My Experience hosting my own fashion photo gallery

My habit

My experience whenever I see something cool is to download. Pinterest doesn’t feel right, as I don’t own the image, and it is not close to my own hands
This habit of mine, repeated over many years, had created a massive collection of images, more than thousands of files, and more than Google images can handle (not like I am comfortable with everything there being on Google where my privacy is at risk)
After a friend told me I was unfashionable, a tinge of denial and defiance made me want to show it to em. Yes, it was a small petty thing, but I am happy with the result

All the non-Google big cloud services can hold a ton of files, but they don’t provide a good photo gallery experience. What if I want to share this gallery with others, and allow everyone to search for specific themes?
This leads to trying to find a good looking photo gallery app that can be self-hosted, then feed the images to the server via a secured network or through a cloud service

After going through many suggestions on the net, I repeated the cycle of finding something I like, just to see that the set up is poorly documented or too complicated, and then looking for the next shiny thing. I ended up with PhotoPrism - sleek, modern, and fast - and I can connect with my virtual network.
Well, getting a Linode instance may sound easy, but getting PhotoPrism installed is no small feat. My secondary laptop turning into a Linux machine would be a waste, and the Digital Cloud instance does not seem reliable. The docker instance doesn’t seem to work for some reasons, or will need to be exposed to the Internet via domain name
Ow, setting a domain name’s CNS and AAAA records on GoDaddy is not easy peasy either
However, the whole experience was also a learning opportunity for me - as it turns out I have much to learn about the complexity of getting something to run on your own

Because fashion is a subjective thing, and the context surrounding them is so varied, AI-powered tools couldn’t comprehend them. PhotoPrism’s auto-recognition tool can tell if a picture has humans or cars in them, but of course, humans wear clothes!!
I later found and learned about open-source Photo Management tool DigiKam, and went and sort all my images myself, tagging them with names of game franchises and styles. It’s a gruelling but fun process, after everything.

In the end, I opted for PikaPod, a service that runs your own app on their instance (pod), which takes care of the fundamentals and updates. I just had to set the domain name and the connection to my image folder. It was easy I was wondering why I tried so hard.
Have I given up too soon? I am still thinking about that now. I may be able to learn to use a docker image and troubleshoot issues.
In the end, you learn to appreciate why services exist, and all the work maintaining an image/instance that just works, and using the right tool for the right job, via the right people. Overengineering or overcomplicating a problem would have led me to frustration and no photo gallery.

Here it is, and I invite anyone landing on my blog, improbable as that sounds, to see:

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