Hey #parenting and #dads!

Thrilled that our little one was born healthy (just over a week ago) and starting to get to know this incredible being. It is such a trippy experience for all involved!

Now in between naps and nappies, we are recording lots of pictures, to help engrave our own memories, and to share with friends and family who share in our joy. I'm kind of at a loss of what approach or tools to use for that though. Ideally we'd like something like Google Photos (which auto-uploads photos/videos from your phone, which you can then put into albums to share with people, either by email invite or link - also albums can be collaborative, and photos can be liked/commented on), but that preserves privacy. If looked at a few options (especially software which I could self-host) but haven't come across anything great...

How have you been doing it?

Wishlist:

• auto upload via mobile app
• file encryption (e2e or at least at rest)
• collaborative editing of albums
• albums shared via email invite
• viewers authenticated via email can view pictures using web interface
• social features like commenting (optional)
• can store files in a cloud bucket (rather than only on the server)

Thanks @Andrei Cociuba latest mobile profile as of June 2019, I've been meaning to try Nextcloud again and see how it's evolved. I don't think it is big on encryption though.

I cross-posted to the fediverse, and so far people are recommending Nextcloud or Hubzilla...

We've got 3 kids, 15, 9 and 7. I will say this, more photos / videos exist of our 7 year old, than our 9 year old, and more of the 9 year old than the 15 year old. This isn't because technology has gotten better, just that technology from 8 years ago or so is more similar to technology today, and unfortunately for some events of the 15 year old's childhood, we've lost pictures and videos because of changing technology.

My big lesson in my kids' lives: Avoid vendor lock in. This also covers the "neat open source project that I'm sure will catch on" temptation.

One thing is for certain, change. I'd strongly urge just backing up the images on different discs, and even putting copies into Amazon glacier (I'd suggest encrypting them, but it might be too easy to lose keys, so whatever your risk tolerance says). Whatever you do, keep multiple copies. Things get damaged over time, bitrot is a real thing. Clouds aren't forever.

Anyway, congratulations on the new addition to the family, hopefully you don't make mistakes I did by keeping some photos in only one place and on one kind of medium.

@Mayel I've got a Piwigo instance running and while it's not the slickest experience it does check off a lot of the items on your wishlist.

Been trying Nextcloud. It's pretty slow UX though. Will maybe set up some caching.