IIIMGS
This blog is built on 11ty, and I use Decap CMS to update it (editing code directly gets old reeeeal quick). I don't love image management in Decap, though, and I always wanted a better and quicker solution for that. So I made my own.
My requirements were the following:
- I want a standalone solution for image hosting
- I want to use it as an image gathering app (hoarding, really), not only as image storage for this blog
- It should use authentication for uploading and deleting images, but it should also be accessible without logging in for view-only features
- I don't want to put money into it, so it should rely only on free products/services
The suggested solution, and the one I went with, was a project in Supabase, using their storage, authentication, and database systems, with a front end built on JavaScript and hostable locally or in any JAMstack provider (I went with Netlify, which I use for everything).
When logged in, I can just drag and drop images onto the page, and it will upload and organize them by date (grouped by month). The images are shown and paginated by month, and I can click on any of them to copy the URL, double-click them to see them in a lightbox, or click the × icon to delete them.
I also made an export script so I can back up everything whenever I need to, in case I want to move all the content to a new provider. The images from the last three posts (including this one) are hosted there, and it's been working really nicely.
For future features, I want to add a "locked" status to some images, in case I'm using them on a post and want to prevent myself from accidentally deleting them. That's pretty much it for the moment. It makes me so happy 🙂.
This is a post about a tool I made using AI. Here's the context.
