Photo hosting idea...

I am attempting to download all my pictures this morning using their buggy "download album" tool.

Cripes what a cock up.

From what I can tell, you can still link photos from PB to things like build threads in the $9.99/month plan (which provides 112GB of storage). I mean, it sucks to pay (or pay more than the $3.99 plan I currently have), but int he grand scheme of things, not the end of the world.

I don't see much of an alternative to me. If I don't, my giant build threads all basically die, and I won't bother fixing them...not enough time or patience to re-upload 5,000+ photos......

So I guess either I'll pay the $10/month (really, a small amount in the grand scheme of things), or I'll just let it die.

For the time being, it seems that my current plan ($3.99/month) on PB is still letting me hotlink photos....so who knows what's up - some kind of "grandfathered" contract?

To be honest, I expect someday Facebook and Instagram will do this too....either pay up or lose the last 20 years of your public life lol....

We all know this is how it works, so why do we act so surprised when "free" services suddenly stop being free? It's like complaining that you saw Pearl Jam in 1992 for $12.50 ticket price, and now you'd have to pay like $250 for a ticket to see them.....

Also, it still sucks....but such is life.

Anyone want to give some tips for self hosting? I know I can just set up hosting and do the direct link thing, but I'm sure there's a more elegant way to go about it.

Also, what kind of bandwidth usage should someone who's not Mazdeuce expect to need?

In reply to Crackers:

I use pair.com on a $6 plan but if I something just for pictures I'd look at bluehost.com for better value. Pair is great for support and reliability. You just pay a little more and they don't offer unlimited. I use copper mine to run the image stuff but another program was mentioned earlier in this thread. Let me know if I can help.

How deep do you want to go with self hosting?

At the very basic level you need some webspace, so a shared hosting space might suffice. In my case I also run my own web server and blog(s) off the same virtual server, so I have a full-on virtual server that I have full control over.

If you know your way around Linux or BSD Unix, the big hosting cos should be able to sort you out with a virtual server that does everything you need for $5-$20/month. The range depends on what else you need. A basic web-server only box with nginx, some firewall rules and only photos will probably work fine on a $5/month box.

In my case, the photo traffic for my distinctly not mazdeuce build threads is essentially background noise on the server.

Oh, and obviously you need a domain name. That's really the first thing you need. I have a personal preference for keeping hosting and domain names apart so I use hover.com for domains and vultr.com and rootbsd.net for hosting.

In reply to Crackers:

I think I have 75 GB bandwidth and I'm like half a percent usage for this month.

Not very deep. LOL

I know very little about website... ...stuff. Even at that, what I knew is 12 years old and probably not worth trying to remember. I can (could) edit existing code to update stuff, but that was about it.

I've been wanting to start a WordPress type website/blog as I try to turn one of my hobbies into a part-time side business and was thinking I could just use an FTP app to upload into a dedicated subdirectory and link directly. Is there any reason I shouldn't do that?

Tactical Penguin wrote:

EastCoastMojo wrote: I like the idea. It needs to have good mobile functionality, which PB lacked. We could call it PhotoGO

I'd suggest photoBERKIT.

Photoberkit.com now registered. Details to follow hopefully later tonight.

In reply to Stampie:

Ok so here's the deal. I registered www.photoberkit.com today for the GRM community to have a place to host pictures. It currently is running on my personal hosting site.

I truly want this to be a community run site and to achieve those means I wish for volunteers from the GRM community to take control of the site. I am willing to help for up to a year in order to get it along.

As I said right now it's running off my personal web hosting mainly because I'm a cheap SOB. I was one click away from dropping $100 for separate hosting this afternoon but I couldn't do that without knowing that it would work for us.

Because I have limited space and bandwidth I need to limit the initial users to 20. Tactical Penguin gets the first spot for coming up with such an awesome domain name. Please respond here if you would like to be a user. Please also let others that need this sign up first. Meaning if you don't have an immediate need let those that do have the first spots.

I started with Coppermine because it's free (see cheap SOB above) but Chevereto mentioned before in this thread might be a possibility later on.

Please at this time keep the image hosting for GRM community purposes and please keep any image uploads in good taste.

Any questions or people wanting to sign up respond below.

I'm in i have stuff people want to see

Oh cool, Stampie. Thanks for doing this.

I cant say iam very pleased with PB either...often it takes a stupid amount of time to get a pic from my phone to my tablet upload to PB then link to grm....its exhausting just to type it :(

I'm sorta illiterate regarding all the hosting stuff and don't have a ton of pics linked, but would be willing to chip in $ to assist and allow me to store pics without somebody else that "owns" the uploaded pics. Definitely not near the top 20 and probably not savvy enough to donate skills... but willing to help as my skill set and abilities permit.

In reply to secretariata:

I'll pm you the info and get you set up.

I think it got kicked back but let me know.

In reply to Stampie:

I'm sure it got kicked back. I registered with a yahoo email. You can email me at (use the cap letters) November Alpha November November Echo Yankee Sierra at yahoo dot com.

Ok email sent.

Good GRM response to the problem, except I was expecting " My friend dropped off this old server, I swapped the drive and we're good to go. "

I don't feel worthy of top 20 consideration, but will use if it becomes available. You might consider a GRM watermark in the corner of hosted pictures. Might or might not include:

In reply to coexist:

So far there's just three of us so plenty of room. I'm wanting 20 so I can see how the web space and bandwidth requirements scale. PM me if you want in.

In reply to Stampie:

I in for helping man the ship and a donation if needed to keep it afloat. Let me know what I can do.

In reply to EastCoastMojo:

PM sent

PM sent.

I'm interested but I'll hold back and let the ones with more awesome things to share sign up first.

I'm totally cool with FTP file transfer. That is actually probably more easy. The only thing I really liked about Photobucket was the automatic image resizing, but that is easily done at home.