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frontend
JavaScript2012–2026
photo / frontend · Archived

frontend

The official @github repository of the Trovebox frontend software. A photo sharing and photo management web interface for data stored "in the cloud" (i.e. Amazon S3, Rackspace CloudFiles, Google Storage).

Web DevelopmentCreative & MediaDevOps & Cloud
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
3Distinct people
13Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
1.4KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

The official @github repository of the Trovebox frontend software. A photo sharing and photo management web interface for data stored "in the cloud" (i.e. Amazon S3, Rackspace CloudFiles, Google Storage).

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

+1 for Trovebox. I love that I can use my own domain name (http://photos.masnick.org/) and have Trovebox use my own S3 account for storage. I haven't had a chance to hack on…

masnick used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year13 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2012-09-11 03:45:40 UTC to 2026-10-25 15:50:29 UTC.

0123452012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

13 sources
jmathai·Oct 25, 2026
Open source let your project be rebranded and resold. That happened to me a decade ago. A company named ClickUp rebranded https://github.com/photo/frontend. It’s a risk with Apache 2.0. Turned out not to materially impact our efforts. But it felt like a gut punch at the time. AI enables this for closed source. Reputation and community are durable differentiators nowadays. I hope your 10 years of investment provides that.
In Now Google says it might use your Gmail and Google Photos data to target ads
jmathai·Aug 2, 2014
The only thing I'd change at the moment would be to make a Cloud backend API so that customers can plug in Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.net etc. with something simple like a URL, separating storage from display etc. For what it's worth, that's specifically what our differentiation was with OpenPhoto/Trovebox (we support about 7 storage services along with being open source[1]). We've moved on from the consumer space because there didn't seem to be a large enough market for that specifically; separating data storage from application logic. You can see our Kickstarter from 3 years back[2]. I asked in another post how offering custom S3 buckets was working out for PictureLife. Curious if someone else found a market for that. [1] https://github.com/photo/frontend [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jmathai/openphoto-a-pho...
In Google Said to Plan Separating Photo Service From Google+
jmathai·Jul 17, 2014
I've spent the last 3 years in this space[1]. 2 of those were with a fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation[2]. I applaud all the efforts to free up and decentralize data. I believe it's the future but the way we're approaching it is making that a very distant future. My suggestions are simple. Data ownership will not be solved by technology. Focus and practice on framing the solution in a way that people connect with. Build that into the fabric of your team. And be prepared to spend a lot of time figuring out how you can describe what a world where you own your data looks like and how it is drastically better than today's world. It's all too easy to get caught up in writing code. [1] https://github.com/photo/frontend [2] https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/fellows/current/jaise...
In Own your own data
jmathai·Apr 8, 2014
OpenPhoto (now Trovebox) is an open source project [1] with an API you can use without authentication. Something which might be helpful to teach your child is that the API endpoint has a corresponding HTML (visual) representation. For example, the web page at https://current.trovebox.com/photos/list can be viewed in JSON format at https://current.trovebox.com/photos/list.json. The response is standard across all APIs [2] and the API itself is well documented[3]. This applies to most pages and we blogged about how we did that for easy discoverability[4]. [1] https://github.com/photo/frontend [2] https://trovebox.com/documentation/api/Envelope [3] https://trovebox.com/documentation [4] http://blog.trovebox.com/post/11031677122/building-openphoto...
In Ask HN – Simple APIs Without Authentication?
jmathai·Apr 23, 2013
We did something similar. Configuration file with sections/selectors of the feature to highlight [1]. Model to determine if the user has unseen "tutorials" [2]. JavaScript to show an indicator that new features exist [3][4]. It looks like this, http://imgur.com/a/ZWaHV [1] https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/... [2] https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/libra... [3] https://github.com/photo/frontend/blob/development/src/html/... [4] https://github.com/usablica/intro.js
In Show HN: How We Built an Extensible Tour System for Streak

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