Help with a project

[REB]

This fall I am taking a extended vacation to backpack across Australia and
want to keep a daily online journal of the trip with images from my camera
attached for each day so my friends and family can monitor my progress. The
problem with this wish is that I will not have internet access on a regular
basis and will need a way to make many journal entries offline on my laptop
and then be able to upload them all at once when I find access.

I want to build an application using ASP.NET (unless someone knows of
something similar that is not too expensive) that does the things I want.

Here is a list of features I want built in:

- Calendar object where users can click on a day and if there is a journal
entry for that day it will be shown. Perhaps dates that have journal entries
can be highlighted on the calendar.

- Photo's with captions in each journal entry

- Photo Gallery to display photos for the entire trip (taken from all
journal entries and extra's I may want to upload)

- Offline interface for making and storing journal entries with photo's

- One button upload to synchronize the offline entries with the online
journal


Ok now for my questions: Would using a access database to store journal
entries and links to photo's be a good way to go? What would be a good
offline entry method to try? Any other architectural tips or suggesstions
will be greatly appreciated or links to pre-existing programs. I have 7
months to get this set-up so I have plenty of time.

Thanks everyone,
Russ

 

[Kevin Spencer]

You do realize that any method that works "offline" would have to employ a
local IIS web server if you want to do it with ASP.Net, don't you? Perhaps
your offline solution would be faster to develop if it was a Windows Form?

For a single-user application, Access would be fine. You could also look at
MSDE, which is not licensed either, and is faster.

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.

 

[Curt_C [MVP]]

Well, here is what I would do.
Write a base app that simply scans a dir for files (these are the logs with
the name being the Date).
Write these each day, in html most likely, and put the images in a
subfolder. Then when you get a connection just upload the new HTML pages and
the Images subfolder, with FTP. Poof, done, with not clumsy interface to go
through, especially since you will probably have limited time and don't want
to drag each file/page/pic individually.

 

[REB]

I am thinking out loud here so bare(or is it bear) with me. What if I used
an Access as the offline medium? I could create a form for making entries
inside Access and then just upload a fresh copy of the database for a
ASP.NET application to use whenever I get the chance.

 

[Kevin Spencer]

That would be perfectly fine.

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.