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[JamesV6CDX]

Hi Folks,

I recently noticed that Photobucket have now started charging, and all of the other image hosting sites are rammed full of ads and unwanted popups that generally p*ss me off. I've seen that many people on various forums are also struggling for image hosting, so I thought sod it, I've bought a server, and made a not-for-profit website where car enthusiasts can host images to then post on forums (I am also now using this myself to host the Astra thread images, etc).

Admin please note, it has no forums, and the comments facility on each image has it's length significantly reduced to remove discussion. This is Just an image hosting site for car people, we are not aiming to remove traffic from forums, but instead to help them out.

A brief guide on how to use it (It's not hard):

The home page, looks like this:



When you click on "member albums" at the top, you can see everyone's albums, and choose between seeing the latest, or sort by other choices:



To upload, you need to make an account. It's dead easy and all details are transmitted securely (Https/SSL). Click the "Register" button at the top right, and you'll see this:



Upon logging in, you'll see this



If you click on "member albums" and then "my photos", you'l be directed to your own album portal:



To upload, simply click the blue "upload photos" button seen above.

When you click on any of your photos, you can right click it, and select "Copy image address"

Edit: like this



You can then just paste that address into a forum post on here, making sure you put an tag at the end, and your image will display.

I hope even a couple of people get some use out of it

The site is https://www.mycarphotos.co.uk

A proper T+C page will be developed soon, but the basics will be you can only upload images that are not indecent in any way, and images that don't have copyright, or, you have permission to post them.

You can choose whether or not images are public, or just for you - but bear in mind if you set an image not to be public, it won't appear on forums etc if you link to it.

There is a slight glitch with registration with android phones and tablets which I'm looking into.

Enjoy.

[JamesV6CDX]

Edit: To copy an image link, you do this:

[BazaJT]

That looks like it might come in handy,do you have to re-size photos either for the site or when posting to the forum? When you say not for profit do you mean there is some kind of cover charge? I'll have to write down and study[I'm thick when it comes to such things]the procedure.

[JamesV6CDX]

That looks like it might come in handy,do you have to re-size photos either for the site or when posting to the forum? When you say not for profit do you mean there is some kind of cover charge? I'll have to write down and study[I'm thick when it comes to such things]the procedure.

No, there is no charge to anyone, it's free for anyone to use What I meant was, I'm not hosting loads of ads on it, etc, to make money. I've just made it because I think photos absolutely make a thread, on car forums - and there is a lack of free hosting for them, these days

It's not a perfect site, I'm not at the level that a photobucket developer would be, for example - but it is easy to use, safe, ad free, and works

[TheBoy]

and there is a lack of free hosting for them, these days

That'll be due to the costs of providing free/freemium services where there is storage and bandwidth costs, on top of service costs, staff/support and standard business overheads.  Then backup costs, though I'm a luddite still addicted to tape, but even so an 800Gb/LTO5 cartridge costs me £25, but the drive is around £3k, and its controller is approaching £1k, and the backup software not far off that either.  It all adds up.


I actually have some decent stats on the percentage of users of freemium products who actually decide to pay for the service, though they are probably a year or so out of date now. I was stunned how low it was. I was expecting it to be very low, but I was an order of magnitude out.

People feel that as a service is on the Internet, it must be free/cheap to provide, but in fairness, its incredibly expensive.  But we've bred a society of freetards (to quote the term by TheRegister) which is roughly the same group as Millenials.


Most of the "free image hosting, that can be embedded in other sites" have gone, simply because people refuse to pay for the service they use (and genuinely don't see why they should), so have to rely on ad click-thru revenue, which can't happen if those images are embedded in other websites.


Cloud storage providers have found similar, and now make the free service so tiny, its unworkable.  Storage, network bandwidth, resilience and backup are all hugely expensive.



Please be aware, if images are not posted as https, browsers will start to dump them soon.  Although its bad practice to use http now.  HTTPS will add processing overheads, unless you have expensive offloading cards in your servers.

[Broomies Mate]

I think it's a great idea James, and I hope it's a success!   

[TheBoy]

I think it's a great idea James, and I hope it's a success!   

Indeed, me too. But I can see the problems ahead without regulation. Ideal when its 20 users or so, needs a lot of people when it grows.  Remember, he is legally liable, as I'm sure he knows given his (former?/current?) occupation.

[JamesV6CDX]

I think it's a great idea James, and I hope it's a success!   

Indeed, me too. But I can see the problems ahead without regulation. Ideal when its 20 users or so, needs a lot of people when it grows.  Remember, he is legally liable, as I'm sure he knows given his (former?/current?) occupation.

It's not intended to have any more than a handful of people from car enthusiast networks. I doubt it will grow very much at all. At the end of the day, if it becomes a problem, and I can't find a solution, I can just turn it off. The only reason I made it, is because I've seen so many people not post images because they can't find sites that allow it anymore - and I think the quality of forum discussions is greatly improved with pictures.

I am convinced that will get zero uptake at all, outside of OOF. Not least because it isn't advertised, and there is no SEO (intentionally) to keep it small

There is also a safeguard against the worst kind of images (we all know what I'm talking about) - the CDN serving the site has a CSAM scanner enabled. It's clearly not foolproof, but, I'm being as responsible as I can, for example, I get email notifications which pop up on my phone when people do things. I will not be reckless with it, I'm just trying to help out forum users, mainly on here

More info on the CSAM Scanner we use, here: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-csam-scanning-tool/

[JamesV6CDX]

given his (former?/current?) occupation.

I never talk about what I do on here, any more. I've made a point of it for some time. It's not worth the hassle. When I'm not at work, and using a forum, I prefer to switch off, and not make a point of broadcasting it.