Self-hosted photography website
A photography website
you host yourself.
Retro Photo Blogging. No Algorithm.
What’s new is old again. Nothing here is an invention: the single-photo blog, long-form posting, classic Insta, Picasa-style albums — all of it used to belong to photographers. We’re giving it back, on hardware you control, where nobody can take it again.
Your photos. Your voice. Your style. Your dignity.
“Self-hosted” sounds like it comes with a beard and a server rack. It doesn’t. It means PHP and a database on the cheapest shared hosting you can find, uploaded once, running for years. No Docker. No Node. No monthly platform bill that quietly becomes a yearly platform bill.
The heavy work — editing, resizing, batch publishing, backing up — happens on your own computer with a free desktop suite, so the hosting account never breaks a sweat. The site is a folder and a database. You can open both. You can copy both. Try that with a platform.
Highlights
- YoursYou host it. You own the art. No company, no tiers, no upsell, no “we’ve updated our terms.”
- Four ways to scoreOne photo at a time, the classic grid, writing with photographs in it, or SMACKTHEMUP: simplified, self-hosted public photo sharing for friends and family. Pick the way you always shared.
- Get in, get outImport Instagram, Flickr and Blogger with dates and captions intact. Leave any time with everything, in a form other software reads.
- SkinsReal sites, real archives, and nothing that looks like a template.
- Not aloneYour site is on the fediverse. People on Mastodon, Pixelfed and the rest can follow, like, boost, and reply to your work while it stays on your server. Plus a directory of photoblogs worth browsing and a weekly challenge.
- Desktop suiteA free non-destructive photo editor, batch publishing, backup, import and export tools. Windows and Linux.
- Locked downReal security, publicly audited. If something goes wrong you hear it from us the day we know — not two weeks later.
- AI insideCaptions, alt text, looks, a skin designer. Five providers, your own key, your call. It’s the intern, not the boss.
- Cheap to runShared hosting, small footprint, upload and go. Run several sites from one desk.
- Not a companyBuilt by a working photographer who uses it every day, under a licence that stops anyone fencing it off.
A folder. A database.Your domain.Nothing to cancel.
Guided installer, signed updates, built-in help on every admin page, and a FAQ that answers “how techie do I have to be?” honestly.
Built by a photographer, not a company. Ask him anything — he’s rude but he answers.