Whilst the first generation HP MediaSmart Server did a good job of helping you publish photos online using your home server’s own website, the new model now allows you to publish photos directly to a selection of photo sharing sites, including Google’s Picasa, Yahoo’s Flickr and Facebook.
You can, of course, still publish photo collections to your home server’s website as well as send photos to HP’s Snapfish photo printing service, but today we’re going to focus on publishing photos to the three major services. Let’s start with Flickr:
Publishing Your Photos to Flickr
1. In a Web Browser, go to http://hpserver
(or whatever name you gave to your HP MediaSmart Server)
This will open up the home server’s website front page.
2. Select HP Photo Publisher
You may get a certificate warning, which you can safely ignore – just select “Continue to this Website”
3. Enter your login details
Type in your username and password for the home server.
4. Select Flickr
You’ll be given a choice of a number of photo sharing communities – select Flickr to continue.
5. Log On to Flickr
The first time you access Flickr with your HP MediaSmart Server, you must authorise the home server to access your Flickr account.
To do this, select Log On and a new browser window will open, in which you should enter your Flickr username and password.
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll receive a message that you have successfully authorised the HP MediaSmart Server Photo Publisher.
Go ahead and close that browser window, and on the HP MediaSmart Server’s Flickr log on page, click Next.
6. Decide which album you want to publish to
If you don’t use Flickr’s photo sets, you can simply upload your photos to your Flickr Photostream, or create a new album for your photos.
7. Select your photos to upload
Your files and folders will be displayed on screen. Navigate to and select the photos you want to upload to Flickr.
If you have HP Media Collector switched on, you’ll see that your files and folders are neatly arranged in date order. Selecting a folder shows all photos in that folder, with metadata (filename, date and time taken, file size and file format) displayed for each photograph.
Clicking a photograph selects it for upload - you’ll see a tick placed in the box underneath each photo. Once all photos have been selected, click Finish.
8. Files will upload
A progress screen will keep you updated on uploading events.
9. Enjoy your photos on Flickr
Once all of your files have uploaded, the Flickr page will open up in your browser and you’ll see your photos in there ready for sharing with family and friends.
Publishing Your Photos to Picasa
The process for publishing to Picasa is quite similar to Flickr.
1. In a Web Browser, go to http://hpserver
(or whatever name you gave to your HP MediaSmart Server)
This will open up the home server’s website front page.
2. Select HP Photo Publisher
You may get a certificate warning, which you can safely ignore – just select “Continue to this Website”
3. Enter your login details
Type in your username and password for the home server.
4. Select Picasa
You’ll be given a choice of a number of photo sharing communities – select Picasa to continue.
5. Log on to Picasa
With Picasa, there’s no need to go through any authorisation, just log into your account and you’re good to go.
6. Decide which album you want to publish to
You can upload to an existing album or create a new one.
7. Select your photos to upload
Your files and folders will be displayed on screen. Navigate to and select the photos you want to upload to Picasa.
8. Files will upload
A progress screen will keep you updated on uploading events.
9. Your files will be displayed in Picasa
Publishing Your Photos to Facebook
Once again, publishing your photos to Facebook is similar to Picasa and Flickr.
1. In a Web Browser, go to http://hpserver
(or whatever name you gave to your HP MediaSmart Server)
This will open up the home server’s website front page.
2. Select HP Photo Publisher
You may get a certificate warning, which you can safely ignore – just select “Continue to this Website”
3. Enter your login details
Type in your username and password for the home server.
4. Select Facebook
You’ll be given a choice of a number of photo sharing communities – select Facebook to continue.
5. Log On to Facebook
The first time you access Facebook with your HP MediaSmart Server, you must authorise the home server to access your Facebook account.
To do this, select Log On and a new browser window will open, in which you should enter your Facebook username and password.
Once you’ve logged in, you can go ahead and close the browser window, then select Next in the HP Photo Publisher page.
6. Decide which album you want to publish to
You can upload to an existing album or create a new one.
7. Select your photos to upload
Your files and folders will be displayed on screen. Navigate to and select the photos you want to upload to Facebook.
8. Files will upload
A progress screen will keep you updated on uploading events.
9. Approve or Reject the Uploaded Photos
One additional step with Facebook is that photos have to be approved before showing on your Facebook page. When the photos are uploaded, Facebook will open up in your browser window, and you can then approve the photos you’ve just uploaded.
10. Share your photos
Once approved, you can share your photos on Facebook with the world!
That completes our walkthrough of photo publishing with the new HP MediaSmart Server. As you can see, it makes sharing your photos easy, no matter which photo sharing community you use.








30. December 2008 at 12:57 pm
It would be nice if there was an add-in for the first iteration MediaSmart servers to allow this sort of capability. Do I sound jealous at all?…
30. December 2008 at 3:39 pm
i hope hope hope this functionality will come out as an add-in for existing WHS users like myself. This and the Mac backup features are a huge bonus!
30. December 2008 at 6:21 pm
Your making me suffer
It’s not even out yet and you have a great how to.