Well, I stand corrected now, partial success: my domain name resolves to the landing page of jsbeddow.jalbum.net, but naturally nothing is visible there as all my albums are marked private/hidden. Yet, this seems like a temporary victory, as the domain names are still shown as "red" status on the JAlbum settings page, which means they are provisional/temporary and will be removed in 30 days.
Getting closer....

You always publish an album to a folder. The opposite would be that all files would be in the root. Then the index.html files would overwrite each other. You don't want that.

Ok, my wording mistake to use the word "make" in regards to subfolders: yes, I know that they are always made for every album. What I didn't understand was the need to explicitly create a new domain linking reference within the JAlbum settings page to each album/subfolder. That seems rather tedious. Or am I again misunderstanding here?

In regards to Cloudflare: they are my domain registrar and nameservers, and thus the only place I can make changes to the DNS resolution.

However, I do have the option to use their pure "DNS resolution only" or the default "cacheing/proxying" setup which also helps with automatic SSL/https: upgrade....I might lose that if I switch over the the more basic DNS resolution only setup, but it might allow the JAlbum setup to work more smoothly (green checkmarks potentially). I'll test that later, probably tonight.

Edit: Yes, changing the Cloudflare setting to DNS resolution only took care of the "green checkmark" issue. Now I just need to work out the logged-in user vs. non logged-in user problems.

Edited by: jsbeddow on 26 Aug 2024, 20:50

What do you mean the issue is there? If you are logged in to jalbum.net you will see your hidden albums. If you logout you won't. Only you (and admins like me) can see your hidden albums. No other users, no matter if they are signed in or not.

Yes, the problem isn't really a technical one, it is more a change in mindset from what I had previously with third-party hosting. Previously, any random visitors to my domain home page (index.html) would find a blank page, and in order to find an album would have to know the full album name/ web address (path). Security through obscurity, sure, but effective enough for these purposes. Now, I need to choose from having the home/landing page show up as a generic JAlbum user (with unfilled, more or less blank, no content available yet....) to the non-logged in user, or give out my user credentials to friends and family to allow viewing, and every album I have ever made is then visible. I'm not sure either of those choices are ideal.

Or an "under construction" page:

https://jefftucker.net/

Feel free to steal that one - utterly minimal code, and a single image that I swiped from somewhere.

You can use the uploading module in jAlbum, but it's probably simpler with FileZilla (visually easier to see what you're doing).


No. To password-protect an album on jalbum.net, you need to go to its thumbnail on your profile page, hover, and choose Edit album. You'll find the spot there to put a password on it.

Yes, I actually stumbled across the privacy and password settings when digging around last evening, but thanks to all who assisted here.

I have this pretty well sorted out now, but as I suspected, by switching my Cloudflare settings to pure DNS mode (rather than proxy mode), I lost the automatic SSL/https: upgrade that the latter offers. This was the primary reason to use Cloudflare in the first place. Now I may as well just be sharing my links in the "pure" jsbeddow.jalbum.net/MyExampleAlbum format, rather than inserting my personal domain at all. Sorry, I know I could use the even shorter link format that is offered as well, but that format is even more obscure/less personalized.

Ok, I will have to chalk this one up to the computer trolls/gremlins being especially active last night: I know when testing (from a desktop computer) the "redirected" link (the one with my domain inserted at the front), it was showing the "insecure" symbol and information when clicked. Today, when testing the same link from a mobile, it is showing as secure. No idea why, but I'll happily run with it.

Obviously, my other comments regarding not bothering using my domain name were in regards to this (apparent) insecure connection issue. I suffered through that situation by remaining on my last hosting provider for 12+ years: they basically never updated any of their services or offerings, and the path to getting SSL certificates was particularly expensive and onerous.