Phlog Space
phlog.space is a small photolog where every upload gets shrunk to 400 pixels and wrecked by one of 35 random effects, from fax and Game Boy to Super 8 and cyanotype. The original is thrown away, the code is plain PHP with no JavaScript, and every profile comes with a guestbook, a hit counter and an 88x31 button. Here’s how it works and how to get in.
Contents
Every photo you post on phlog.space comes back worse than you sent it. First it gets shrunk to 400 pixels on the long side. Then a random effect gets its hands on it. It might turn into a fax, a Game Boy screen, a VHS tape left in a hot car, a cyanotype or a Super 8 frame with dust on the lens. You don't pick. You find out after you hit post.
The original goes in the trash. The site keeps only the wrecked copy, and that copy has no EXIF data, so no GPS and no camera model either.
I miss the web where people had small pages with a guestbook, a hit counter and a little button you could paste on your friends' sites. Photo apps today work hard to make every picture look perfect. This one goes the other way.
How it works
The whole site is PHP, the GD image library and one SQLite file. There is no framework and no JavaScript at all, not even on the upload form. Every page is plain HTML and one stylesheet.
The effects are the fun part. Each one is a small function that walks over the photo pixel by pixel. The fax effect turns the image black and white, halves the vertical resolution, tilts the page about a degree and stamps a header with the date across the top, the way the old machines did. Databending opens the JPEG as raw bytes, swaps a few of them at random and decodes what's left, which gives you those blocky colored tears. Two-strip Technicolor throws the blue away and rebuilds the picture from a red record and a green one, so everything looks like a film from the 1920s. There are 35 effects now, and each one also rolls its own settings, so two VHS photos never come out the same.
At first you could choose the effect. Then not knowing seemed more fun, so the choice went away. If you want a photo straight, there's a switch in settings that turns the effects off. The photo still gets shrunk, and nothing else happens to it.
The small web stuff
Your profile lives at phlog.space/~yourname, tilde included, like the university home pages of the nineties. It has a guestbook for other members to sign, an archive by month and a hit counter at the bottom. The counter changes its look every time the page loads: green LED, odometer, calculator LCD, flip clock, a Windows 95 button, a train station dot matrix and six more, all drawn pixel by pixel.
The page background is picked at random from a pile of 734 old tiles, so the site rarely looks the same twice. There's a random link that drops you on any photo, a people page with everyone who posts, RSS for the whole site and for each person, and an 88x31 button with a tiny camera and a cracked lens, for the links page on your own site.
Members can leave one "nice" and a one-line comment on each photo. There are no followers, and the front page is just the newest photos first. No ads, no tracking scripts.
How to get in
Go to phlog.space and click register. Pick a name, which becomes your address and can't be changed later, so choose with care. Add an email, a password and a few words about yourself. The about box takes HTML, even a <style> tag, so you can repaint your whole profile page. Marquee is allowed.
New accounts are approved by hand, which keeps the spam out and the place small. You get an email when you're in, and the upload button shows up in the menu: JPEG or PNG, up to 25 MB, and a caption only if you feel like writing one.
You can delete your account any time in settings, and everything you posted goes with it right away. There's also a box to keep your profile out of search engines if you'd rather not be found.
Bring a photo you like. Fair warning: your favorite shot might come back as a fax.
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