Custom Image Storage and API

[Tex Mechs Robot]

Okay. I've bitten off just a little more than I can chew and I'm looking for some direction. I have been tasked with designing a custom image storage application. I'm not a programmer but I am familiar with coding at a basic level and can usually figure things out with enough Googling and trial and error.

Backstory: We are celebrating service anniversaries at work and have over 750 people included. Each of these people need to submit 1-3 photos. They typically email these and you can imagine how complicated that is to keep track of. I suggested "Why not create a web app where people can just upload their pics with required data to a shared server?" So I get to make this. It has to be simple (the entire page should only be about uploading an image from their computer and subsequent data fields).

I've thought about using cloud features like Google, DropBox, Flickr, etc. and am only concerned that the added functionality of these services will over complicate the process for the end-user. I literally want a web page with simple controls, a database to hold the images and meta, and an API between them.

HTML/CSS/JavaScript should get the front-end taken care of pretty simply and I think I can handle that side. I just don't know which language would be best for the API or what database to use.

Thoughts?

[InterCity]

I'm not a pro, just someone who used to work as a php programmer in college. 

PHP has an API for uploading stuff, including images. You can have it uploaded through that (there is even a HTML input type called File for that). Then, you simply upload any data about that thing into a MySQL database. When you want to load the thing again, you loop through the database and load a div for each one. I might even write a snippet, if you want me to?

 

[Tex Mechs Robot]

Thanks for the reply. I should probably install something to get me the ability to test PHP and MySQL projects. This is all so over my head that I feel like a noob lol. HTML and CSS are easy to test in any web browser without any hoops to jump through but that isn't the same with PHP and MySQL so I don't really know where to begin.

This is what I was thinking anyway since I want it to be a web app so thanks for confirming that. If you wanted to help steer me along with the code then I would appreciate it a ton!

 

EDIT: Looks like I need Apache, PHP, and MySQL in order to get started...

Edited March 16, 2016 by Tex Mechs Robot