---
title: "Deploy Piwigo"
description: "Photo gallery for publishing and organising picture collections"
category: "CMS"
url: https://railway.com/deploy/piwigo
---

# Deploy Piwigo

Photo gallery for publishing and organising picture collections

**[Deploy Piwigo on Railway](https://railway.com/template/piwigo)**

Machine-readable deploy manifest (JSON, validated by TemplateCI): https://railway.com/deploy/piwigo/manifest.json

- **Creator:** A3A
- **Category:** CMS
- **Total deploys:** 1

## Template content

### MySQL https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/homarr-labs/dashboard-icons/svg/mysql.svg

- **Image:** mysql:9.4
- **Start command:** `docker-entrypoint.sh mysqld --innodb-use-native-aio=0 --disable-log-bin --performance_schema=0 --innodb-buffer-pool-size=1G`

### piwigo https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/homarr-labs/dashboard-icons/svg/piwigo.svg

- **Source:** https://github.com/gridalpha/piwigo-railway
- **Health check:** /
- **Public domain:** Yes

## Documentation

# Deploy and Host Piwigo on Railway

Piwigo is an open-source photo gallery for the web, in development since 2002 and used by museums, universities, photographers and families to publish picture collections. It handles what a folder of JPEGs cannot: albums and sub-albums, tags, EXIF and IPTC metadata, search, per-album permissions, user accounts, generated display sizes, and a batch manager for thousands of photos at once. Self-host Piwigo and the originals stay on storage you control, with no per-seat pricing and no quota.

This template runs Piwigo as two Railway services. `piwigo` serves the gallery and the admin over nginx and PHP 8.4, with a volume at `/config` holding the photo library, plugins, themes and every generated thumbnail; `MySQL` is a Railway-managed database holding albums, tags, users and permissions. Visitors reach `piwigo` over its public domain, the database stays on the private network, and the gallery installs itself on first boot — the administrator account you name in the variables exists before the site answers its first request, so the installation wizard is never claimable from the internet.

![Diagram of the Piwigo and MySQL services on Railway](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789669128/piwigo-architecture.webp)

## Getting Started with Piwigo on Railway

Set `PIWIGO_ADMIN_USER` and `PIWIGO_ADMIN_PASSWORD` when you deploy — they become the webmaster account, and nothing else is required. When the deploy finishes, open the public URL: you land on an empty gallery rather than an installer, because the installation ran inside the container before nginx started. Click **Admin** and sign in. Go to **Photos → Add**, create your first album, drag a handful of JPEGs into the uploader and press **Start Upload**; Piwigo stores each original on the volume and generates the display sizes it needs. Visit the gallery again and the album is there, with thumbnails, a full-size photo page, EXIF details and prev/next navigation. **Batch Manager** then selects the whole library at once to tag, move or delete. Public registration is closed by default — turn it on with `PIWIGO_ALLOW_REGISTRATION=true` or under **Configuration → Options**.

![Piwigo album grid showing five landscape photographs](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789669131/piwigo-landscapes-album.webp)

![Piwigo photo page with album and visit metadata](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789669134/piwigo-photo-page.webp)

![Piwigo Batch Manager listing the whole photo library](https://res.cloudinary.com/rroe4rtk/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1789669137/piwigo-batch-manager.webp)

## About Hosting Piwigo

Piwigo is a publishing tool: you upload pictures, arrange them into albums, and decide who may see what. Teams self-host it when a collection outgrows shared drives, when clients need a branded gallery, or when the pictures cannot leave an organisation's control — it is GPL-licensed software you run yourself, so no vendor holds the archive.

Key features:

- Albums and unlimited sub-albums, plus tags, saved searches and a calendar view
- EXIF and IPTC extraction, with per-photo author, title, description and dates
- Derivative sizes (square, thumbnail, XS through XXL) generated on demand
- Users, groups and privacy levels applied per album or per photo
- Batch Manager for tagging, moving, resizing or deleting thousands of photos
- Over 300 plugins and themes installable from the admin, including LDAP, OAuth and video

The two services split cleanly: MySQL holds every row Piwigo queries, the volume holds the bytes. A web API serves the official mobile apps and desktop uploaders. Photos are delivered through Piwigo's own permission layer rather than straight off disk, so a private album is genuinely private.

## Why Deploy Piwigo on Railway

Railway removes the parts of self-hosting a PHP gallery that usually cost an afternoon:

- Managed MySQL with backups, provisioned and wired up automatically
- A persistent volume for originals, plugins and thumbnails
- HTTPS on a public domain, database kept on the private network
- The gallery installs itself on first boot — no wizard exposed to the internet
- One-click redeploys when a new Piwigo release ships

## Common Use Cases

- **Client galleries for photographers** — a password-protected album per shoot, with downloads enabled only where you want them
- **Institutional archives** — museums and local authorities publishing catalogued collections with full metadata and controlled access
- **A private family archive** — decades of photos in one searchable place, visible only to the accounts you create

## Dependencies for Piwigo

- **piwigo** — built from [gridalpha/piwigo-railway](https://github.com/gridalpha/piwigo-railway), a thin layer over [`lscr.io/linuxserver/piwigo`](https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-piwigo): nginx, PHP 8.4 with `gd`, `imagick` and `exif`, ImageMagick, ffmpeg and exiftool. The layer installs Piwigo unattended, keeps the library on one volume, and gives PHP the real visitor address behind Railway's edge.
- **MySQL** — Railway-managed `mysql:9.4`, holding albums, photo records, tags, users and permissions. Piwigo needs a real SQL database; SQLite is not an option.

### Environment Variables Reference

| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
| `PIWIGO_ADMIN_USER` | Webmaster login created on first boot |
| `PIWIGO_ADMIN_PASSWORD` | Webmaster password; any characters are accepted |
| `PIWIGO_ADMIN_EMAIL` | Address stored on the webmaster account |
| `PIWIGO_ALLOW_REGISTRATION` | `false` by default; `true` lets visitors register |
| `PIWIGO_GALLERY_TITLE` | Gallery title, applied while it is still the default |
| `PIWIGO_DB_HOST` / `_NAME` / `_USER` / `_PASSWORD` | Database connection, pre-wired to the MySQL service |
| `PIWIGO_DB_PREFIX` | Table prefix, `piwigo_` by default |
| `PUID` / `PGID` / `TZ` | Runtime user, group and timezone |

### Deployment Dependencies

- Source repository: [github.com/gridalpha/piwigo-railway](https://github.com/gridalpha/piwigo-railway)
- Upstream project: [github.com/Piwigo/Piwigo](https://github.com/Piwigo/Piwigo) (GPL-2.0)
- Official documentation: [piwigo.org/doc](https://piwigo.org/doc)

## Hardware Requirements for Self-Hosting Piwigo

| Resource | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1 vCPU | 2 vCPU — resizing is CPU-bound |
| RAM | 512 MB | 1–2 GB for large batch uploads |
| Storage | 5 GB volume | Originals plus roughly 30% for derivatives |
| Runtime | PHP 8.2+, MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.4+ | PHP 8.4, MySQL 9 |

Sizing follows the collection, not the traffic: budget your originals plus about a third again for generated sizes, and raise the volume before importing a large archive.

## Self-Hosting Piwigo with Docker

Piwigo publishes no first-party image; LinuxServer.io's is the maintained community build. The following runs it with MariaDB:

```
docker network create piwigo

docker run -d --name piwigo-db --network piwigo \
  -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=change-me \
  -e MARIADB_DATABASE=piwigo \
  -v piwigo-db:/var/lib/mysql mariadb:11

docker run -d --name piwigo --network piwigo -p 8080:80 \
  -e PUID=1000 -e PGID=1000 -e TZ=Etc/UTC \
  -v piwigo-config:/config -v piwigo-gallery:/gallery \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/piwigo:latest
```

Open `http://localhost:8080`; the wizard asks for the database host (`piwigo-db`), name, user and password, then the webmaster account to create. Upgrading is a pull and a visit to `/upgrade.php`:

```
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d
curl -I http://localhost:8080/upgrade.php
```

On Railway both steps are already handled: the container installs itself from the variables and applies the schema upgrade when a new Piwigo release arrives.

## How Much Does Piwigo Cost to Self-Host?

The software is free and GPL-2.0 licensed — every feature, plugin and theme included, with no paid tier of the code. The Piwigo company sells optional hosting from €32 per month billed annually, and support contracts for self-hosters from €43. On Railway you pay only for infrastructure: one small application service, a managed MySQL database, and the volume holding your photos — the line item that grows with the collection.

## FAQ

**What is Piwigo?**
An open-source photo gallery application for the web, written in PHP with a MySQL database. It organises pictures into albums, extracts their metadata, generates each display size and controls who sees which photos.

**What does this Railway template deploy?**
Two services: `piwigo`, running nginx and PHP with a volume for the photo library, and a Railway-managed `MySQL` database. The gallery installs itself on first boot with the administrator credentials you supply.

**Why does the template include a MySQL database?**
Piwigo stores albums, photo records, tags, users, permissions and visit history in SQL and has no SQLite mode. The managed database also brings Railway's backups for that data; the photos themselves live on the volume.

**Can visitors create their own accounts?**
Not unless you allow it. Piwigo ships public registration enabled and this template closes it; set `PIWIGO_ALLOW_REGISTRATION=true`, or use **Configuration → Options**, when you want open sign-up.

**How do I upgrade Piwigo to a new release?**
Redeploy the service. The image tracks Piwigo's releases and the container applies the schema upgrade itself at boot, so there is no `/upgrade.php` step to remember.

**Is Piwigo a good alternative to Google Photos or SmugMug?**
For publishing and archiving, yes — stronger on albums, metadata and permissions, and you keep the originals. It does not match Google Photos on face recognition or automatic albums, though plugins cover some of it.


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