Want to set up an image-gallery website... (read inside, I'll explain better there)

Want to set up an image-gallery website... (read inside, I'll explain better there)

Hey guys

(Cliff notes given at bottom of post, if you want.)

I know I haven't really posted too much lately, just been busy studying for my final exams.

Anyway - I was looking to set up a small website which people could upload images to, possibly with a caption or something - since I'm leaving college, it'd make sense for us all to have a place to put photos / other stuff like that
I considered doing it using an "email the pics here and I'll update the HTML" method, but i really won't have the time.

As far as hosting it goes, my main rig is not 24/7, due to noise and heat (it could easily compete with a fan-heater as far as heat output goes) so I'm planning on using an old 500MHz system (256 ram, 40gig). Bear in mind that this site will be low traffic, and hosted on a home broadband connection, so I don't need a Dual Xeon 2.4 with 2gig of ram to shift a few jpegs and captions out to my mates.


Now, this machine is currently devoid of an OS... so for simple hosting of a site (I'm guessing it'd use PHP and possibly MySQL) what Linux distro should I use on it? I have Windows 2000 lying around, but I'm pretty sure Linux would be the smart move here.

I'm not quite a linux noob, I've used it... twice maybe. However, that was Mandrake 10 and KDE. I didn't mess with the console, nor webserving, i just played about, so if you tell me to chroot anything, I'll just look at you and blink. Also, I've never EVER used Apache, PHP, MySQL. Ever. Ever ever.



SO - IN SHORT (Cliffs)
1- Want to let my friends upload pictures, and have them be automatically parsed by the server. They need to be able to upload the pics themselves, (possibly using the image uploader from www.celerondude.com )

2- Hosting at home. Don't want to pay money, nor use a free online service (hate banners)

3- Got a server. No OS, No webserver, No experience at all with linux or websites. Please talk to me slowly and clearly.


Cheers guys
-Blueacid

Well, scince you don't know all that much about setting up linux, I'd say Win2000 is the way to go. That's what my website is being hosted on

But I really wanna make it into a linux server, just don't have the time...



And 256MB of RAM? Pffft. Look at what I'M hosting my server with...

Alright, sounds a plan. Does your site involve any server-side work (PHP / ASP / etc) or is it all plain HTML and images? I guess since these image galleries recompress images when they are uploaded, they need a bit more memory, and processor, although since the webserver will be the only thing running on that box, it should be alright. Hey, I can expect about 5 users at once, MAX, and that's if i'm unlucky.

I looked around hotscripts.com (hey, the iNet toolbar does have its uses sometimes) and found this http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/


PROBLEM BEING:

The FAQ talks about chrooting. If anyone would like to explain that to me, i'd be an incredibly happy man. In the meantime, i'll get to work installing Win2k and a firewall for it.