problems but I'd love to have a look at one of those images and try to figure it out.
    Please send me the url using the contact form.

  • Everyone should take just a moment and glance at
    http://whswebsite.googlepages.com/

    Two fellas started with Andrew Grant's Whiist, added a ASP.NET 2.0 Starter Kit, and mixed in Microsoft's Free Express software to produce fully functioning dynamic websites hotsed on their Windows Home Servers.

    Really take a look
    * Albums (two methods)
    * Forum
    * user Login
    * Polls
    * etc.

    And it is easy to read and follow and ALL Free

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