California Institute of Technology

Add your own photo album

New: upload files to our server via anonymous ftp (but remember, we don't have much space). Instructions available if you're on the Caltech Campus.

Update Dec. '07: clubs.caltech.edu is going down, so the ftp address below is invalid. If you'd like us to host your pictures, please email alpine.

Instructions for adding your photo album to the site

At first, these instructions may seem a bit time consuming, but it's really a very efficient process once you're setup. We have 250 MB on the server, so try to keep your albums reasonably sized.

To upload your own photo album:

Option 1:
    Send me a .zip or .tar file of your complete photo album (send to alpine). Alternatively, you can upload it to the clubs.caltech.edu server (see the settings for it below) if you know the password, which I will give out if you ask me for it.
Option 2: Follow these instructions to make a photo album:
  • Gather all the pictures you want to upload into a directory and give the directory an appropriate name. I am assuming the pictures are JPEGS -- GIFs or PNGs are acceptable, but BMP are not. [To edit comments or dates on photos -- useful to change the timestamp of a lot of pictures at once -- you might try a command-line utility that is very quick and simple called jhead. Here are my instructions on how to obtain and use jhead. To view photos, a nice, quick viewer is ACDSee; ACDSee is no longer free, but you can still find the free older versions of ACDSee on the web.]
  • Get JAlbum, a free software program that runs on Java Virtual Machine, so it should work on all platforms. No adware and stuff; I think it looks like a good program which is why I'm recommending it. You are free to use other programs of course. The program is fairly easy to use. You give it a directory of pictures and select your preferred skin, and it will make a subdirectory with the slide show, including thumbnails. Several important things:
    • Please limit the size of your pictures to 800 px x 800 px. Smaller is fine too.
    • If you used imbedded JPEG comments [e.g. via Jhead], you need to tell JAlbum to use them, which is not the default. To do this, select the checkbox "JPEG" under "Comment Sources" in the "Main" tab of the "Advanced" tab in JAlbum. Sounds confusing, but it's not.
    • Jalbum lets you add their version of comments easily. Under the "Edit" tab, right-click a photo, select "Properties", and fill in the comment. You can click "Next" to edit the comment of the next photo. The comments are stored in a special text file in the photo directory.
    • With Jalbum, you need to give your index.html file a title manually, otherwise it will use the default "New Page 1" (this file is in the newly created subdirectory).
    • You're give a subdirectory, say MyPics, containing the slideshow (placed inside your original pictures directory). To send it to us, please zip or tar it. In linux/unix, to use tar, get to the original pictures directory and then type the following:
      tar cvf PICTURES.tar MyPics/*
      which will make the file PICTURE.tar which you can then email.
    • Alternatively, you can upload the pictures via ftp or sftp directly. You can use your favorite ftp program or JAlbum's built in program. The settings for JAlbum are (in the "Publish" tab):
      FTP server: clubs.caltech.edu
      Username: alpine
      Password: (email me to get it)
      Web directory: /home/alpine/www/data
      Remote directory: (whatever you want to call your photo album)
      Web root URL: http://clubs.caltech.edu/~alpine
      Even if you upload yourself, you must email me and let me know what you called it so that I can link to it.