Home hosted website and Sweet Home Image Backup app

[danno]

I wonder if someone else is doing this and how they accomplish it:

I am serving a website on my home network and using DynDNS to keep my ip address updated. So I have a domain name that points to my site and works very well. I have a photos folder that I want to use with Sweet Home Image Backup but can only use it when I use the host as 192.168.xxx.xx.x and not domain.domain.com
The permissions set on the photos folder is 775. What can I do to make this work?

As it is, this app is only useful to me when I'm home. I would like to snap a photo away from home and have it automatically upload it while I'm away from home.

Thanks in advance.

[Scott DeLeeuw]

I wonder if someone else is doing this and how they accomplish it:

I am serving a website on my home network and using DynDNS to keep my ip address updated. So I have a domain name that points to my site and works very well. I have a photos folder that I want to use with Sweet Home Image Backup but can only use it when I use the host as 192.168.xxx.xx.x and not domain.domain.com
The permissions set on the photos folder is 775. What can I do to make this work?

As it is, this app is only useful to me when I'm home. I would like to snap a photo away from home and have it automatically upload it while I'm away from home.

Thanks in advance.

Interesting thought... To do that via SweetHome you'd need to expose the server's SMB sharing to the internet, which isn't the best idea... Do you want it to be automatic or are you ok with having to click the share button and send it?

A couple of ideas that come to mind:

1) Look for an FTP type program and set up an FTP server at home, also not super secure as password is passed in clear text, but doable.

2) Picasa has an email address that you can send pictures to your web album. I also think you can set Picasa to keep the web album and local album synched. You could leave Picasa running on the home machine, have the web album and local album synch, and then email the pic from your phone to Picasa. That's probably the easiest thought.

[danno]

Interesting thought... To do that via SweetHome you'd need to expose the server's SMB sharing to the internet, which isn't the best idea... Do you want it to be automatic or are you ok with having to click the share button and send it?

A couple of ideas that come to mind:

1) Look for an FTP type program and set up an FTP server at home, also not super secure as password is passed in clear text, but doable.

2) Picasa has an email address that you can send pictures to your web album. I also think you can set Picasa to keep the web album and local album synched. You could leave Picasa running on the home machine, have the web album and local album synch, and then email the pic from your phone to Picasa. That's probably the easiest thought.

Thanks Scott!
Here is what I've done now and it seems pretty good. I loaded Ajaxplorer on my site and the app on my Android phone. Although it doesn't automatically upload my photos, the process is very simple and I only need to click an Upload button. My photos are instantly available now for viewing/editing/moving/copy etc. It is a very slick system and I can now avoid having to go through 3rd parties like Picasa/Dropbox/Google. I hope this is useful to others as well. BTW Ajaxplorer is open-source meaning free! The phone app is a whole dollar.

[Scott DeLeeuw]

Thanks Scott!
Here is what I've done now and it seems pretty good. I loaded Ajaxplorer on my site and the app on my Android phone. Although it doesn't automatically upload my photos, the process is very simple and I only need to click an Upload button. My photos are instantly available now for viewing/editing/moving/copy etc. It is a very slick system and I can now avoid having to go through 3rd parties like Picasa/Dropbox/Google. I hope this is useful to others as well. BTW Ajaxplorer is open-source meaning free! The phone app is a whole dollar.

Thanks for the follow-up danno! I always like seeing different options like this brought to light. I may try it as well.

[LisaC930]

Did you want this just as a personal domain that you can only access on your network or do you want to be able to access it from anywhere with internet connection? Sorry, I'm just a little confused on what you were exactly trying to accomplish.

[danno]

Did you want this just as a personal domain that you can only access on your network or do you want to be able to access it from anywhere with internet connection? Sorry, I'm just a little confused on what you were exactly trying to accomplish.

Actually I'm a little confused by your question. I have a domain name that points to my home server. I find that Sweet Home has trouble using my domain name (external IP), but understands my internal IP address with no problem (192.168.xxx.xxx). I have other apps now that use my external domain name flawlessly, so I think the app Sweet Home may still need some development. I don't like that I have to be at home to get it to upload a photo automatically.

[LloydC]

I had the same problem as danno, except I want to basically use my home network like a secondary hard drive, where I can save my stuff and access it from any one of the other computers at home, and possibly even over the internet. Or maybe there is a way that when my computers are both on and connected to the some network they will automatically transfer and update files so they basically have the exact same info on all the computers.

[danno]

I had the same problem as danno, except I want to basically use my home network like a secondary hard drive, where I can save my stuff and access it from any one of the other computers at home, and possibly even over the internet. Or maybe there is a way that when my computers are both on and connected to the some network they will automatically transfer and update files so they basically have the exact same info on all the computers.

Lloyd,

You must check out http://ajaxplorer.info/
I have been using this for months and find it flawless. I have multiple computers, notebooks and phones (it has an app) all connected to Ajaxplorer. As for accessing your drive on the internet, all you would need is an IP forwarding service like DynDNS. There are also ways to configure a wireless router with external USB hard-drive and give it an external IP address - the advantage being that you don't need to leave a computer running, it is always on. There are security issues that need to be addressed if you do this. As for synching computers, thats easy. I have found that the simpler the better, there are many free programs to do this. My solution has been rsync running in the background - I rarely have to mess with it (I run Linux never Windows). I hope this helps you get started.

-Dan