What you're looking for is genealogy software. You've got me curious about this as well now, hadn't thought about it before. I'm seeing some recommendations online for Gramps Web, don't know if it's a perfect fit but might be a good starting point.
this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2025
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Start with plain old Gramps. It can export to static sites with several different templates. Gramps Web is not easy to host or run. It was designed for some specialized things.
Gramps is the way! Running the container self hosted is quick! And it’s very active, lots of UI upgrades. I’m working with my dad in it being in diff countries.👌
This is pretty much what I searched for. Thanks!
I use Gramps and it's good. Has a Linux client too. My Family Tree is also good but windows only.
2nd gramps. I spooled it up in about 2mins on an unraid server.
Have you heard of webtrees? Self hosted, similar enough to Ancestry and you can upload relevant media to their entry. Not sure if it can handle a few hundred gigs but you could probably host the media on a separate program to reduce the DB strain.
I've used it when my wife was getting into genealogy. Still running in the background for the last few years with little to no maintenance.
It sounds like you want a combination of things, which is why you are getting such varied responses. Keep in mind, you probably aren’t going to find an all in one solution, but with some docker images you could run a couple different solutions, one for each task. Immich for photos, and maybe another for the family tree.
I was in a similar boat and stumbled across “digital gardens”. I made my own digital garden, and I think if it as a life wiki. It has tech notes, images, recipes, etc. Obviously it’s not a drop in replacement for good photo hosting software or ancestry software tho.
HTH!
Self host dokuwiki. Simple, easy, effective. I do.
How does that help with lots of photos with annotations?
Unless you want a photo organizer like Immich, you can upload or better maybe link photos in dokuwik.
And you can write entire pages with photos, something you cannot do in immich or similar tools.
Which ones have you looked at?
First hit on my search was https://www.bookstackapp.com/ which seems to be a nice FOSS wiki with MIT licensing.
I've worked with bookstack. Found it easy and intuitive. It's wiki software not specific to family history.
Wordpress?
Mediawiki?
Nextcloud offers practically everything you ask for besides the family tree and even that might be available as a plugin (or "App" as Nextcloud calls tem). Or if you're willing to split photos in a different app, Immich works great.
I'm a noob who just turned to Linux and is planning a similar selfhosting project like OP. What apps/plugins of Nextcloud would you recommend?
Depends heavily on what you need/want. My current installation doesn't have anything extra, mail and calendar with "standard" file storage (with sync agents on desktop/laptop) is well enough on what I use it for as my photos are in Immich instance.
NC is kind of a pain to run and tries to do far to much. I'd pick different software to run than adding addons to nextcloud.
That being said, I add contacts and calendar and use it to sync to my PC/Phone