Building your own version of flickr.com or even a much scaled down version of it is not for the faint of heart... or the novice. It's kind of like building an e-commerce site. It doesn't look all that tough until you actually get into it and find out all of the security stuff, and database stuff, and server side include stuff that you have to deal with.
Finding gallery software for your website is no problem. There are dozens of options available. Almost all of them require you to upload the images, then build a script describing each "slide show" or album. This is probably not something that you want visitors to be able to do. Anytime you open the doors to strangers uploading scripts to your website, you're asking for trouble. If no one discovers you sight, you may be up for a month or two. If you become popular, you may only be up an hour or two. If you are on a shared server, your ISP will kick you off and charge you mega $$$ to clean up the mess that you let in.
There are a few "auto-generating" scripts available such as:
http://scriptandstyle.c
an
There are hosting business which will host your site and allow you to transparently operate their software so that your visitors can upload and manipulate images on their own without getting into your files and compromising your security. Once such company is http://www.phanfare.com/ho
The
As far as doing it on your own, ericpete has the best advice. Get PHP for Dummies, build yourself a testing server, and have at it.
Best of luck.
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by: ericpetePosted on 2009-08-23 at 17:49:30ID: 25164993
At a minimum, and doing it cheaply, you need:
1. A hosting service that will allow a lot of storage, and possibly a lot of bandwidth.
2. A database -- MySQL is available from most decent ISPs
3. Some skills -- minimal, but nonetheless some -- in programming in PHP
Not intending to be rude, but I would start by getting my hands on PHP For Dummies. Pretty much everything you'll need is in there, and what isn't there, you can find out here (the PHP Experts are pretty good, if you ask me).